TRANSCRIPT
Welcome back to the Voice Science Channel. I’m so delighted that you are here.
It’s been a big week for business owners and bosses as we all navigate a totally virtual space. How did you go engaging your teams, clients & stakeholders?
It’s been inspiring to experience 100% contact online. I’ve had my resident little puppy by my side 24/7 as I hustle & head up my team and I’m not complaining. We’ve had a smooth & positive transition for this interim period while the world awaits what next…
We’ve done online consulting since 2013, but this week was our first week purely online.
After some thorough research, I’ve learnt that I drink more coffee when working at home and dance a lot more to french hip hop when I take mini breaks (something that’s not too conducive to our regular working space).
But aside from these fun quips, I’m popping up here today to talk to YOU about how to design your online meetings to build social presence and engagement.
You might be charged with managing a large team that is working from home or purely virtual right now. What are some quick strategies to build social presence and engagement when interacting in online meetings so that your task force is productive?
There’s some pretty solid research in this area that I’ve been reading up late at night in my p.js. Geeking out, as usual.
And here is what you are going to learn:
1. How to use Meeting design to deliver amazing meetings online with your clients / team
2. How to build social presence and engagement in meetings
But first, let’s define online meetings. We all know why we have them but given the number of ineffective meetings I’ve sat in, in my time, I think it always pays to check in with the purpose.
In the most basic sense, meetings are essentially communication tools used by groups
and teams to accomplish organisational goals (Maitlis, 2005).
Got it?
As a team leader, you have a lot of great options you can consider when organising a meeting in the online space. At this particular time, it is important that you don’t just default to the regular norm. Why not get creative and test a few alternate approaches to keep your team or clients fresh and engaged?
Now is the time to reinvent the online space, more than ever. This is a time where your meetings absolutely need to build social presence and engagement.
You want to restyle your virtual meetings so your team tunes in and stays engaged. If you don’t, well, they may end up watching that fluffy cat video in situ.
Before we jump in we need to consider the AFFECTIVE events theory.
The Affective Events Theory
Tells us that work environment events impact employee moods and emotions. This in turn influences work attitudes and behaviours in a positive or negative way.
You are responsible for creating a positive experience in your virtual meetings. So how are you going to do that?
Use meeting design to achieve this.
It’s time to get creative. It wouldn’t hurt to map out how you want your meetings to move. What style are you going for? What adjectives do you want your team to use to describe how each meeting went?
Energetic, powerful, really interesting, super efficient
OR Dull, not relevant, could have been an email.
How you plan your meetings with your team will directly impact on your team’s mood, emotions and deliverables.
START by building a positive mood.
1. Warm up your Voice
We know from research, listeners will listen better if you use a good vocal tone. The voice tone of your entire team matters and sure, you can’t impact on how they use their voices directly but at least take some responsibility for your own. Not sure how? You know where to find us! See our elocution services here.
2. Start on time. End on time.
People like to know what is happening and will see your meeting as more efficient if you follow these simple principles. Your meetings need PRE and POST communication bookmarks. Make a meeting guide. Increase expectation fulfilment with a pre set agenda. Allocate minutes. Add one more communication interaction after the meeting. It could be sending the minutes, a personalised email to each participant. A praise point for the team. This will reinforce the meeting as a timely and important event that was relevant, not just for the sake of checking everyone is at work!
3. Try the “Take 5 moment”
Keith Ferrazzi, CEO of Ferrazzi Greenlight suggests spending the first 5 minutes sharing in the group. This will build a listening culture for that meeting and break the ice. Don’t launch gung ho into your agenda. Go around the virtual room and share one thing each. You might use prompt cards or topic cards for this. While it feels a bit cheesy, rapport building and icebreakers will go a long way as you start your team to be ready for their question, share info and occupy a listening mindset.
4. Allocate tasks
Allocate tasks to attendees to boost engagement as you would or should in face to face meetings. Get your Minute taker, Q&A manager.
5. Time matters
10 minute chunks will work a lot better virtually in mini instalments. Do not do long virtual meetings with a team. Tune out is real my friends. Insert breaks. Play with the frequency.
6. Allocate turns in the meeting
Some participants will put the phone on mute. When you are face to face you can see how everyone is. You see the meeting homeostasis. Online this is very different. You will need to physically check in with that.
7. Use more emotive words
Talk about how you feel and use more positive vocabulary that is proactive for that. This will hold everyone’s attention.
Listen to this example,
Don’t say” Yeah, we need to work out how to fix it. It’s really hard and challenging.”
Why not try,
This project is solid and will take work but let’s be creative and see it as inspiring. We will learn a lot!
8. Small talk is big talk now
Don’t put the banter in the back seat. Make sure videos are on and encourage a bit of convo. Just because you are online does not mean you need to go all newsreader on your team. Have a good blend of formal and informal language. Maybe give more informal at points throughout the meeting to hold attention and interest.
9. Ask open questions.
This will keep people on their toes listening. If it is all casa de me show, you won’t have anyone listening.
10. Create a question etiquette
Decide how your team will speak up. This will make communication so much more seamless. You could try: raise your hand, type a large Q in the comment box, use a seperate Q&A interface. Whatever you choose,make it clear and concrete at the start. This will reduce verbal clutter, tangents and interjections and make your meeting run in a classy way, we are talking more like a swiss clock than a fake rolex.
11. BAN multi-tasking
No trello slack or cutsie puppie videos in the meeting zone. Don’t multi-task yourself either or you will look like one big stinky hypocrite. Be direct and discuss this policy from the start.
A tonne of features will influence forming a positive impression of a meeting.
No one size fits all. So I invite you to take a moment know and think about your team or meeting groups. What is it that this individual group is going to need. How are you going to add some social presence spice to the mix?
I hope this got your mind opening to the power of virtual meetings. I hope I’ve encouraged you to avoid the path of least resistance and really push through repetitive meeting structures and think about how you can add value, catch attention and build the virtual party each time you engage your team.
Make sure you snag our free 1-page communication kit.
Navigating your social communication is no easy task! It is really normal to find that some aspects need improving. We tend to notice the need to lift our social communication game when something changes in our life. Change causes unexpected reactions and having agile social skills will insure your success in navigating challenging territories. As workplaces move to virtual environments now is a good time to appraise your communication agility.
Let me know how you go!
Is there someone you work with or even live with you needs to see this video? Share away and make their day! Not only will you help them but you will hold yourself accountable to jazzing up your own meetings. Because I am here trying to advocate for the importance of communication impact and as I always say, “communication is like string theory, it’s the foundation of everything” so go get them . Thank you so much for watching and I’ll see you next time!
Ciao!
XO
