After a year of doing all meetings virtually, I have discovered many essentials to making virtual meetings more productive and engaging. Beyond my own meetings, I’ve trained hundreds of leaders in the past year on how to reduce boredom, multi-tasking and burnout in virtual meetings. 

Of course, some virtual meeting fatigue and frustration is inevitable. You don’t get instant reactions from people like you do in person. Internet speed and availability might shut you down. It’s hard to look at a screen for long stretches. 

But most of what causes virtual meeting fatigue and frustration can be fixed. 

Virtual meeting facilitation is here to stay, so it’s worth your while to put in the effort to become great at it. Plus, virtual meetings can be incredibly powerful — often MORE powerful than in-person meetings. You’ve got this high-impact resource available to you. If you’re not putting it to its best use, it’s like you’ve been given powerful sports car and are only using it to drive a newspaper delivery route. Frustrating and boring.

Of the essentials to making virtual meetings more productive and engaging, here are the six that rise to the top and that apply to most meetings:

1. Make people feel seen. Constantly. Can you imagine going with a group of people to visit a friend’s house and never being welcomed in or spoken to while you stand in your friend’s living room and listen to them talk to someone else in your group? That would be awkward, weird, and deflating. Yet this happens all the time in virtual meetings! People join virtual meetings and are never welcomed by name and/or never asked to contribute during the meeting. To the extent possible, welcome each participant by name and make small talk until the meeting starts. Continue to reference their name throughout the meeting. Even if there are too many participants in the meeting to do it with everyone, do it with some! “Ferah, Venkata, and Laura, I would love to hear your perspectives on this. We don’t have time for everyone to weigh in verbally, so please write your reaction in the chat.”
2. Don’t talk for more than 90 seconds at a time. Even if it’s a small meeting with people we know well, we can’t think about virtual meetings as a platform for endless one-sided talking. As I’ve noted before, people will lose you or multi-task if you over-talk. It doesn’t matter if you’re an important person with important things to say — people’s brains generally can’t handle more than 90 seconds of you talking at a time. So think like a basketball player. Have a “shot clock” in your head every time you start speaking, and shoot or pass the ball before it expires.
3. Use: [Destination] + “please” + [Verb]. Virtual meetings have so many cool ways to participate — chat, annotation, polls, etc. The key is to ensure people are crystal clear about what to do and how to do it. Give them a destination on the platform like: “In the chat…” or “On the screen.” Then say “please” so they view it as a request, not a demand, and follow that with a verb for what they should do: “Write an answer to this question…” or “Drop your pointer to the left of the bullet point that resonates most with you.”
4. Workshop real life. In any meeting or presentation, participants benefit most if the content is directly relevant to their lives. Ask questions that people can answer (in the chat) about how the current topic or idea will relate to their work or life, e.g., “Where do you see this being useful?” “How does this relate to your current priorities.” “What are you working on that will be impacted by this?”Then do some workshopping: Ask people to come off mute and elaborate on their response. Talk through it briefly: “How do you feel about this?” “What will your team need to do to overcome these barriers?”
5. Mine for conflict. In Death by Meeting, Patrick Lencioni explains that meetings are dull and unproductive because they lack healthy conflict. If the word “conflict” makes you think “fighting” or “arguing,” consider a different word like “tension” or “differences.” The point is to pull competing and opposing perspectives into the open.People often hold back, though, because the facilitator doesn’t invite robust dialogue or for fear of consequences. Great virtual meetings foster psychological safety, vulnerability, and diversity. Try asking, “Who else has a different perspective on this?”
6. Keep reiterating what’s at stake. In his famous TED Talk, Simon Sinek says that great leaders inspire action by starting with “why.” Clearly state the why of your virtual meeting and reiterate it throughout: “The purpose of our meeting is…” “The reason we’re here today is…” This keeps people aligned and more open-minded to options. It also allows you to avoid getting mired in details that could be handled asynchronously or by a subset of attendees.

Imagine if your #1 goal was to maximize virtual engagement for all meeting attendees in the next month. What might that change look like?

Avoid complaining about virtual meetings and decide to make your virtual meetings awesome.

Patterns are Inevitable. Growth is Optional. Check out my award-winning book Four Patterns of Healthy People to become more aware of the healthy and unhealthy patterns in your thoughts, relationships, ego, and daily operations.

Analyze Your Opportunities for Growth. Join other leaders and discover how well you are leveraging your strengths and opportunities. It’s a free tool for your self-awareness. Just click here.

About the Author. Matt Norman coaches and advises executives on how to build great people and culture. He is President & CEO of Norman & Associates, which offers custom coaching and consulting in the areas of talent strategy, personal effectiveness, planning, and goal alignment. Norman & Associates also provides Dale Carnegie cohort-style action learning programs to help people improve how they communicate, lead, influence, and work together.

View additional articles by Matt and sign-up to receive them in your inbox by clicking here.