Engaging Virtual Meetings

8Activities forCommunication, Morale, and Trust

After you've mastered the basics of virtual meetings, you'll run into the familiar meeting problems of inefficient communication, low morale, and not trusting your attendees. You knew many of the rules of communication, morale, and trust in your face-to-face meetings. The challenge is that the rules for these in a virtual meeting are different. You and your attendees need new rules.

A virtual meeting activity is a good way to learn a new virtual tool, raise morale by having fun, and increase trust in your attendees. A good virtual meeting activity addresses your attendees' key issues, is easy for your attendees to learn, is engaging enough to get your attendees to buy in to the outcome of your activity, and is able to be completed in the time you have available.

“Yes, and …”—Accept Attendees' Ideas and Improve Communication

Goals: Get every attendee to participate. Reduce negativity in your meeting. Improve brainstorming and creativity. Demonstrate a winning technique from top teams.

Have you ever shared an idea in a meeting and immediately have it shot down? Are you wondering why nobody is saying anything when you ask for input? Do you wish you had a brainstorm where every idea got better and better?

“Yes, and…” is a concept that is at the core of improvisation. It comes from the concept of accepting anything an attendee says. Even if you don't agree, you can say Yes (I heard you), and (insert your point of view). As simple ...