Interested in Leading More Efficient, Productive Online Meetings?

Late last week, EAB was one of several higher ed consultancies that shared good counsel about maximizing the efficiency and effectiveness of meeting technologies in our new COVID-19 world. I found their Virtual Meeting Tools, Tips and Alternatives resource to be especially useful in its breadth and brevity.

As we deal with the new normal of entire teams working remotely, those of us who have been functioning successfully for many years working from home-based offices have advantages over our colleagues who are just now learning those tricky ropes.

So as someone who has orchestrated and executed more log-in and dial-in meetings over the past 20-plus years than I care to admit, here are 10 tried-and-true tips especially for online meeting leaders who want to waste as little team time as possible:

1. When practical, schedule meetings for 30 minutes instead of an hour, or 15 minutes instead of 30. Online and telephone meetings will consume as much time as you give them, and no busy professional should enjoy lingering on the phone when they could be doing other things.
2. Choose your meeting spaces carefully to avoid rooms that echo. And remember that the quality of the speakerphone function on your equipment never delivers high audio fidelity to meeting participants like your handset -- or headset with a built-in microphone -- will deliver.
3. As an online meeting leader, think of yourself as a news anchor person and an orchestra conductor; consider how each manages her/his respective assignment and take cues from how you’ve seen them function successfully.
4. Begin every meeting on time, and wait no more five minutes for stragglers; you’re establishing new ground rules for meeting productivity, so let your actions send a strong signal that your performance expectations remain high in spite of the communication challenges we’re all facing in this moment.
5. Either introduce everyone on the line yourself, or assertively lead the process of asking each participant to self-introduce, as in, “Mark, can you please introduce yourself to the group and then I’ll cue each of the rest of you when it’s your turn to do the same.”
6. Rather than asking, “Can everyone hear me?” simply state, “If you can’t hear a speaker during our meeting as clearly as you’d like, please stop the conversation and let me know.”
7. Set the pace of the meeting dialogue with the rhythm and flow of your own comments; go the extra mile to help participants feel your meetings are purposeful, efficient and productive.
8. Think of speaker transitions as baton handoffs, as in a relay race. Make them efficient and obvious by stating someone’s name when you’ve finished your comment and want your team to know (a) you’re done talking and (b) you want someone else to start talking. Watch the evening news tonight and note how reporters in the field interact with anchors in the studio.
9. Every time you speak, make sure your mouth is near the microphone. If you’re not sure where the microphone is on your equipment, figure it out right now. Make yourself easy to be heard.
10. When multiple people speak -- or even whisper -- at the same time, no one on the line hears anything. Manage extraneous dialogue aggressively.

Bonus tip: to maximize efficiency, open dialogue portions of online meetings and conference calls by specifically asking someone to offer observations rather than opening the floor for that awkward jumble of comments that invariably follows, “So … what does everyone think?” Rather, try asking, “Janet, what do you think?” Then follow by asking each participant, by name, the same question when Janet finishes up.

This list is hardly exhaustive or definitive, so please add your advice in the comments section that follows. And here’s wishing you and your teammates nothing but efficient and productive meetings for the duration of our shared self-isolation.

As an agency consultant, Eric Sickler helped the nation's college and universities clarify and elevate their brands for more than three decades. Today, you can reach him in his new position at Grinnell College.