It’s day 7 of my Advent Calendar and today I’m going to be sharing the EAT technique to help you facilitate better virtual meetings, because believe it or not we’ve been spending even more time in meetings during this pandemic and we don’t want them to eat up more time than necessary!

There are some very similar rules to holding virtual meetings as there are face to face ones and I’m going to touch on three that never seem to be made explicit.  However, the more explicit we can be, the more smoothly our meetings will run.  As a facilitator it’s crucial to get these things right.

Let’s start with the E for etiquette.  By this I mean setting your ground rules for the meeting, ie mute when not speaking, cameras on so that you can connect with one another.  Asking people to get rid of distractions, such as other work, so that they can be fully present for the meeting. I like to get the people who are taking the action points away to make it clear what they are going to do and by when so that this can be noted in the minutes.  Get input from around the virtual room so that everyone signs up to it.  If it’s a group of attendees that haven’t worked together, get everyone to introduce themselves so that there’s no second guessing who’s who.

Make sure you send out an agenda for the meeting so those attending know what to expect.  It can also help people decide if they’re the right ones to attend so as not to waste unnecessary time.  Ask those attending for agenda items to encourage engagement.  Where minutes are concerned, make sure they state who is doing what and by when so that there is clarity the next time you meet.

Time limits are good for both agenda points to keep you on track but also to make sure you finish the meeting on time.  Sitting in meetings for hours on end, encourages those attending to be distracted by other things.  If it’s going to be a long meeting, the timescales enable people to attend only for the points that are relevant to them.  And isn’t it great when you expect a meeting to take a certain amount of time and it finished early!