The place of face-to-face meetings are always quite different and special for us, we know that, but now the healthiest way to communicate in the age of the coronavirus pandemic is video calls, remote and virtual meetings. Like individuals, companies are now embracing remote work. As safe as it is, holding meetings in the virtual space is not an easy task.
With the new age, virtual meetings started to get a large position in our daily and business lives. But while virtual meeting terms have gotten wider, managers or spokesmen have more tendency to stumble more about the type of the meeting. Because, even though the all process seems easier, regarding the capacity to address more audience, the type of meeting is way important now.
So, let’s come closer to our main question, what kind of meetings are still living in this virtual age? Also, what kind of meetings are born with remote working?
Meeting Types
There are several meeting types, let’s have a look at the commonly used ones.
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Decision – Making Meetings
In this meeting type, there will be a situation where the whole team needs to come together to brainstorm and agree on a final call or action. Approving or rejecting a long-term decision, or hiring/firing decisions can be counted.
In decision-making meetings, the main topic will be option choosing and implementation of the plan. Due to this, in this meeting, all available knowledge and information needed to be discussed and actually represented. After that, some potential decisions will be clarified.
(photo by Cherrydeck on Unsplash)
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Problem – Solving Meetings
Problem-solving meetings are aimed to figure out the issue and the causes of it. Your team will be focused on responses, solutions, strategies, potential results, and answers. After the questions and answers part, you should focus on the ways to prevent the recurring and the action will be taken.
Here is a helpful tip, you should separate your problem-solving meetings short-term and long-term. After the way you decide it, responsibility assignments and implementation timetabling are crucial.
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One – to – One Meetings
This meeting is more preferable for the pair tasks or manager/employee appointments. A manager can learn about an employee’s current mood, a mentor or coach can follow development and performance, feedback sessions can be held up, and specific topics can be discussed especially between manager-employee, employee-employee, or manager-manager.
These three meeting types already migrate to the virtual world. Below you can find out the methods of meetings that replicate the real-life experience and turn us into digital nomads.
Methods of Virtual Meetups
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Teleconferencing
Teleconferencing is a virtual meeting method that two or more participants from different locations with telecom devices such as phone services and phone services. With this kind of meeting, group meeting costs would be decreased, and it will increase communication and contact.
Also, teleconferences require a specific and unique dedicated conference network. By this way, your efficiency will be boosted and costs will be reduced. At the same time, you can record your conversations, call multiple participants while saving time. But you should prefer video calls if you needed to share your screen or display images or videos. In case, you need a couple of things in one place, you could choose a cloud phone system.
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Video Conferencing
Video conferencing also enables private and group chat or instant messaging, preventing the possibility of others’ presentation being interrupted. Another feature is easy screen sharing via whiteboard and file sharing. Uninterrupted meetings are reached by video conferencing through the use of computers and mobile phones. Thus, employees can meet each other almost anytime, from anywhere. This type of virtual meeting is particularly useful when participants are far away.
Video conferencing is also a very useful meeting platform for people working from home and remote workers. An organization can also use this to connect with business advisors or board members at remote locations.
Additionally, with the ability to record all video conferencing content, it creates an opportunity for staff training and education online. It also helps customers and employees to collect and repeat information more easily.
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Webinars / Web Conferencing
Webinar, also known as web-based seminars; virtual classroom is one of the working and interaction methods in which individuals and institutions can communicate with each other with the diversification of technology and communication networks.
As Covid19 spreaded out crazily, students are joining these webinars so frequently. Webinars are giving more people a chance to join specific training, and students are already starting to see this pandemic age as an opportunity for self-development virtual classrooms and webinars.
From the businesses perspective, also these web conferences are a nice shot to give a chance to new comer students as interns, tell your story as a manager or to introduce their companies to youth. Or these webinars are a perfect opportunity to create networks in the same sectors with sharing the same floor in an event.
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Virtual Fairs
Exhibitions are specific events for industries that allow businesses to show their products or services to their targeted audience. People visit exhibitions to find new suppliers or businesses to work with.
Virtual exhibitions offer the same experience but in the digital environment. Businesses use virtual exhibition stands to highlight their products and services to a niche audience.
Visitors log-in to the online environment and can visit one virtual stand to another. There is also the option to book one-to-one meetings by video calls and attend webinars.
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Webcast
Web Broadcast is the streaming of a combination of live or media files over the Internet. Webcasts often use streaming media technology that broadcasts content from a single source to multiple viewers or listeners simultaneously. A webcast requires a headset or speakers to listen to the audio script or version as part of the media file that is posted on the internet. Apart from these, it does not require any extra high-end hardware.
Do you have your own way of meeting up with your colleagues? Come on and share with us: info@11sight.com
We summarized a small part of the virtual meeting world, but there’s more to come! Our work-life balance has changed, our systems have changed, our relationships have changed… Pandemic has taught us how to live in a different way and this new way of life is here to stay.
To maintain good relationships and close contact with your customers during the lockdowns -and always, check out our 1-click video communication solution. 11Sight offers super quick integration and various management features to keep the business up and running. Check out, we have a special offer with the promo code: RUNNINGREMOTE21
Now we use various tools to keep the order we used to live in. These tools can be for meetings, productivity, health care, fitness, education, shopping or whatever you might think. So let’s take a broader look at the virtual world. It’s more than only meetings, it’s becoming our life.
12 Tips for Effective Virtual Meetings
After checked what is virtual meetings and what are the types of it, read more to find out some tips to have effective virtual meetings.
1. Decide what do you really need before the meeting
First of all, you need to check if you really need to have a meeting or not. If you can explain the topic asynchronously, probably there is no need to have a meeting. Because as a team, meetings where only a few people talk, will not be the effective ones. So, first things first; ask yourself ”Do we really need a meeting to reach a clear outcome?”. If your answer is yes, go and set a meeting but, if it’s not that necessary, consider writing an e-mail or send an audio message.
(Photo by Unsplash)
2. Define your meeting and assign some roles.
This will be helpful to send this objective, duration to the participants so they can learn what the meeting will cover. And, it will be effective, when you collaborate with teammates on deciding the meeting agenda. Considering to work sharing with these titles will lead you to have contributions such as facilitator, tech support, timekeeper, notetaker, conversation assistant.
3. Design your slides and make them interactive
With adding animations to your slides and visuals, you can make it more interesting for your audience. At the same time, you should keep considering that while you are trying to make your slides interesting, also you should be successful in keeping them simple.
4. Open your mic and camera
In the virtual meetings, there should always be a person who is coordinating the meeting and moderating the participants to display their inputs. Moderator should set the balance between extravert participants and introverts. You can organize this with using cameras and mics on, and everyone can be a part of the meeting equally.
5. Decide long-lasting rules
To build trust and reach long-lasting efficiency, having some general rules in the meetings will help. After sometime, some disrespectful attitudes may occur, but tolerating them will harm your community unity. In short, mutual respect and collaboration is the key.
6. Use ice-breakers
Using some ice breaker methods will help to have a warm and sincere environment. For instance, a chit-chat will support you to remove serious and negative vibes before the online meeting. You can use this kind of method with your whole team and make them more connected in this way.
7. Humanize Your Virtual Meetings
Communication is the fundamental factor in the meeting, especially in the virtual ones. So, keep your cameras on to feel in a real meeting room, and keep your mic on to keep communication healthy. In addition, non-verbal communication prevents misunderstanding, it is very important that the cameras are kept on constantly. For this, we can say that it is the most important step of humanization in virtual meetings.
8. Be Open to Alternatives
With the impact of the pandemic process, tech and software companies have not remained silent and our lives have moved to the digital world. And they offered a variety of applications and options for online meetings. For example, when you have a meeting with another company, your application and the infrastructure of the other side may not match. Be prepared for alternatives and changes. In such cases, you can choose applications such as 11Sight where the other party can join the conversation with a one-click without downloading or installing an application to their computer or mobile phone. This will speed up and make the process easier for you.
9. Avoid Multitasking
Working remotely lead us to have a lot of meetings on the same day. Naturally, after some time, this creates boredom and tiredness in a day due to having a lack of real social connectedness. So, avoid multitasking while meetings, and try to focus only for the meeting without doing extra work while you are a part of a virtual event. Additionally, try to see those meetings as an opportunity to be more social, not as a part of work.
10. Have A Bright PlaceÂ
Making some arrangements before meeting will help you to have better time and energy during the event. So, you can put your table in front of your window to have more light and with these you will be more happy with the perspective of your camera. Also, having a glass of water and a cup of tea or coffee with you will increase your motivation for your meeting.
11. Dress Properly
We know that we are all used to attending meetings from home, and it is not important to dress as formal as before. However, the status or position of the person we will be meeting with is still important to us. It will be enough to choose clothes that you can feel comfortable during the meeting and at the same time make you feel that this meeting is important to you without overdoing it.
12. Smile
Last but not least, do not forget to smile. During the meetings, sometimes we can feel that our body is captured by stress, but positivity and having a smile on our faces will help a lot. Everything can become digital and virtual, but we should keep being sincere and real 🙂
Do you have other ways to make the most out of virtual meetings? Come on and share with us: info@11sight.com
11Sight offers super quick integration and various management features to keep the business up and running. Check out, we have a special offer with the promo code: RUNNINGREMOTE21
Don’t get lost in the virtual world, make real connections with 11Sight.
