Tips for Awesome Virtual Meetings

When everyone on your team is working remotely, getting through a meeting can be tough. If it is on the telephone, everyone talks over everyone else and it’s just hard to “see” what they are talking about.

At Freedom Makers, we have been remote from our beginning. Over the years, we have learned best practices and have evolved in our virtual meetings. They have vastly improved as we have not shied away from setting rules and establishing routines. 

Here are our tips for running an effective virtual meeting:



The easy stuff first:

• Mute is your friend.

For large groups, make sure everyone goes on mute. Explain that everyone should be on mute upon entering the meeting. This way the leader of the meeting can begin the meeting on time and when others speak they are not overshadowed by superfluous noise from others’ background. 

• Video is your best friend.

55% of communication is body language. You miss out on more than half of communication when it is just telephone. Further, screen sharing is the sweet nectar of getting things done in a virtual world. At Freedom Makers, we learned early on that seeing each other enhances our teamwork and communication. We can laugh and show support through a nod or smile. 

The medium stuff:

• Have a time limit. 

A strong remote team must be results focused. Thus meetings need to start and end on time per the schedule. This is not a water cooler. If you are setting the agenda, be respectful of the time you allotted for the meeting. Do not let a 30 minute meeting roll into a 50 minute one.

• Schedule water cooler meetings separately AKA virtual happy hour.

This kind of interaction is lost with remote teams yet critical to human bonding and thus team culture and performance. You could set up a time each morning where everyone could hop on your Teams or Zoom for a morning huddle. Or you could wrap the day with a huddle. They need not be required, but optional for people so they can let off steam or just relax for a few minutes with their co-workers.

• Have a designated note taker. 

With a designated note taker, discussions and decisions are captured and published for everyone to see and review. Meanwhile, everyone else can focus on the meeting at hand. Come to think of it, this is a good move for in-person meetings too.  The notes should then be distributed so that everyone can ensure their points or information was received correctly.

The hard stuff (but not really):

• Is a meeting really necessary?

I heard a new phrase recently: zoomed out. People are burning out from being on Zoom all day, every day. Consider what you are doing with your team. Does it really need to be discussed in a meeting? What can be discussed in another forum? Having an agenda may help determine that, along with an understanding of what decisions require live discussion and what can be handled via chat/text/email. 

• Have a published agenda

When you have an agenda, you can put meeting hijackers in their place (people who derail the meeting to discuss their own needs).You set time limits on discussions that really need to be handled outside of the meeting. Everyone knows what is going to be discussed and can prepare ahead of time. The meeting is therefore more focused on results. Plain and simple, you get more done.

• At Freedom Makers, we have a standing agenda for our weekly meetings and one that changes for our project meetings. The notes from our project meetings include tasks that move our projects along. Those tasks then form the agenda for the next meeting. It becomes a reinforcing circle once you get the hang of it.
• Outline rules of engagement 

It is critical to know what is expected of people participating in order to have an effective meeting.

• The purpose of the meeting
• How people should talk to each other (th
• Expectations around background noise and visuals (this is a great time to explain MUTE)
• Should people use the “raise hand” feature? Should people wait until they are called upon to speak? 

The key to strong virtual meetings is ensuring they have a meaningful purpose and are organized. We are fortunate we live in a time where we are able to have remote meetings via the many platforms. Go forth and make your virtual meetings so awesome that people cannot wait for the next one!