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How To: Run A Remote Meeting

Reinier Jonker in

Remote meetings are becoming more and more common. Whether it’s because partners, clients or team members work remotely to spend more time with their families, escape the coronavirus or simply live on the other side of the world – more and more teams are extending their collaboration beyond the physical walls of the office. If you’re new to this, don’t worry: we’ve collected the best tips for a successful remote meeting. 

- This is part 2 of a 3 part series about remote meetings.

How To: Run A Remote Meeting

The points we’ve covered so far will help you get a virtual meeting up and running. But those will prove irrelevant if the meeting attendees aren’t engaged during the actual meeting. Here are some 3 tips for keeping all attendees present for a remote meeting, from beginning to end:

1. Make time for casual conversation

A few minutes to friendly banter before diving into a meeting enables you to build the necessary rapport for a successful sit-down – and keep everyone engaged when the conversation jumps to business talk. Spend a few minutes at the beginning of the meeting checking in with everyone, catching up, or just having small talk about what’s going on in everyone’s life. 

2. Have everyone introduce themselves

If there are a lot of NEW faces attending a meeting, it can be hard to keep tabs on who’s who. Having everyone introduce themselves at the start (and especially before someone speaks or presents) is a good way to help everyone keep track of different meeting attendees and how they’re contributing to the meeting.

Assign tasks to everybody during an internal meeting:

Before the meeting, make sure every attendee has a task; for example, have one attendee write down any questions that come up during a brainstorm, someone else can take notes on the discussion points, and another participant can manage the slide progression during the presentation.

 

The best tasks to keep people engaged during meetings are:

  • Interactive. The task should require each person to contribute in real time and interact with the meeting and other attendees.
  • Straightforward. If the task is too complex, attendees may spend more time trying to figure out what to do than actually participating in the meeting.
  • Frequent. Ideally, each attendee’s task is something they need to do over the duration of the meeting so that they’re engaged from start to finish, rather than being assigned a “one and done” task.

Giving everyone a task allows them to take an active role in the meeting, instead of forcing people to be passive listeners – which, we can all attest, is boring and tedious.

3. Determine your Moderator and Secretary

The core roles you will need to run a successful meeting are:

  • Moderator. The person who is responsible for the successful running and outcome of the meeting. He or she sends out the agenda, divides roles, ensures the meeting starts and ends on time and that all next steps are clear to all attendees.
  • Secretary. The person who is responsible for taking the minutes and jotting down important feedback given in the meeting, all unanswered questions and all the next steps (including owner and deadline). 

NedWorks Tip – In case of an interview or if you are unable to divide roles, the Moderator will take on the role of Secretary as well. Try to avoid this at all costs! It’s challenging trying to lead a meeting while keeping track of all the important details.

 

Also read: How To Run Remote Meetings Effectively

Pt. 1 How To: Prep A Remote Meeting

Pt. 3 How To: Follow Up A Remote Meeting

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Reinier
Reinier
About the author

Reinier Jonker is on a mission to help scale the impact of NedWorks. In his role he ensures NedWorks gives people the strength to become the best version of themselves. He loves talking business, effectiveness & personal growth.

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