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For more on designing your virtual meeting, read this helpful resource from Nancy White and colleagues.

3-How To Avoid Technical and Time Zone Scheduling Snafus

It isn’t a matter of whether technical problems will happen, it is more like to expect them to happen and have a Plan B or a way to avoid falling into the pit of technical despair where the meeting gets derailed because of one person’s technical issue or you experimenting with a new tool and it doesn’t work as planned. First, make sure everyone troubleshoots their technical issues before the meeting, if possible. Many platforms have a technical testing page and good tech support, include those links ahead of your meeting. And, if not, here’s a great infographic of common virtual meeting technical issues and fixes. My secret is to write out a step-by-step facilitator agenda if using a new technical tool and rehearse it. And, always have a plan B. For examples, if your platform drops callers, be a little flexible with the agenda. If someone is supposed to share their screen and is having a technical problem, make sure people have copies of the document and at minimum, you as the facilitator, so you can share your own screen. Many virtual meetings require working across time zones. My best tips and tools are in this post.

4-Always Do A Virtual Icebreaker or Check-In A great meeting or training starts with a great icebreaker. Icebreakers are discussion questions or activities used to help participants relax and ease people into a group meeting or learning situation. It is important to build in time for an icebreaker because it can create a positive group atmosphere, break down social barriers, motivate, help people think about the topic, and get people to know and trust one another. Any icebreaker you do in a face-to-face meeting can also be done virtually. But, you can also have some fun with virtual icebreakers that build trust and engagement. For example, you can share photos of your workspace or your location. Here’s an example of an icebreaker where I asked everyone share a photo of their space. This helps created a shared experience. 5-Create A Line for Participants To Follow Establish a method you can call in participants. This might include alphabetical order by first or last name or if you are using a video conference platform by order on the screen. If you are using an audio-only conference call platform, you can use the clock technique where you assign people numbers on the clock at the top of the meeting, then use that for introductions and later in the

meeting to call on people as part of the discussion. Here are some more tips for making audio-only conference calls more impactful. Pro Tip: If you are using a video conference platform, watch for eye movement (means person is reading something), arms moving or typing sounds (they’re typing), or bored expressions. Don’t call out the person specifically, but remind people that one of your meeting norms is full attention. Here are some more techniques to ensure that your virtual meeting participants are listening.

6-Techniques for Virtual Brainstorming, Voting, Feedback, and Energizers In face-to-face meetings, one way we get engagement is doing activities like brainstorming and sticky voting. Both of these activities can be done online using different tools. For brainstorming and sticky dot voting, there are many free, simple to use, and low cost tools you can use. I’ve used liniot to do brainstorming, here’s an example. The tool is the least of the requirements for an effective virtual brainstorm, you need to understand how to design and facilitate an effective process and facilitate with virtual sticky notes. Another technique that goes hand-in-hand with brainstorming is dot voting. I’ve used in many faceto-face workshops, but it can easily be done online with “Emoji” voting. During face-to-face meetings, you can easily tell when participants are getting tired or the energy drops. With virtual meetings, even with video conferencing, it is more difficult. You can ask people about their energy level and then ask them to do a simple stretch movement to help replenish energy. There are also some fun virtual energizers and games that make it fun. 7-Ways To Evaluate and Continuously Improve Virtual Meetings Your nonprofit’s virtual meetings will get better over time if you allocate 5 or 10 minutes at the end of the meeting to evaluate how it went and what you need to improve. You can use the same methods you would use to evaluate any meeting or training. Here’s an example of using virtual sticky notes to evaluate meetings using two different methods, “Sad, Mad, Glad” and “Plus/Delta.” 8-Hybrid Meetings: Mixing Virtual and Face-to-Face Participation When you have both people in the room and remote participants, use a bridge moderator (someone in the face meeting) who ensures that there is a linkage between virtual and real time participants. The bridge moderator reminds people in the face-to-face meeting that virtual participants are part of the meeting. Checks to make sure that virtual participants can hear, see, and speak.If using video conferencing, project remote participants on the screen or give a seat at the meeting table. 9-Send Meeting Notes that People Actually Read I’m sure you are not surprised: no one reads meeting minutes. Nonprofit professionals are so underresourced and busy, that they don’t often have time to go through meeting minute documents and reading them to figure out what they missed out on. Most people rely on what was mentioned verbally in a meeting, which can lead to miscommunication. A brief, concise follow-up email that summarizes who is working on what is a lot more more effective than meeting minutes. Here’s a good guide for meeting note taking.

Additional Tools and Techniques If you are like me, you are always looking for more tools and techniques to increase engagement during virtual meetings, webinars, and workshops. Check out “The Ultimate List of Virtual Meeting Tools” or “The Ultimate List of Online Collaboration Tools“for more tools. If you want to evaluate meeting platforms, check out this list from Gartner or this curated list from Collaboration Super Powers. If you are looking for different facilitation techniques to adapt to virtual meeting spaces, check out “8 Fabulous Meeting Facilitation Playbooks.

The Ultimate List of Virtual Team Technology Tools

(List updated: Mar 2020) The following is a list of around 60+ technology tools that you can use to manage your virtual team. To keep things simple, I’ve categorized the tools into 10 different functional categories. However, keep in mind that those categories are loosely defined, and one tool can technically belong to more than one category (because of overlapping features and frequent tool updates). Note: None of the links below are affiliate links, so feel free to click away

1. Collaboration Tools

Tools that help you collaborate with your team through a central hub for sharing information  Slack  Podio  Webex Teams  Lighthouse  Microsoft Teams  Blackboard Collaborate  Redbooth  Zoho Connect  Huddle

2. Project Management Tools (includes Time Tracking Tools)

Tools that help you manage and plan your projects with your team through task assignments and scheduling  Microsoft Project  Teamwork  Basecamp  Redmine  ActiveCollab  Jira  Primavera  Asana  Smartsheet  Trello  Workfront  ProofHub  Wrike  Pulse (time tracking tool)  Projecturf  HiveDesk (time tracking tool)  Apollo

3. Document Storage/ File Sharing Tools

Tools that help you store and share your files securely among your team  Dropbox  Onehub  Google Drive  Zoho Docs  SharePoint  Box

4. Meeting Tools (including Video & Audio Conferencing Tools)

Tools that help you meet with your team through web conferencing and collaboration (including video and audio conferencing)  Webex  Skype  Zoom  BlueJeans  GoToMeeting  Join Me  Google Hangouts  Anymeeting  Adobe Connect

GlobalMeet

5. High-End Video Conferencing Tools

Tools that allow you to meet with your team through super high definition or real size video conferencing  Cisco Telepresence  LifeSize  Polycom Telepresence

6. Instant Messaging Tools

Tools that allow you to chat in real-time with your team members  Jabber  Skype  Grape  Mattermost  Rocket Chat

7. Document Co-creation Tools

Tools that allow you to co-create and co-edit documents or visuals in real-time with your team members  Google Docs  ONLYOFFICE  Prezi  Xtensio  Conceptboard  Scribblar

8. Social Network Tools

Tools that allow you to collaborate and interact with your team members through a social network  Yammer  Jive  Chatter

9. Scheduling Tools

Tools that help you to schedule common meeting times with your team members  Calendly  TimeandDate  Doodle  HubSpot Scheduling  ScheduleOnce