Strategies For Keeping People Engaged During Meetings And Conference Calls

Project Management / By

Today advance technology and communication methods have made our life very easy. There is no need to spend a large amount on travelling to attend a meeting. Technology has made it so easy that ten different people sitting in ten different locations can attend a meeting. On the top of it they can even see each other using video conferencing technique. Meetings are relatively easy now and conference calls and bridge calls are very common these days.

It depends on the host of the meeting to manage it effectively so that the outcome of the meeting meets his expectations. At times it is observed that some people take conference calls very casually and often engage doing other work in parallel. When they were questioned, they simply say “Sorry, I was on mute. Can you repeat the question again? Actually they were engage in some other task and were not paying any attention, and your calling their name to answer a question caught them off guard. Or even worse there are few who are neither listening nor doing any official work just checking their personal mails or chatting with others, such people are the ones who were asked to attend the meeting by their seniors in their absence. This is an awkward situation for the host in case the meeting involved external stakeholders and customers.

List of strategies to minimize or prevent the above from occurring

  • Ensure the agenda and minutes of previous meeting (if applicable) are circulated well in advance to all the participants.
  • Ensure only the right set of people are attending the call, else cancel or postpone the meeting so as to save the time of all the attendees. There are cases when most of the points are marked as depends on availability of person X and people start losing interest in the meeting resulting in meeting ends up without any outcome.
  • Prepare notes and highlight critical points with the names of the people accountable for the same. Take and the names loudly and repeat the actionable.
  • Ask questions in case you feel any participant in taking lesser or no interest.  Even if there is no actionable for this person, just ask “do you have a better way to implement it or can you provide a better idea”
  • Be very confident while speaking so that the attendees do not lose interest. An uncertain or hesitant voice leaves a bad impression on other participants.
  • Check your pace while you are presenting your facts and figures, ensure you are neither very slow nor too fast.
  • If any participant is travelling or is in a noisy area and you are experiencing a lot of background noises, ask that participant to put his phone on mute, so that rest of the people don’t get distracted by it.
  • Ensure that the meeting is short and contain only the important and relevant points covering the majority of participants. Don’t allow two people discussing something and rest of them just waiting for that discussion to get over. Politely ask these two participants to take that discussion offline, as you are running short of time.
  • Stick to your meeting agenda, concentrate on your business goal and try not to deviate the agenda of the meeting. Identify the primary distracters and warn them before the meeting through a polite email, so that you can finish it on time.

Conducting effective meetings is an art and not all of us are good at this. At times it is very difficult to interrupt in between even if people are going off track. But in the interest of your and others’ valuable time, one is bound to do so. Choose the correct set of words like “I apologize” or” sorry to interrupt you” and try to wrap it effectively with the desired outcome.

About Aditi Malhotra

Aditi Malhotra is the Content Marketing Manager at Whizlabs. Having a Master in Journalism and Mass Communication, she helps businesses stop playing around with Content Marketing and start seeing tangible ROI. A writer by day and a reader by night, she is a fine blend of both reality and fantasy. Apart from her professional commitments, she is also endearing to publish a book authored by her very soon.

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