How To Hold Highly Effective Remote Team Meetings

Since the Covid pandemic forced everyone to work from home, remote team meetings have become an essential part of business workflow. But, many business owners think that remote team meetings are not as effective as face-to-face meetings. In addition, it can be pretty hard to keep all of your team members engaged and energized during a meeting while sitting at home, trying to take care of their kids, and handling the house chores.

Collaboration plays a significant role in the success of your business. Whether your team members are working from home or working remotely, you need to have a place to brainstorm ideas, plan their next move in the task, and constantly keep themselves up-to-date with all that’s happening in their workplace. Remote team meetings enable your team members to connect and stay on track with their tasks. But, despite the enormous advantages of remote team meetings, they also bring their own set of challenges.

So, how can you overcome these challenges and make your remote team meetings highly effective?

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Before conducting a remote team meeting, you need to find the proper meeting tool. There are various remote team meeting tools available for entrepreneurs, which offer different features for your various needs. You need to find the tool that will serve all of your needs, such as connecting with people, collaborating, and sending feedback. These meeting tools enable you to keep your team members engaged and ultimately, making the meeting productive.

Here are some of the famous meeting tools that can be used to hold your remote team meetings:

• Zoom
• Microsoft Teams
• Webex
• Free Conference
• Join. me
• Gather
• FaceTime
• Skype

When choosing the proper meeting tool, you should focus on your requirements. First, think about what you want to accomplish by using the tool. Consider checking the tool for basic requirements, such as audio, video, screen sharing, etc. Next, you need to determine how many people can accommodate a video chat. Many tools allow a limited number of virtual attendees to join a video chat.

Furthermore, you should integrate your remote meeting tool with your project management tools. In addition to the meeting tool, you may need to use separate communication tools, such as:

• Slack
• Google Hangouts
• Adobe Connect

It would be best to do a test run of your meeting tool before starting the remote team meeting. Consider checking the process of turning the camera, screen sharing feature, and how to add new participants. These steps will enable you to troubleshoot any issues before the meeting and avoid an unproductive meeting session. I recommend having a backup plan for everything you will need in your virtual meeting.

Tips for holding a highly effective remote team meeting

Tip #1: Finding a convenient time for all of your team members

If you have ever tried to conduct a virtual meeting, then you would understand how difficult it can be to finalize a time frame for the remote team meeting as you have to make sure that the time is convenient for all of your team members, especially if they all live in different parts of the world with time zones differences. Many entrepreneurs try to have a fixed day for their team meetings, mainly on Mondays. This meeting enables them to set a tone and plan for the rest of the week. Avoid holding meetings that would last longer than an hour. The optimal timing for a remote meeting is 45 minutes at a time.

#Tip 2: Determine the purpose and agenda of the meeting

Before inviting the participants for the remote team meeting, it is vital to know the purpose of the meeting. Generally, meetings are conducted to share information about ongoing tasks and anything significant happening in the company. So, before you bombard your meeting attendees with tons of information, it’s essential to create a meeting agenda.

A detailed agenda will enable you to keep the information synchronized so that when you are presenting the information during the meeting, there is nothing left behind. The agenda will help your team focus on a common goal and keep the meeting on track to achieve that goal.
Once you have the schedule ready, go ahead and send an invite to all participants. Instead of just posting a message in the shared communication channel, it would be better to send an email that contains the basic information about the meeting, such as:

• Time and date of the meeting.
• Agenda of the meeting.
• Instructions of what the attendees would need during the meeting.
• Describe everyone’s role in the meeting.
• Links to additional documents, slides, presentations that you will use in the meeting.
• Contact information of the meeting organizer so that the attendees can connect with them if someone cannot attend the meeting.

Tip #3 Set some guidelines before starting the meeting

Like a face-to-face meeting, a remote meeting also needs some guidelines and rules. Setting meeting etiquette reduces the chances of distractions during the meeting. Here are some of the ground rules that you can implement in a remote team meeting:

• Respecting each other’s time.
• Finding a quiet place for the meeting.
• Keeping the mic on mute while someone else has the floor.
• Keeping the camera on so that all of the participants can see one another.
• Not using the mobile phone during the meeting and keeping the phone on silent.
• Have the talking points ready before the meeting. Stick to three main points per meeting.
• Don’t interrupt other people while they are talking. Always wait for your turn.
• Keeping the meeting under 60 minutes to keep all of the participants engaged.

Tip #4 Make the remote meeting more fun

For productive team meetings, your team members need to have a bond at a personal level, even if they have never met in their lives. So, before you start the meeting, it would be best to have an ice-breaking session for your team members to introduce themselves and build a rapport.

Tip #5 Always follow up after the meeting

To ensure the success of your meeting, don’t forget to send a follow-up email to all of your participants and ensure they are on the same level as you in terms of goals and objectives for the coming week. In addition, you should send meeting minutes to the participants to ensure they stay on track.