![\"Picture1\"](\"https:\/\/www.watermarklearning.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/01\/Picture1-150x150.png\" "\\"Picture1\\"")
<\/p>\nIf you’re a project manager or business analyst and have ever facilitated or participated in a virtual meeting, you know they can be highly productive. And, highly frustrating if not run well. Here is a list of 5 things I think all virtual meetings should have to be successful:<\/p>\n
1) Test your technology<\/strong>. If you have never used the software or hardware for your virtual meetings, make sure you practice with a small group first. If you are doing a formal presentation, I suggest you reboot your PC right before you make it. We recently did a product demo where the presenter\u2019s PC froze up right at the start. It took some fancy \u201ctap dancing\u201d to recover and keep the meeting going. Better to reboot first than to recover later.<\/p>\n 2) Presenters: clear your desktop<\/strong>. There is nothing worse than seeing an incoming email notice popping up on the moderator\u2019s screen, or seeing his or her calendar reminder saying \u201cPick up Amie from soccer practice.\u201d If you are a participant and there\u2019s a chance your screen will be displayed during the session, this applies to you, too.<\/p>\n 3) Participants: minimize your distractions.<\/strong> Don’t text or read emails when you should be participating. Pretend it\u2019s a live meeting. How would you behave? (I know, some of you out there would be on your Blackberries during a meeting. Ha ha.) One method to deal with this issue is to call on participants to ask for their input or thoughts. Some virtual meeting tools provide an \u201cattention\u201d meter. Ours does. It\u2019s very useful to see who has other non-meeting screens in the foreground. It\u2019s also good feedback for the facilitator on how engaging the meeting is going. That can be a bit deflating, I\u2019ll admit, but an impetus to try harder!<\/p>\n 4) Larger meetings: use your name.<\/strong> I was recently in a virtual meeting with people I just met and every one of them sounded the same! I could not distinguish them and I kept asking \u201cJennifer is that you?\u201d or \u201cWas that Tom who said that?\u201d In retrospect, I should have asked at the beginning for people to announce their name as they commented. Better yet, I think it should be a standard ground rule for virtual meetings.<\/p>\n 5) Take notes as you normally would.<\/strong> Unlike an in-person meeting, though, announce you are pausing<\/span> to write down your notes. If people can\u2019t see you, the audio pause is disconcerting and vocal people will fill it and try and move the discussion along. If you want to successfully capture an action item or decision, tell people you are writing and ask them to wait a moment. Make sure you write fast, though\u2026virtual participants are more impatient it seems to me than in-person participants.<\/p>\n What other \u201cmusts\u201d can you think of? I\u2019d like to compile a top ten list and post it to our site.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If you’re a project manager or business analyst and have ever facilitated or participated in a virtual meeting, you know they can be highly productive. And, highly frustrating if not run well. Here is a list of 5 things I think all virtual meetings should have to be successful: 1) Test your technology. If you have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":10834,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,16,9,17,211,20,1],"tags":[41,40],"coauthors":[138],"class_list":["post-284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business-analysis","category-communicating","category-elicitation","category-facilitation","category-project-management","category-virtual-teams","category-watermark-learning","tag-facilitation-skills","tag-virtual-meetings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.watermarklearning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.watermarklearning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.watermarklearning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watermarklearning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watermarklearning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.watermarklearning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10835,"href":"https:\/\/www.watermarklearning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284\/revisions\/10835"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watermarklearning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.watermarklearning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watermarklearning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watermarklearning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watermarklearning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}