How to Make Online Meetings More Engaging with 5 Key Ingredients

Introduction

Online meetings have become an essential part of today’s work culture, but keeping participants engaged can be a challenge. Here are some key ingredients to make online meetings more engaging and productive.

Making Online Meetings More Engaging

• The first key point to make online meetings more engaging is to start with an unofficial kick-off, encouraging immediate participation and purposeful engagement.

• This involves sparking interaction through a thought-provoking question that encourages verbal sharing or written responses from participants.

• The second important ingredient is to create a structured agenda that outlines the key discussion points, activities, and time allocations for the meeting.

• Having a clear agenda helps to keep the meeting focused, ensures that all important topics are covered, and provides a sense of direction for participants.

• The third element is to actively encourage participation by setting clear expectations for everyone to contribute, share their thoughts, and actively listen to others during the meeting.

• This can be achieved by using techniques such as ‘round robin’ discussions, small group activities, or interactive polls to gather feedback.

• Additionally, creating a safe and inclusive environment where everyone feels comfortable sharing their ideas is crucial for increasing engagement.

• The fourth key point is to leverage interactive tools and features within the meeting platform to enhance engagement, such as breakout rooms for group discussions, real-time collaboration on documents, and interactive whiteboards.

• Finally, the fifth ingredient involves incorporating brief, impactful activities or icebreakers throughout the meeting to maintain energy levels, break up long periods of passive listening, and keep participants actively involved.

• This could include short energizing exercises, quick reflection prompts, or sharing interesting facts or experiences related to the meeting topic.

Key Ingredients for Effective Meetings

• Meetings should start with a warm-up chat to engage participants and allow early arrivals to connect informally.

• Setting the context and purpose of the meeting is crucial, as it focuses on the intention rather than just the time. It ensures that everyone is aligned from the beginning and reduces the need for additional meetings.

• Prioritizing connection before diving into content is essential for engagement. Taking a few minutes to connect with participants can lead to better participation and collaboration during the meeting.

Designing Effective Meetings

• Number one design your meetings for contribution not consumption.

• When you look at your agenda, is it a bunch of report-outs that turn people into consumers, or are they questions, exercises, conversations, participatory things that invite people to contribute to the overall meeting?

• Everyone you will ever meet knows something you don’t, so in your meeting, if only two people talk and seven people sit there and don’t say a word, you’ve lost out on about 40 pounds of brain power.

• Connection before content is about connecting before diving into the agenda but it has to also connect to the purpose of why you are there.

• It’s important to state your intention and context, and then allow people to dive into it. For example, if the purpose is to debrief everything that happened this quarter, the connection before content question could be about something that was an ‘aha’ moment during the quarter.

• Splitting the meeting into smaller groups of three to four people to answer the connection before content question, and then sharing the responses with the larger group helps to foster contribution and engagement during the meeting.

Key Points for Content Engagement

• Content is a crucial ingredient for engagement, and it requires more time and effort to develop.

• Encouraging experiential content creation is essential to move away from a mere consumption model.

• Online meetings allow for simultaneous talking and listening, making active participation more accessible.

• Utilizing chat and inviting perspectives can transform content from passive consumption to active contribution.

• Incorporating analog visuals instead of constant screen sharing can significantly enhance engagement and memory retention.

Tips for Designing Engaging Online Meetings

• A professional storyteller shared her top tip for telling phenomenal stories, which is to know the first and last sentences before filling in the rest.

• Applying this advice to online meetings, it’s crucial to start with an unofficial connection before diving into content and to have a deliberate closing with a purpose or intention.

• It’s suggested to invite participants to close the meeting with their own words, fostering contribution rather than consumption.

• Two quick tips for online meetings are to hide self-view to reduce burnout and to incorporate more questions into the agenda to boost engagement and productivity.

• The use of questions is emphasized to tap into the group’s expertise, acknowledging that everyone knows something others don’t.

Conclusion

Incorporating these key ingredients into online meetings can significantly enhance engagement, participation, and productivity. By creating a purposeful and interactive environment, online meetings can become more beneficial and impactful for all participants.

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