Virtual Teams Zoom Through Their Workday

Virtual Teams Zoom Through Their Workday

Many businesses are using Zoom to replace face to face meetings right now. We’ve been using Zoom for years and have learned a few things ourselves in recent days. This post is to share what we’re learning and ask you to share what you’re learning. Let us know on the comment below looking forward to hearing from you!

All these tips apply to an internal planning or operational meeting. They may not apply to meetings with prospects, clients, suppliers or others. I’d love to hear what you’re learning about those meetings, too.

For a retreat or other internal meetings, don’t use the Waiting Room feature, or make people wait for the host. Anyone who arrives early should be able to chat with each other. Imagine a face to face meeting where you showed up to the conference room and it was locked, and not only that, you couldn’t see the other people waiting in the hallway for the same meeting and you all had to be in your own private room where you couldn’t interact with anyone else. Weird, right? This also lets people set up their own audio while they’re waiting for everyone else to arrive. Some people will use phone audio and that takes a few minutes to get set up. Let them do that before the host arrives.

Show your face

When replacing a meeting where everyone would be in the same room, everyone should be required to be on video rather than just using their audio function. It would be weird to all be in the same room but not be able to see each other.

Share your screen

Sharing your screen is great for slides or viewing data or even conducting a brainstorm session as I described above. However, turn off the screen-sharing function often, so you can see each other’s faces during discussions.

Can’t put it in words? Draw it!

Zoom also has a white board feature. You can type or draw, and everyone can see it. You can also annotate documents that you’re sharing. You can use your mouse or draw right on your iPad or Surface screen with your finger or pen.

Collaborate

I also found I like having more control when facilitating a meeting, so used a Word document that I shared when brainstorming quarterly priorities. I had attendees write down their ideas first, and then I would type them out as each person read theirs out loud. I could then move Items around and combine them so everyone could see what I was doing. In some ways it was better than post-it on the wall.

What other tips do you have to share? What questions do you have? Let us know on the comment below looking forward to hearing from you!

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