5 tips for better facilitation of virtual meetings and events

There is much debate about how many hours it takes to master a new skill. Malcolm Gladwell would have you believe that the magic number is 10,000 hours, and perhaps that is true for highly complex skills. For simpler tasks, however, many people say 20 hours is sufficient.

Before the pandemic, online facilitation was not something that I would have said I was an expert in. Actually far from it, because when I was leading groups of people it was always outdoors, at the 100 Point Challenge.

But fast forward 2 years and I would now estimate that I have spent well over 500 hours online leading games and activities for teams from all over the world.

I have had to get familiar with being on Zoom, Teams, Meet, Webex, and many other video conferencing platforms on a daily basis, and have had some very varied experiences - with the lowlights tending to be related to tech meltdowns!

But this has given me plenty of insights into what you can do as the event or meeting facilitator to try and improve engagement. So here are my 5 tips for better facilitation of virtual meetings.

  1. Preparation is key

It sounds obvious, but preparation is one of the most important things to ensure you deliver professionally and smoothly when you are leading virtual meetings.

This means preparing the meeting content and the meeting platform, before you start leading the meeting. The meeting content is obvious, but the platform is where you can potentially run into problems if you are not well prepared.

Knowing that all the settings are as you want them in your Zoom call can save you from all sorts of embarrassment. For example I was once facilitating for a group where I did not set up the call but joined as a co-host.

Even though I had asked for the Breakout Rooms to be set to “manual close”, the person setting them up had forgot to check and they were actually on “automatically close after 5 minutes”.

Unfortunately I only discovered this after sending 100+ people into breakout rooms for a 40 minute activity, and having them all come bouncing back into the main session looking disgruntled after 5 minutes.

When Microsoft Teams first released Breakout Rooms there were all sorts of bugs and platform anomalies that we had to deal with.

After facilitating a few events we released that making sure all the participants were using the most up to date version of Teams as well as the most updated version of their own PC/Mac helped reduce the issue where a participant could not join a Breakout Room. From that day on when we facilitaed we asked everyone to ensure they had updated Teams and their computer before the event.

2. Look and sound good

And by that I don’t mean make sure you are freshly shaven and put make-up on before the call, although you can do that too of course.

What I mean is that as a presenter you can do yourself a huge favour by using the right mix of light on the face (buy a desk lamp), using a virtual background, and dressing in clothing colours that contrast well with your background to make you stand out on the screen.

It’s just your top half too, you don’t even need to wear pants to look and present professionally in a virtual meeting.

There are two other factors that come into play when presenting on video - your internet speed and your headphones.

I’m Australian, and anyone that has ever lived in or visited Australia will know that our internet speed sucks. Luckily I live in Sweden most of the time where the internet travels at light speed.

Do what you can to make sure you have fast internet - everyone knows the frustration of watching someone present on lag as their mouth moves at a different pace to the audio you’re receiving.

Finally get a good set of reliable headphones, ones which block out any background noise, and a quiet space to facilitate from. Just make sure you don’t leave the microphone too high or everyone will hear the sound of the air coming out of your nose as you exhale.

3. Be prepared to fill silences with self deprecation and jokes

Before I give you some tips on how not to end up in a situation where there is awkward silence, I want to give you some tips on silence filling, as inevitably this happens to online facilitators at one point or another.

Where normally you could get in front of a silence by asking a question, sometimes in virtual meetings the easiest way to fill the silence is by telling a story, joke or giving people some kind of insight as to who you are as a person.

If I am facilitating for a team in North America, I normally make fun of my own accent, as it’s typically Australian and filled with quirky pronunciations.

You can find something current, or have a few go to “Dad” jokes in your back pocket just in case you need them.

- Did you hear about that robbery at the barber store down the street? The police are still combing the area.

Jokes can fill silences so you don’t have to hang a question out there to the group and hope someone bites.

But speaking of hanging a question out there - let’s move on to the next tip, which is on asking questions.

4. Ask specific, targeted questions to people

There is a tendency in online meetings for people to sit quietly and listen, or to sit quietly and not pay attention at all, but it’s normally one or the other.

As a facilitator, you crave engagement from people in the meeting, but sometimes it can be hard to get it. As mentioned above, asking general questions to the group doesn’t always work very well, or doesn’t work at all, depending on the size of the meeting or event.

If it’s a big group, I think people often assume that someone else will answer your question, so they don’t come off mute to participate. To get around this, I find that singling people out with a question is a much better way to engage.

Rather than asking - “Hey Everyone, how are you all today?”, you can just jump straight in and say- “Hey Anna, what is that artwork on your back wall?” (assuming Anna is not using a virtual background) or “Hey Jason, how has your morning been so far - anything fun happen?”.

5. Arrive armed with a fun, small group activity

If you are leading a large virtual meeting or event, a great way to improve engagement is using a short activity or game.

We find that doing these in smaller groups using breakout rooms is the best way to go, as it means that everyone can participate and all those in the individual team get an opportunity to interact with each other.

Our team problem solving game series called Unpuzzled provides a great way for people to energise together before a work meeting, event or conference.

The game involves solving a series of different individual puzzles as a team, and then putting the answers together to solve a master question.

It’s played as a time-based competition between teams, so will get people’s adrenaline pumping, especially those with a competitive streak.

Preparation and practice makes perfect

They say practice makes perfect, but when it comes to online facilitation I think it’s preparation and practice that make perfect.

If you’ve got the right tools for the job just start leading and over time, I’m sure you’ll be great!

For more tips and tricks on meeting facilitation as well as access to games and activities for team leaders, sign up to loumee today.

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