Online meetings are already a storm of technology – logging in, getting the microphone ready, checking your slides, and reviewing the speaker/mute instructions. To be more than a nerdy ‘talking head’ and stand out in a sea of dry virtual meetings, build trust and human connection when you moderate meetings.
For many presenters, executives and entrepreneurs meeting virtually is a far cry from the personal interaction, which is possible in a face-to-face meeting.
It’s far too easy to get distracted with the technology details, and forget that you’re communicating with people on the other end.
If you’ve previously built a relationship with the participants online, you can continue and build on it. But if this is your first time to sit down and meet together, remember this: you are meeting with other humans.
It sounds simple. Even obvious. But if you’ve attended any virtual meetings recently, you know it’s not common practice. Far too many are routine data dumps with packed agendas. And little time for building relationships.
To add human touch to your virtual meetings do this single thing:
First, focus on building a human connection. Use your voice to replace what you would usually see if you were in the room.
You don’t have eye contact – unless you are using videoconferencing. But you do have your voice.
Use your voice to replace the things you normally would see.
This includes:
Since you can’t see who is speaking, state the name of the person who is speaking.
Since you don’t know who is in the room, say who has left the room.
Since you don’t know if a new person has come in, say who has entered the room.
Disclose things that may impact the sound quality. This may be something as simple as, “There is construction on the building next door and I can’t hear you over the jack hammer.”
Disclose if something external such as weather is affecting peoples’ ability to focus. Such as, “It looks like the sky is turning green. I think we may be getting some of those tropical hurricane winds coming our way.”
When working with teams or clients over a period of time, develop your own agreements for adding human touch to your virtual meetings.
Take the extra step. Add human touch to your meetings.Human Touch For Virtual Meetings
Online meetings are already a storm of technology – logging in, getting the microphone ready, checking your slides, and reviewing the speaker/mute instructions. To be more than a nerdy ‘talking head’ and stand out in a sea of dry virtual meetings, build trust and human connection when you moderate meetings.
For many presenters, executives and entrepreneurs meeting virtually is a far cry from the personal interaction, which is possible in a face-to-face meeting.
It’s far too easy to get distracted with the technology details, and forget that you’re communicating with people on the other end.
If you’ve previously built a relationship with the participants online, you can continue and build on it. But if this is your first time to sit down and meet together, remember this: you are meeting with other humans.
It sounds simple. Even obvious. But if you’ve attended any virtual meetings recently, you know it’s not common practice. Far too many are routine data dumps with packed agendas. And little time for building relationships.
To add human touch to your virtual meetings do this single thing:
First, focus on building a human connection. Use your voice to replace what you would usually see if you were in the room.
You don’t have eye contact – unless you are using videoconferencing. But you do have your voice.
Use your voice to replace the things you normally would see.
This includes:
Since you can’t see who is speaking, state the name of the person who is speaking.
Since you don’t know who is in the room, say who has left the room.
Since you don’t know if a new person has come in, say who has entered the room.
Disclose things that may impact the sound quality. This may be something as simple as, “There is construction on the building next door and I can’t hear you over the jack hammer.”
Disclose if something external such as weather is affecting peoples’ ability to focus. Such as, “It looks like the sky is turning green. I think we may be getting some of those tropical hurricane winds coming our way.”
When working with teams or clients over a period of time, develop your own agreements for adding human touch to your virtual meetings.
Take the extra step. Add human touch to your meetings.
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