Working from home is quickly becoming “the new normal.” The COVID-19 pandemic kicked the WFH movement into high gear, and many experts believe it will continue long after the crisis has passed (this article makes a solid case). But before we can optimize this new way of working, we’re going to have to get proficient at one of the biggest work-from-home fundamentals: the virtual meeting.

Remote meetings are inherently different from in-person meetings. If you’re not used to running them, you’re going to make tons of mistakes, and those mistakes can have major ramifications in terms of how well people perform once they log-off and get back to work. The good news is that well-run online meetings can be extremely powerful. In fact, according to the Harvard Business Review, online meetings can be even more effective than in-person meetings when done right. But first, you need to be aware of what not to do.

Here are five common mistakes virtual meeting newbies often make:

1. Neglecting one (or more) of the “big five” success keys of online meetings

If you are seeking to bring people together to share information, come up with solutions, make decisions, coordinate activities and/or socialize, you will be successful if you:

1. Have a clear purpose
2. Get participants in the right mindset
3. Get them fully engaged behaviorally
4. Incorporate high-quality content aligned with the purpose
5. Make it easy to participate

If you do all of these correctly, you will have high-impact online meetings. If you don’t, there’s going to be a lot of awkwardness and inefficiency. Worse, bad meetings can lead to bad workplace performance, which is the last thing any of us need right now.

2. Holding voice calls instead of videoconferences

When everyone has their cameras on, you can expect a 200 percent-plus improvement in the effectiveness of online meetings. This keeps people engaged because they’re visible to everyone else. They’re far less likely to multi-task, which is one of the greatest obstacles to audience engagement.

3. Failing to be strategic about sequencing

The first item on your meeting agenda should be a restatement of the purpose of the meeting. After that, strategize on the sequence of your activities. For example:

• If there are any “elephant in the room” topics, deal with those early or they will be a distraction.
• If you have some sort of fun or exciting announcement, you may want to hold it for the end, letting the participants know that it’s coming but keeping the outcome a surprise to create suspense.
• If an agenda item may be intense or create some heated discussion, put it in the middle — get people warmed up and feeling productive first, then hit them with the challenging topic.

4. Not giving people an active role

It’s possible for one person to present content, facilitate questions, ensure the meeting stays on time and take notes, but why? Seek to distribute the roles of facilitator (responsible for running the agenda); presenter (responsible for sharing specific units of content); timekeeper (watches the clock and alerts facilitators and presenters how to adjust their speed and content); and the notetaker (documents the meeting) among the participants.

When you give participants something to do, you prevent them from being passive listeners or webinar watchers. When people have an active role, they are far, far more attentive and engaged.

5. Failing to take advantage of breakouts

In most meetings of more than eight people, most of the talking is usually done by just five to seven participants. This is one reason why during live workshops I often break larger groups into breakout teams so they can come up with ideas, work on prioritization, action planning — whatever the work is — in smaller groups and then come back to the larger group and report on the work they did (several of the major online meeting platforms including Zoom and Google Hangouts now offer breakouts).

We give each team clear instructions for the work they are to do in writing, and then usually give them a small amount of time to do it, such as 20-40 minutes. A compressed time frame forces the group to organize quickly, get to work and focus on progress, not process or perfection. I’ve been amazed over the years that sometimes when clear instructions, a small team and a tight time frame are combined like that, you can get work done in a 30 minutes that might have taken days, weeks or months if done “the usual way.”

When done correctly, online meetings are an incredibly powerful method of enabling collaborative work, so it’s worth investing a bit of time and effort in learning how to maximize them. Frankly, they have the potential to move the needle for your business and right now, this is more important than it’s ever been.

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