Large, in-person gatherings have been discouraged for the better part of a year now, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t still craving those social and professional meetings and events. Check out these great tips to build connections in team meetings and virtual events.
To Build Connections – Define the Purpose for Your Gathering
Whether you are talking to your professional team, small business employees, executives, or friends and family – the best way to encourage a good turnout for a virtual meeting is to define the purpose of the gathering. Is the gathering a virtual networking event? A holiday or anniversary party for your company? A monthly department or team meeting?
Clarifying an event’s purpose can also help get your participants excited or prepared for the virtual gathering.
When you define and share the purpose of your online event or meeting, you can then find the best tools (Zoom, Skype, Webex Teams, Microsoft Teams, etc.) to help you create an event that is true to it.
Create Context Using Everyone’s Virtual Environment
Now that you have your event or meeting purpose, you can use it to set the mood for preparations. If you are hosting your annual company dinner or having your end-of-the-year business meeting, you and your participants can create a collective environment using their displayed space in their home or remote office.
Put up lights, have everyone dress up (or down) in a certain theme – even if the theme is just “business casual.” For-end-of-the-year meetings or celebrations you can ask people to decorate their space to that theme, or hang a DIY poster of their greatest accomplishment this year, or have them share the importance or meaning of an item they keep in their remote workspace.
Adding these unifying touches helps your virtual audience “buy-in” to the atmosphere of the meeting or event.
Know Who’s in Charge
We’ve all been in a virtual meeting or party that feels disorganized or exclusionary. To fix this, make sure you have a clear “master of ceremonies.” That person should understand how to use the mute buttons, encourage feedback from different group members, and navigate dead spots in the presentation or event.
Remind people that they’re not alone, especially in larger events and meetings – schedule moments into the presentations for the entire audience to do or say something together. That thing may be some neck and shoulder stretches, recite a company mission statement, sing a song verse, or just let out a giant collective scream.
Create a Space for Collaboration
Technology is all about sharing – information, resources, that video of the guy drinking Ocean Spray and singing Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams.” Why not create an in-meeting space that can allow for the same collaborative sharing?
In business events and meetings, you can create chat threads and share links to collaborative documents to encourage engagement. And for fun events, you can play games, create and share polls, videos, or memes in real-time.
Build Connections – Plan Your Event, Train Your Team, and More
Need help organizing or educating your global team? Switching to a better collaboration tool? Throwing a virtual NYE bash? Meet Me In The Cloud is your go-to resource for white-glove support and training of collaboration services and tools and event assist services.
Whether you need training and education, event assistance, or other collaboration-based support and service, contact us today.
