With more meetings taking place remotely, you want people listening, questioning, and offering ideas. Here are three tips for more engaging online meetings from Howard Tiersky, coauthor with Heidi Wisbach of Impactful Online Meetings: How to Run Polished Virtual Working Sessions That Are Engaging and Effective.
Turn on video – Encourage or require participants to turn on their video cameras. This makes participants part of “the show” versus remaining in private. They’re less likely to multitask—an engagement killer—since they can be seen.
Give people roles – Involve as many people as possible with presentation roles, so they do not attend the meeting in a passive mode of watching a webinar.
Use the chat feature – Increase participation and get feedback by asking others to answer a question with short answers in the chat feature. Not only will you know they are still there, but you are in dialogue with your audience.
Don’t be surprised if you find people enjoying working together virtually and getting more done than ever before.