When your virtual team meet together are they engaged, excited and taking the initiative to have an active share in the meeting OR are your virtual team meetings dominated by a few strong team members leaving the rest to quietly drift off in the online world?
Keeping your virtual team excited and engaged during your virtual team meetings can be achieved. With a little thought and planning you can get more out of your virtual team meetings – they can be productive, exciting and can be a great way to build strong virtual team purpose and relationship.
Here are three virtual team meeting tips to incorporate into your overall virtual team building strategy:
Use Quick Virtual Team Building Exercises to bring the team together
Arrive 10-15 mins before the start of the scheduled virtual team meeting and have some fun virtual team ice-breakers to start the meeting off. This will help your team feel positive about showing up for the meeting. Remember your virtual team members may be logging on from different timezones (some times not so conducive to creative thinking) and will need extra incentive to show up for meetings.
John Chen author of 50 Digital Team-Building Games: Fast, Fun Meeting Openers, Group Activities and Adventures using Social Media, Smart Phones, GPS, Tablets, and More
In fact, using quick simple virtual team building games before your virtual team meetings will help people get creative, relax and build connection between remote workers who many never or rarely meet each other in person.
Initiate Virtual Team Collaboration before and after the virtual team meeting
Have an agenda to keep your virtual team meeting on-track and purposeful. Before the meeting invite team members to add to the agenda if they have items that need to be discussed as a virtual team. Provide opportunity for remote workers to truly feel part of the team – that way they will be more inclined to get active and contribute to the meeting, rather than “drift off” or get distracted while the meeting is in progress.
Use Video and Visual Aids to keep the virtual team “turned on”
Always use a virtual meeting room and video conferencing. Try ShowMyPC Meetings and Remote Support for a great virtual team meeting hosting platform. Other online collaboration tools (ie smartsheets) will also help you to record actions, outcomes and plans for your virtual team. The more visual stimulation, interaction and hands-on engagement you get from your virtual team members will ensure a more productive virtual team meeting.
Virtual Team Meetings Tip: Avoid marathon meetings – the longer the meeting the harder it is to stay engaged! Keeping your virtual team meetings short and frequent.
More Virtual Team Meeting Tips here: http://virtualteamintelligence.com/managing-virtual-team-meetings/boring-virtual-team-meetings-banned-forever/