Three Tips for Engaging Remote Meetings

How do you make remote meetings productive and engaging? With the time of COVID-19 and working from home in general, it is important to have real practical tips to make remote meetings engaging.  What are some tips?  Here are three that have been tested to provide greater odds of helping you keep sessions productive and engaging.

Ask people to turn on their cameras.  When people have their cameras turned on, it creates a visual environment that makes people realize that they should be engaged much like in an actual physical room.  You know everyone can see you and you can see everyone.  This helps keeps you and others engaged.

Check in on people.  Checking in on people throughout the session helps keep them engaged. Examples include “Gemma, what do you think about this?”, or “Trey, does this make sense?”, or “Rami, what would you add to the discussion?”  Ensure you rotate who you check in with so everyone is engaged and you don’t pick on anyone more than others.  This has an added benefit of getting people’s feedback on the direction of the session. The longer the session, the more frequently you should check-in.

Ask people to co-host or lead.  Often times, a meeting is in several parts. Invite a few people to lead a section or discussion during the session.  This could simply be asking them to read the slides (ensuring they are tuning in) or asking them to facilitate a discussion on one of the topics (or a combination).

As remote learning and working from home is becoming more prevalent and even the norm, it is more important than ever to have practical tips to make remote working more engaging. Ultimately it is important to keep people engaged in any type of session, whether remote or in-person.  Keeping people engaged is both a science and an art, ergo it isn’t easy.  Try these tips and let me know if it helps you.