Do your virtual team meetings need more focus? More engagement? Better results? In this “Virtual Meetings That Don’t Suck” video series, visual facilitator and engagement specialist Carolyn Ellis of BrillianceMastery.com shares her tips to help you create conversations that count!

TIP #6: Virtual Meetings That Don’t Suck – Watch Your Costs

Transcript of Video

Hi, everyone! It’s Carolyn Ellis from BrillianceMastery.com and thank you for watching this week’s video! This is part of my video series on Virtual Meetings that Don’t Suck.

I want to share with you a tip this week about Watch Your Costs. What am I talking about? Because hey, Carolyn, we are saving money in a lot of ways! We don’t have to travel, we don’t stay at hotels anymore. We don’t worry about room rentals and buying all those doughnuts and coffees and meals.

But here’s the big cost that we need to be worried about when we’re working virtually: the cost of people’s time, their attention, their goodwill, and their productivity. We need to think about those costs because they are so important. And once you squander them, you have to work super hard to regain the credibility to get them back from your people.

What I want to talk about is three ways that I want you to watch your costs. The first one is about what are we hearing. I’ve been on a few meetings and it’s really like people are watching somebody else talk at them. The “talk and watch” kind of format is really a wasted opportunity. If that’s all you’re going to be doing when you have your 50 or 100 or more people gathered together, why don’t you just send them a video in advance? Then have another call where you actually discuss what they saw what those key messages were. So, watch out for the “talk and watch” format. It’s really not effective, and it can waste a lot of time and attention for sure.

The second thing I want you to think about is what are people seeing. This is a subtle thing. We need to engineer our meeting design so we do a better job. What I’m talking about here is when you have a slide deck being spotlighted and a speaker over on the side talking. We want there to be a bit more of a mix happening. Is that slide really necessary for the entire time someone is talking? If it’s not cut, back to the main speaker, because what that does is it turns it back into a conversation. You’re watching somebody speaking at you through the camera, rather than hearing somebody talking in a little box and seeing the screen. So, mix it up! It helps to engage people and keep their attention rather than having it wander off through distractions and other things.

The third place I think we can do better is about how are we listening. How are we building in time to get feedback and input? Recently, I was in a call with about 150 people. They had a little bit of a breakout session, which was great. I love seeing breakout sessions because they’re a great way to really help people make that personal relationship and communicate with each other. That’s great.

But when it came back to the plenary they were asked “Who has something they’d like to say?” What that meant is that one or two people out of the hundreds on the call got called on, and everybody else was passive and sort of put on the sidelines. If that facilitator or if that leader had instead said, “I want to hear from one or two of you, but I want to invite all of you to give us one key insight you got from your breakout. Put it in the chat so that we can read through that. But I’m going to call on a couple of you directly so that we can speak.” That way you’re still making it a conversation with everybody. You’re leveraging the engagement. When people feel like they are participating actively, you are going to get a much better return on your investment of people’s time, energy, attention, goodwill and productivity.

I look forward to speaking with you soon! If you need any help with thinking about how you deliver your meetings and taking them up a notch, please feel free to reach out and I’d be happy to have a call with you. Have a great day!

Missed a tip? You can check out other “Virtual Meetings that Don’t Suck” video tips by clicking below:

Tip 1 – Start with the End in Mind
Tip 2 – Less is More
Tip 3 – Engage at the Start
Tip 4 – Wisdom is in the Room
Tip 5 – Dynamic Game Plan
Tip 7 – Digestion Time
Tip 8 – Leading Through Connecting