Create Space for Small Talk
Talks about the importance of breaks and intervals – both in the meeting itself – but also before and after the digital meetings. It is about the kind of small talk that takes place in the changing room or in the corridor during physical meetings and events, and which you as a meeting organizer can plan for by opening the digital meeting room earlier and being there yourself a little earlier. It helps build presence and trust with the group before the meeting. She also advocates giving the participants the opportunity to greet each other in smaller group rooms for a few minutes at the beginning of the meeting.
Tempo and variety for better conversations structure, pace and variety are particularly important to create dynamism and energy in digital meetings. This makes the role of meeting leader even more important to get and keep the participants’ focus during the meeting. From having been fully booked as a speaker on stage, everyday life now consists of training companies and organizations in the digital transition.
The pace and quality of the conversation has to be different for you to be engaged online. As a meeting leader, you need to work with the voice mode and think like a children’s program leader who needs to go through the box. Most meetings are about getting conversations going and not a presentation. And then you have to create an agenda that contains a lot of variety, she says.
Clearer control from the meeting leader as a meeting leader, it is also important to get focus from the participants and work to make everyone feel included. This by using the participants first names, distributing the floor and constantly coming back to the purpose of the meeting.
According the meeting leader’s task becomes more like being a moderator in front of a large audience, even if only a small working group participates. This means more planning before the meeting, a clearer driving schedule with tempo changes and clearer control of who gets to speak and how long someone gets to speak. Leading a small physical meeting and a large physical meeting are different things. But leading a digital meeting is much more difficult and requires much more. It’s more like leading a large physical meeting, he says.
Thinks that you can be inspired by the idea of a funky classroom where the students have prepared for the lesson and then use the shared time for dialogue and discussion. In the same way, you can let the participants watch a film or read a text before the meeting and devote the actual meeting time to dialogue and interactivity. Encourages more unexpected approaches and surprises in the digital meeting rooms.
