How to Make Virtual Meetings More Engaging and Interactive with 6 Simple Tips

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Remote working has become an essential part of keeping business moving. With teams across the world, or even just sitting in their own homes, communicating effectively and getting the most productivity out of meetings can be a challenge, especially if people are working in different time zones.

So how can you overcome the challenges of virtual meetings and create an atmosphere where everyone is involved and all voices are heard? Consider these 6 tips on how to make virtual meetings more interactive.

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1. Prep Before the Meeting

The best tools for virtual meetings have three essentials: connection, collaboration, and feedback. These three combined can give you and your team the best virtual experience possible as participants feel more engaged, making meetings more productive. There are a few solutions out there that support these three essentials. Lucky for you, Mitel carries several of them. Once you know which tools you’re using, create an agenda to cover topics that need to be discussed. This will serve as a reminder to not to get sidetracked and make the most of your meeting time.

2. Assign Roles

Sometimes, just having an agenda isn’t enough to engage participants. A few people may end up contributing more than others. To even out participation a bit, try assigning different roles to different people to make meetings more interactive. This will not only help them focus on the meeting but will also allow more voices to be heard. Roles may include a facilitator, a note taker, technical supporter, and timekeeper.

3. Mirror In-Person Meetings

In-person meetings have been the norm for a long time. Some people may even prefer them to a virtual meeting because of the ability to communicate and collaborate smoothly. However, similar results can be achieved through virtual meetings with a video conferencing system in place. And with the adjustments made over the past couple of years, these systems have become much easier and reliable to use. With a Mitel system in place, it's much easier to keep your team focused and engaged.

Like these tips? See some other ways you can improve virtual meetings >

4. Start with an Icebreaker

Productive meetings start off on the right foot. An easy way to get participants engaged from the get-go is to begin the meeting with an icebreaker. It can be a random question of the day, goals that have been accomplished for the week, or upcoming weekend plans. These short talking points help people ease into the meeting and can create a comfortable, fun atmosphere for participants to engage in, especially if people don’t know each other well.

5. Ask for Feedback

Constructive criticism can help improve your meetings, especially in remote situations where communication is key. Ask participants to share how they felt about the meeting once it’s over. This is a chance to do things differently in the future to ensure a better experience for everyone involved. By taking their experiences into account, it may prompt people to participate and contribute more in the future because they’ll know that their voices are heard.

Not sure people will send you feedback directly? You could try sending them a small, short, anonymous survey. There are several survey tools with free editions you can use for this, like Poll Everywhere.

6. Make Collaboration Easy

Communication doesn’t end after a virtual meeting. In fact, it’s more important in a remote setting because you don’t have that face-to-face interaction.

Being able to engage with your team throughout the day is as essential as interacting during a virtual meeting. Connect with your team no matter where they are with constant lines of communication. Mitel makes this easy with cloud communications solutions, including business phone service and collaboration tools that virtual teams need to keep the workflow moving. You can even start a call and collaborate with a single tap within our tools to ensure even more productivity with ease. MiTeam Meetings does all of this and more.

As we all adjust to working from home, don’t let your virtual meetings be another reason to stress out. We’re here to help you stay connected with your teams no matter where they are—to help keep your business running.