Getting the best out of online meetings

The Covid-19 lockdown has forced many of us to hold online meetings in situations where we would have preferred to meet face to face. I suspect we will all learn that online meetings can work well in more situations than we first thought, although there will undoubtedly be times when face to face would have been better.

We have been using video conferencing for years and more recently we have been working with a client based in multiple time zones, which makes holding face to face workshops impossible. We have learned some valuable lessons for getting the best out of large online meetings or workshops, which we wanted to pass on to help others.

We don’t claim to have all the answers or even to be experts in this field but we have real firsthand experience of what works (and what doesn’t) so we hope the hints and tips below are helpful.

It is perhaps worth saying that, while online events work well and a lot can be gained through them in much the same way as face to face meetings, what they lack is the informal interaction that comes with face to face meetings; the conversations in the margins during breaks and, for residential events, the team building that comes from socialising in the evening. Some of this can be overcome with icebreakers, storytelling and time set aside for informal chat (it’s OK to talk about Covid-19!), but it is a poor substitute.

For the more transactional elements of online meetings we have found that the following ‘top 10 tips’ help get the most out of online workshops:

1. Preparation is really important. Plan the event carefully, be realistic about timings and think through contingencies for if things go off track. Structure is essential, such as allowing no interruptions during presentations, staring with clarification questions first and then discussion opening up to discussion.

2. If you have time and participants are unfamiliar with the platform you will be using, schedule time for trial runs on a one to one basis with each participant. This allows you to test the technology at their end, ensures they know how to use the platform and how to configure their screen if they need multiple windows open, and gives an opportunity to reinforce the ground rules and objectives for the event. Be sure to test screen sharing in these trials because it often reconfigures the screen at their end when switched on. All this saves masses of time in the main meetings (although you will need to reiterate the rules more than once during the main sessions).

3. Participants need to stay focussed on the workshop and not multi-task in private; it’s not respectful to others and means everyone loses out on your full input. You need to be present to benefit and contribute.

4. Video is not essential but it is very helpful and really needs all participants to have decent broadband connections to support video. Video also helps prevent elicit multi-tasking.

5. We use screen sharing for presentations and demonstrations and have a separate window open with a shared Google Doc (or other online shared live edit document) to which the facilitators and scribes have edit rights and everyone else just view rights; this acts like a flip chart. There are also more sophisticated tools like IdeaFlip if you need them.

6. Participants should mute when not speaking (to avoid background noice contamination). When they want to speak everyone except the facilitator should use the “raise your hand” facility (if there is one - we use Zoom, which does) rather than jumping in and talking over others. It needs some discipline but people quickly learn and it makes the facilitator’s life so much easier.

7. There is a great onus on the facilitator(s) to make sure everyone who wants to gets a say; to direct the discussion and invite participation in a structure way to avoid a domination by a few people who may be more familiar with video conferencing.

8. Two hour sessions are easily long enough before a break is needed (other advice we have seen suggests 90 minutes or even an hour, but 2 hours works for us). Give a good length of time for breaks so people can freshen up, get refreshments and catch up on urgent work without disrupting the main sessions. Participants can stay on the conference and mute and.or switch off video if they want to chat informally but not be seen going to the loo or munching a sandwich!

9. Multiple facilitators are essential for all day events even with breaks; online facilitating is exhausting and one person facilitating and scribing is almost impossible in a large online meeting. Facilitators and scribes can swap roles for different sessions to help avoid fatigue.

10. Break out groups are still a good idea and can be done easily in Zoom and other video conferencing platforms. Each group needs to be facilitated; anything developmental that is unfacilitated is usually disastrous if there are more than 4/5 participants. Preparation to assign people to breakout rooms in advance saves a lot of time during the meeting and makes the whole thing run much more smoothly.

We hope that you are staying well in these unsettling times and that our top 10 tips help you use the time as productively as possible in the circumstances. We’d love to hear from you about your experience and learning from online meeting. Just use the comments section below.