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Prepare For a Virtual Meeting

How to Effectively Prepare For a Virtual Meeting with Your Team

Last Updated on October 9, 2024 by Career Reload Team

In the new normal, (almost) everything is virtual—virtual shopping, virtual schooling, and even virtual hangouts. With their flexibility and ease, virtual meetings are fast becoming the new standard for geographically detached teams.


Latest stats show that 50% of employees have had at least one virtual meeting since the COVID pandemic. However, it isn’t untrue that virtual meetings occasionally give out an aloof or pointless feeling. Effective planning is essential to a successful virtual meeting because it guarantees that everyone involved feels included and leaves with specific action items.

Scroll down to read your roadmap to prepare for a virtual meeting. Ready for some coffee-sipping while learning something new and useful? Let’s go.

Should You Grab a Virtual Coffee or Hold a Meeting?

Virtual meetings are great, but sometimes a casual chat is all you need. Virtual coffee breaks are perfect for smaller groups and informal conversations. Here’s when a virtual coffee break might be a better fit than a full-blown meeting:

One-on-One Check-Ins

Regular one-on-one meetings with your team can feel a bit formal. A virtual coffee break creates a more relaxed environment, encouraging open communication about their work, challenges, and ideas. Plus, offering a virtual coffee is a nice way to show your team you appreciate them.

Recruiting Talent

Virtual coffee chats can be a powerful tool throughout the recruitment process. For first-time video calls with potential hires, a virtual coffee chat helps ease interview jitters and showcase your company’s relaxed culture.

You can even set up virtual coffee chats between candidates and existing team members to give them a taste of the team environment. Feeling extra impressed with a candidate? Consider sending them a themed gift, like an espresso maker or gourmet beans, for a virtual coffee tasting before they chat with the team.

Building Your Network

Met someone interesting in your field online? Strike up a conversation! Send a message on LinkedIn, for example, and invite them to a virtual coffee chat. There’s nothing to lose! You might just connect with someone who could become a valuable business connection.

Coffee meetups online are great icebreakers for meeting new people and prospects. These chats are often casual conversations connecting the coffee drinkers over a number of different topics. As the chat progresses, anyone involved can strike up different conversations that could easily lead to a new network connection, a client, and so on.

Pre-Meeting Prep: Priming Your Team for Success

Your itinerary serves as your guide. Clearly outline the goals of the meeting, the main topics of discussion, and any choices that must be made. It is also a good idea to set aside time slots for every topic to guarantee targeted conversations and prevent deviations.

To enable participants to come prepared with useful suggestions or questions, share the agenda in advance.

  • Pre-circulate materials: Give the team access to any reports, presentations, or data points that are important for the meeting before it takes place. This maximizes the amount of time during the meeting for substantive debate and collaboratively resolving issues by enabling everyone to review the material in advance.
  • Icebreaker option: If your team is rather large or doesn’t often speak online, you might want to start the meeting with a short icebreaker activity. This creates a feeling of community and makes the conversations more upbeat. Keep it short and sweet. You can use a “would you rather” scenario, a little “two truths and a lie” game, or a fast trivia question about the theme of the meeting.

Wrapping Up The Meeting

Close out the meeting by summarizing the main conclusions, next steps, and due dates. Give each action item a clear owner, and use project management software to monitor its advancement.

Share meeting minutes or, with everyone’s permission, a recording to document key decisions and topics of discussion. Team members who might have missed the meeting or need to review the details might use this as a point of reference. Ask your team for comments on the structure and efficiency of the meetings on a regular basis.

By prioritizing planning, utilizing technology effectively, and promoting team engagement, even the most complex virtual conference can be turned into a collaborative and productive experience for all participants. The next time you’re in charge of a remote meeting, keep these pointers in mind and see just how much better your team’s online collaboration is!