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Meetings are a staple of any group of humans and are a great way to rally the team and get everyone motivated. And while not every meeting is necessary, they can be a vehicle for inspiration and team bonding.
But very few people know how to facilitate a meeting, and I’m guessing your boss isn’t one of them.
Now that most work gatherings have shifted from in-person to digital meetings, we can easily see how bad most people are at facilitation.
Thankful, this jolt in collaboration is the perfect time to revisit the skill of how to facilitate a meeting. If you can nail it in the digital space, you can nail it anywhere. Team leads are experimenting with this infant meeting format and optimizing it in ways that work for them and their teams.
You can do it, too.
Step 1 to facilitate a meeting: Avoid dud meetings
Great meetings leave team members feeling excited, energized, and feeling that they’ve got clarity on company goals and the strategies required to achieve them. But it’s often hard to get digital meetings to be interactive.
Before getting into the nitty-gritty of how to facilitate a meeting, here’s what you need to do to avoid bad ones:
- Make sure you only set up a meeting if you need to. Not every problem is resolved with a meeting.
- Be prepared. Digital platforms make it easy to spot the leader who just walks in and tries to wing facilitating a meeting.
Now, let’s get into the actions you can take to make sure your digital meetings run as smoothly as possible.
Plan ahead
Digital meetings require more planning than in-person meetings. As mentioned above, you can use a whiteboard and some quick collaboration to storm up something that feels like progress.
But if you want to know how to facilitate a meeting in the digital space, you need to plan ahead.
In your planning, think through these things:
- Why a meeting is more effective than an asynchronous discussion
- A meeting agenda written in question form (check our virtual meeting agenda template)
- Invite the right people. Most people will benefit from reading the notes afterward instead of sitting through the meeting.
- Schedule the meeting at a convenient time so that both co-located and distributed team members have time to prepare.
- The visual experience of attendees. Will you all be looking at each other? At a shared Google Doc? At slides? Is it ok for people to be off-camera? Is it ok for them to walk while the meeting happens?
Also, if it is going to be a hybrid meeting, you need to do some extra preparation to allow for both in-person and virtual attendees.
Sort out the tech
Digital meetings won’t be a success if you start off unprepared or are unfamiliar with the online meeting tools you plan to use. To make sure you have the support to facilitate a meeting, sort out the digital tools you’ll use in advance.
Think about scheduling tools (like Google Calendar or Calendly), virtual conferencing platforms, digital whiteboards, (like Lucidspark, Miro, or Mural), and other add-ons.
Think about cameras, microphones, and other conferencing equipment in different locations of the meeting room so that everyone has a similar experience.
Rules and etiquette
Rules and etiquettes are your safety net for making sure that meetings run smoothly and that everyone, regardless of where they’re joining from, is treated equally.
Online meeting etiquette typically mandates that participants:
- Come prepared to meetings
- Don’t distract others
- Show up a few minutes early
- Stay in the engaged mode of work
- Turn on your camera and mute your microphone
While these are important for everybody, you as a leader will also have to lay strong foundations to facilitate a meeting so that all attendees are equally engaged. For example, if you’re running a hybrid meeting, in-office members and co-located workers are treated in the same way. Similarly, if everyone is logging in from a different place and some co-workers show up late, they shouldn’t be given special treatment if they’re seniors in the company or otherwise.
In addition to etiquette, you need some team ground rules for virtual meetings.
- What happens when team members show up late to a meeting?
- Default settings: camera on or off?
- Conflict resolution: what’s the process for resolving disputes during meetings?
- Minutes: do notes have to be taken during the meeting, and by whom?
- Are meetings recorded?
Perhaps the most difficult aspect to facilitate a meeting: making it interesting
The truth is, it’s easy to zone out during most meetings-and that includes digital ones. Meetings aren’t just about discussing company goals and strategies, they’re also about building community and creating opportunities for connection among team members. That’s not to be underestimated as it’s been shown that a team that gels creates more (and better) output.
So what can you do to create a meeting environment that gets team members feeling good about what they’re working on, and each other? Here are some tips:
Start with a check-in question. Check-in questions are a great way to start virtual meetings because it gives everyone an opportunity to speak, while also creating an environment of openness within the team. Try to keep this segment of the meeting to less than ten minutes.
Get everyone involved. Make sure everyone speaks within the first 5-10 minutes of the meeting so they feel comfortable moving forward. Encourage everyone to add to the digital whiteboard or Google Doc if they are less comfortable with speaking out loud.
Create opportunities for connection. Use breakout rooms for quick discussions in between topics. These discussions don’t always have to be work-related. Allow 5 minutes at the end of meetings for a quick debrief and casual chit-chat. Better yet, finish meetings earlier than scheduled if possible.
Teams are still working through the mechanics of digital meetings so it’s OK if yours aren’t at the level you’d like them to be. But they can be better than the ones your lame boss used to lead.
Leaders will get better at optimizing meetings and there will always be ways to do things better. The most important thing is to start experimenting with your team and learn as much as you can from the process. With a touch of trial-and-error, learning how to facilitate a meeting will hopefully become second-nature.
Meetings are a staple of any group of humans and are a great way to rally the team and get everyone motivated. And while not every meeting is necessary, they can be a vehicle for inspiration and team bonding.
But very few people know how to facilitate a meeting, and I’m guessing your boss isn’t one of them.
Now that most work gatherings have shifted from in-person to digital meetings, we can easily see how bad most people are at facilitation.
Thankful, this jolt in collaboration is the perfect time to revisit the skill of how to facilitate a meeting. If you can nail it in the digital space, you can nail it anywhere. Team leads are experimenting with this infant meeting format and optimizing it in ways that work for them and their teams.
You can do it, too.
Step 1 to facilitate a meeting: Avoid dud meetings
Great meetings leave team members feeling excited, energized, and feeling that they’ve got clarity on company goals and the strategies required to achieve them. But it’s often hard to get digital meetings to be interactive.
Before getting into the nitty-gritty of how to facilitate a meeting, here’s what you need to do to avoid bad ones:
- Make sure you only set up a meeting if you need to. Not every problem is resolved with a meeting.
- Be prepared. Digital platforms make it easy to spot the leader who just walks in and tries to wing facilitating a meeting.
Now, let’s get into the actions you can take to make sure your digital meetings run as smoothly as possible.
Plan ahead
Digital meetings require more planning than in-person meetings. As mentioned above, you can use a whiteboard and some quick collaboration to storm up something that feels like progress.
But if you want to know how to facilitate a meeting in the digital space, you need to plan ahead.
In your planning, think through these things:
- Why a meeting is more effective than an asynchronous discussion
- A meeting agenda written in question form (check our virtual meeting agenda template)
- Invite the right people. Most people will benefit from reading the notes afterward instead of sitting through the meeting.
- Schedule the meeting at a convenient time so that both co-located and distributed team members have time to prepare.
- The visual experience of attendees. Will you all be looking at each other? At a shared Google Doc? At slides? Is it ok for people to be off-camera? Is it ok for them to walk while the meeting happens?
Also, if it is going to be a hybrid meeting, you need to do some extra preparation to allow for both in-person and virtual attendees.
Sort out the tech
Digital meetings won’t be a success if you start off unprepared or are unfamiliar with the online meeting tools you plan to use. To make sure you have the support to facilitate a meeting, sort out the digital tools you’ll use in advance.
Think about scheduling tools (like Google Calendar or Calendly), virtual conferencing platforms, digital whiteboards, (like Lucidspark, Miro, or Mural), and other add-ons.
Think about cameras, microphones, and other conferencing equipment in different locations of the meeting room so that everyone has a similar experience.
Rules and etiquette
Rules and etiquettes are your safety net for making sure that meetings run smoothly and that everyone, regardless of where they’re joining from, is treated equally.
Online meeting etiquette typically mandates that participants:
- Come prepared to meetings
- Don’t distract others
- Show up a few minutes early
- Stay in the engaged mode of work
- Turn on your camera and mute your microphone
While these are important for everybody, you as a leader will also have to lay strong foundations to facilitate a meeting so that all attendees are equally engaged. For example, if you’re running a hybrid meeting, in-office members and co-located workers are treated in the same way. Similarly, if everyone is logging in from a different place and some co-workers show up late, they shouldn’t be given special treatment if they’re seniors in the company or otherwise.
In addition to etiquette, you need some team ground rules for virtual meetings.
- What happens when team members show up late to a meeting?
- Default settings: camera on or off?
- Conflict resolution: what’s the process for resolving disputes during meetings?
- Minutes: do notes have to be taken during the meeting, and by whom?
- Are meetings recorded?
Perhaps the most difficult aspect to facilitate a meeting: making it interesting
The truth is, it’s easy to zone out during most meetings-and that includes digital ones. Meetings aren’t just about discussing company goals and strategies, they’re also about building community and creating opportunities for connection among team members. That’s not to be underestimated as it’s been shown that a team that gels creates more (and better) output.
So what can you do to create a meeting environment that gets team members feeling good about what they’re working on, and each other? Here are some tips:
Start with a check-in question. Check-in questions are a great way to start virtual meetings because it gives everyone an opportunity to speak, while also creating an environment of openness within the team. Try to keep this segment of the meeting to less than ten minutes.
Get everyone involved. Make sure everyone speaks within the first 5-10 minutes of the meeting so they feel comfortable moving forward. Encourage everyone to add to the digital whiteboard or Google Doc if they are less comfortable with speaking out loud.
Create opportunities for connection. Use breakout rooms for quick discussions in between topics. These discussions don’t always have to be work-related. Allow 5 minutes at the end of meetings for a quick debrief and casual chit-chat. Better yet, finish meetings earlier than scheduled if possible.
Teams are still working through the mechanics of digital meetings so it’s OK if yours aren’t at the level you’d like them to be. But they can be better than the ones your lame boss used to lead.
Leaders will get better at optimizing meetings and there will always be ways to do things better. The most important thing is to start experimenting with your team and learn as much as you can from the process. With a touch of trial-and-error, learning how to facilitate a meeting will hopefully become second-nature.
