Businesses are embracing online meetings. Knowing how to run a meeting with web conferencing software is a crucial skill — one that can give you a leg up on your competition.
Online meetings can save you money on travel, boost communication between workers and clients, even increase sales. If you run them right. Follow these 8 tips and you’ll be ahead of the game.
1. Send an agenda in advance. Yes, I know this is a standard recommendation. It’s still an important part of a successful meeting. More so online, where we have to add more visual and verbal cues to keep things on track.
2. Practice with your web meeting software. As a leader, you should know how the features work. Planning to use the whiteboard? Figure out how to use it before the meeting. Only want to share one document from your desktop? Again, practice once and learn what to do. Few things are more irritating to meeting participants than waiting five minutes while the leader mumbles “hmm can you see this now?” in vain.
3. Make sure everyone’s prepared. Participants seem less likely to do their prep work (homework, if you will) for online meetings. I recommend a quick “how are you doing” phone call to anyone needing a nudge.
4. Keep a confident smile on your face. You’ll find that your tone of voice follows your face. Since the attendees can’t see you, they’ll read more into your voice than they would otherwise.
5. Keep background noises to a minimum. Start with a request that cell phone ringers be turned off. Don’t type near the phone’s receiver. If you’re at home, put the dogs in a different room.
6. Assign someone else to take notes. Unless the purpose of the meeting is to fine-tune a document, I can promise your attendees don’t want to watch you type on the screen.
7. Do participants understand (or agree on) the key points? We don’t have facial expressions to help us know if everyone’s in agreement. Instead, online meeting leaders have to ask specific questions after each major topic — use that feedback to gauge the participants’ understanding.
8. Manage the participants. Some online meetings tend to mushroom - people pull coworkers into the conference to listen in “just in case” and suddenly you have a lot of unexpected inputs. At the very least, you should know who’s participating. Start the meeting with a request to quickly list who’s in each location - your participants will appreciate knowing who’s hearing their input.
These tips will take you a long way in your desire to run a successful online meeting. Still feeling uncomfortable? Sign up for a free trial with a internet conference vendor (see resource box for helpful links) and practice a bit with a friend. You’ll both emerge knowing exactly how to run a meeting online.
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