EP. 22 How to Plan Engaging Virtual Meetings Part 1 Team Anywhere Leadership Podcast

Remote teams around the globe have been under one giant cloud zoom fatigue since last March. Remote leaders must face the fact that it’s been almost a year since they’ve been leading virtual meetings, and to get real with really asking themselves if they are creating engaging virtual meetings. 
This week, we’re releasing part one of our 2-Part episode on Engaging Virtual Meetings. In this series, we speak with virtual meeting expert, John Chen to learn tips on how to plan engaging virtual meetings. Inside this first episode, you’ll learn best practices for designing your virtual meetings and understand the role that Psychological Safety has inside your virtual meetings. 
What is an engaging virtual meeting?
Before we reveal how to create an engaging virtual meeting, let’s define how to create a non- engaging virtual meeting. In boring meetings, the leader puts up slides and talks (in monotone) for an entire hour while the team takes a nap or scrolls on social media. To make sure no person is engaged at the meeting, just copy your in-person meeting into an online format and make sure that none of your participant's comment, talk, react, or ask questions. If you don’t want audience engagement, then send a video.  
Engaging Virtual Meeting Best Practices
Connection Before Content
Creating engaging virtual meetings is about keeping and retaining an emotional and intellectual connection with each participant from the beginning to the end of the meeting. Connect with each participant before they dive into the content. Take time for virtual meeting ice breakers. Show the participants that you value the relationships everyone has with each other. Keep that level of personal connection throughout the meeting. In engaging virtual meetings, people connect, engage, and have fun.
Create a Safe & Interactive Virtual Meeting Environment
Establishing good psychological safety in virtual meetings is the most important thing leaders should focus on to engage their teams in virtual meetings. Psychological safety in a virtual meeting is when all participants feel safe in front of the group and contribute, interact and chat. One of the reasons you might not have very interactive online meetings is that you haven’t intentionally created a safe space for interaction, contribution, and engagement.
3 Steps to Create Virtual Psychological Safety
 To establish virtual psychological safety, leaders need to go first, be inviting, and allow for awkward silence. 
Let’s look at those in more detail:
Go First
Leaders need to go first and lead through vulnerability. One example of displaying this is to share when you’ve failed recently. This type of authenticity and vulnerability allows your team to feel more comfortable sharing about when they’ve failed recently and helps create a learning culture. Going first also helps bridge the gap between you and your team to create stronger connection and deeper trust required to accomplish big goals. So, don’t be afraid to go first and display a unique trait or characteristic that you’d like to encourage others on your team to display. 
Be Inviting 
To establish strong virtual psychological safety, recognize everyone’s presence when they login to the meetings. By simply acknowledging their presence and being inviting, you can help create a space that makes them more comfortable to share and engage freely and more comfortably without the fear of judgment. 
Allow for Awkward Silence 
Lastly, in order to establish strong virtual psychological safety, allow for awkward silence. Don’t call out on people when you ask questions, give them time to think about their answers, and allow them to answer when they want to answer. 



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