Online board meetings can be a useful method for making decisions that are effective. When they are not well managed, they can result in boredom and low levels of engagement. Follow these simple tips to energize your virtual meetings and improve productivity.
The agenda should be shared prior to the meeting with all participants to ensure that everyone understands what’s going to be discussed. Consider asking your group to tune in from a location that is quiet and free of distractions. Likewise, ask participants to use your virtual meeting software’s “raise hand” function when they want to speak, in order to avoid talking too much and missing the message.
Set a time limit for each topic to keep the discussion on the most important issues. This lets everyone participate and prevents discussions from going off-topic or distracting other participants. Encourage your board members to muffle their microphones while not speaking to block out background noises such as pets, children and coworkers.
Last but not least, end the meeting on time. This shows respect for the time of your fellow board members. It is also a good practice to distribute the minutes quickly after the meeting has ended. It is also beneficial to simplify the process of recording and disseminating minutes using the built-in features of your board management software like inline task delegation.
This will ensure that everyone is on the same page with regards to what happened at the meeting and what needs to be done between meetings.