9.2 Preparing your meeting

When preparing for your meeting, it is useful to consider the following:

• What are the purpose and outcome you hope to achieve from the meeting?
• Spend time preparing for meetings; what information do you need to share or gather?
• What will be the etiquette for the meeting, and how will this be shared – in advance or established at the start of the meeting when you do the housekeeping! This includes asking people to have cameras on/off and microphones muted and use of the ‘raised hand’ function if they wish to speak. Will people be using chat? Do you need to share your screen?
• Do you need breaks depending on the length?
• How is the information going to be shared – spoken only, via a presentation, a group activity – will this require breakout rooms, will you be using ‘whiteboards’ or other collaboration tools, will more than one person be required to present?

Think about the outcome: are you just sharing information, do you require a discussion or are participants expect to learn or carry forward action?

This article ‘How to lead better remote meetings’ [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] (Mesaglio, 2020) provides additional useful advice.