Conducting Engaging Virtual Meetings

In process improvement, it is always best to involve a team. This helps get different points of view and perspectives on a problem. Also, having a team means that you have more people to help you do the work — especially when it comes to the collection of data and the implementation of improvements. The challenge many process improvement leads have is engaging their team in a virtual environment.

I wanted to share four quick ideas as to how you can keep the team from multitasking and not treating your working meeting as a webinar.

On Camera

Process improvement team meetings should be working meetings. That means everyone should be participatory. If at all possible, everyone should have their camera on. If you are on camera, it is a lot harder to multitask during a meeting. Multitasking eliminates engagement. Since these are working meetings, we do not want people multitasking. So, make “Video On” a standard expectation in your virtual team meetings.

Check-In and Check-Out

The next tip is to engage everyone on your team right away and let them know that they have to pay attention throughout the call. You can do this with a simple check-in at the beginning of the meeting and a check-out at the end of the meeting. When you start a meeting, ask a simple question, like “What’s one thing that you did that was fun since our last meeting?” Then go around the virtual room and have everyone quickly answer the question. At the end of the meeting, you can have a check-out activity. Typically, this is related to the meeting itself. You can ask everyone to rate the meeting on a scale of 1 to 5 and they have to give a reason why they gave their rating. You could ask for one thing each team member found valuable in this meeting. The concept of the check-in is to get everyone engaged right away — it sets the tone. The check-out lets everyone know that paying attention during the meeting is important. Make this a standard for your team meetings (virtual or not) and people will respond.

Round Robin

When you are brainstorming or discussing something, make sure every single person speaks up. Some people can dominate a meeting and others will happily stay quiet. This is not what you want. You can ensure everyone is engaged with a round-robin activity. Simply call on each person to provide their ideas, thoughts, or inputs. Do this regularly throughout the meeting. Team members will realize pretty quickly that they will be called upon a lot, so they best pay attention.

Agenda

The best thing for any meeting is to have an agenda. That means that the meeting has a defined purpose and the activities in the meeting are designed to achieve that purpose. Structure the meeting to be active, not passive. Focus everything on achieving the purpose and have an agenda outlined to get you there.

If you follow these simple tips and make them your standard for all meetings, you will always have an engaged team, virtual or not.

 

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