Who’s Zooming who? – my top tips for hosting successful remote meetings
For those of us working in the charity and voluntary sector, remote meetings are essential to deal with the day to day running of our organisations, and crucially as a means of co-ordinating staff, volunteers, as well as providing our advice and services online.
Here at Community Chesterfield we’ve witnessed incredible resilience and ‘can do’ attitude across the not for profit sector in Derbyshire, with remote AGMs, online discussion groups and (at the risk of blowing our trumpet) our own training courses, which were taken online back in March.
But let’s face it, hosting or taking part in a meeting via your laptop screen isn’t the most natural thing, so here are my top tips for helping you to get the most out of your remote meetings:
1. Choose the best meeting app to suit your needs. If you’re organising a conference or workshop and need breakout rooms then Zoom is probably best. If your organisation uses the Microsoft suite and you want to regularly share documents virtually, then Microsoft Teams is probably for you. I also really love the interactivity and visuals created on PollEv which can be used alongside your chosen meeting app, but spend some time finding the interactive tool you prefer.
2. Just like in the ‘real’ world send out an agenda and make sure that people understand why they have been invited. It’s also a good idea to send out instructions for using the meeting App in advance if colleagues / attendees are new to the technology. Encourage them to test their camera and audio so that time is not lost at the start of the meeting trying to lip read one another.
3. Appoint a chair or facilitator to keep the discussion moving. (Check out our training session on facilitating meetings on 31st March 2021).
4. Make time interactive and also allow time for casual conversation. If the group is small enough and it’s the first time everyone has met, ask everyone to introduce themselves or allow time in breakout rooms for those introductions to happen and don’t rush people back.
5. Follow up the meeting with a note of deliverables and next steps and ask for people’s feedback on how the meeting, using a simple anonymous survey.
Personally, I always open our meetings for Community Chesterfield five minutes early, by muting participants and playing some instrumental versions of my favourite 90s pop, which seems to get everyone relaxed and as they wait for the meeting to start.
If you’d like to find out more about how to make your remote meetings more effective then why not come along to our ‘Training and Tea’ learning session, next Wednesday, 2 December at 9.00am? Each 45 minute session aims to cover a useful topic which will help build the skills and resilience of charities and voluntary groups in these testing times, all expertly delivered by Andrew Deighton of AWD Development Solutions Ltd https://www.awddevelopmentsolutions.com/ and FREE to you as it is funded by us at Community Chesterfield. Visit our Eventbrite page to reserve your place.
Bookings and info on all Training and Tea events here
Kate Burns, Skills Coordinator, Community Chesterfield
Image: by thedarknut from Pixabay