How can you use virtual platforms to facilitate effective meetings?

3 Engage and interact with the participants

The third step to facilitate effective meetings is to engage and interact with the participants during the meeting. Virtual platforms offer various tools and features to enhance the communication and collaboration among the attendees, such as chat, polls, breakout rooms, whiteboards, and screen sharing. You can use these tools to check in with the participants and ask them how they are feeling and what they expect from the meeting, encourage them to share their opinions, ideas, and questions, acknowledge their contributions and provide feedback, use icebreakers, games, or quizzes to break the monotony and build rapport, and summarize the key points and action items at the end of the meeting. Engaging with the participants in this way will help you create a positive and productive meeting environment that fosters trust and teamwork.

5 Resolve conflicts and challenges

The fifth step to facilitate effective meetings is to resolve conflicts and challenges that may arise during or after the meeting. Virtual platforms can sometimes cause misunderstandings, miscommunications, or disagreements among participants, which can negatively impact the quality and harmony of the meeting. To address these issues, it is important to establish and enforce ground rules and expectations for the meeting, such as being respectful, attentive, and constructive. Additionally, active and empathetic listening to different perspectives and concerns of participants is necessary. Open-ended questions, paraphrasing, and summarizing are also helpful for clarifying messages and emotions. Utilizing positive and constructive language, such as "I understand", "I appreciate", and "I agree" can also help. Seeking consensus and compromise or escalating the issue to a higher authority if necessary is another option. Resolving conflicts and challenges will help you maintain a healthy and respectful meeting culture while also preventing or minimizing future problems.

6 Evaluate and improve

The sixth and final step to facilitate effective meetings is to evaluate and improve your meeting facilitation skills and techniques. Virtual platforms can provide valuable feedback and data to assess the effectiveness and the impact of your meetings, such as attendance, engagement, satisfaction, and performance. You can use these metrics to identify strengths and weaknesses, recognize best practices and areas for improvement, solicit feedback from participants and other stakeholders, implement changes based on the feedback, and monitor and measure the results of your meetings. Evaluating and improving your meeting facilitation will help you enhance your people management skills and increase the value and quality of your meetings.

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?