5 Pro Tips to Prepare for Virtual Meetings: Understanding Your Audience
2020 has been the year of virtual meetings. And those of you who teach, present, and facilitate for a living might be facing setbacks as a result of losing the face-to-face component of your work.
Admit it or not, understanding your audience via a screen is difficult. It’s hard to feel the same in-person natural energy through a screen. And that’s where awkwardness comes into play with participants experiencing barriers to connection and participation.
But we have five pro tips that will help you prepare for virtual meetings to understand your audience, keep their attention, and avoid distractions! So, let’s begin.
Turn on Video and Make Your Presence Felt
Body language is one of the essential parts of communication. Turning on the video will help you build a connection with your audience. Moreover, seeing each other and interacting will cut down other distractions and allow both of you to concentrate.
Don’t just stay idle during the video call. Make your presence felt and be active. Making eye contact, calling your partner by name, asking questions, etc. will help you make your presence felt. It will not only activate your presence but encourage all of the members in the virtual meeting to stay awake and active.
Make Things Personal
No one likes to attend a cold-formal meeting, especially if it’s virtual. Make yourself presentable, friendly, and engaging while you are connected with your virtual audience. Greet people by their names, give them attention, and share a smile or two to make them feel like you are with them in person.
Sketch Out Rules
Creating rules for your virtual meeting will set expectations for everyone. All people in the conference will be expected to follow the rules to ensure a smooth and soothing virtual meeting experience. Some rules you can set out for your virtual meetings are:
· Turning off all devices apart from the active one
· Turning on video
· Muting mic if a person isn’t speaking, etc.
Before anyone joins the meeting room, distribute a checklist that they can follow during the meeting. This way, the decorum of the meeting will stay intact, and everyone will be able to make the most of it.
Follow Up and Give Feedback
Before your virtual meeting ends, take five or ten minutes for everyone to cool down and then ask for feedback. Encourage everyone to ask questions one by one and share their opinion about the current session.
Give everyone a chance to speak out and listen to what they have to share. After the feedback session, summarize and debrief your team with quick and vital highlights of the session. After everyone has signed off, ask yourself how things could have been better. Always remember, think, and reflect back.
Set Up A Plan
For every virtual meeting, it’s essential to have a plan. Without a plan, the members or the meeting’s head will not be able to stay on the same page.
Firstly, share your meeting’s agenda will all the attendants before the meeting. Next up, provide them with the necessary documents so they can learn what will be going down in the meeting. Lastly, make the attendants aware of how the meeting will be conducted with some pointers.
These five pro tips will help you to understand your audience and limit distractions in no time.
What tips do you use during the preparation for a virtual meeting? Leave a comment below with your experience!
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