This past week, I was able to sit alongside my kindergarten daughter as she had her first online classroom meeting with her teacher and class. First and foremost, she has an amazing teacher and deserves all the credit in the world. But second, and more importantly, a kindergarten virtual meeting went EXACTLY how you imagined.

Half of the kids didn’t know how to mute themselves and were constantly talking over everyone, the teacher lost internet connection halfway through and disappeared for a few minutes, the children became restless and started showing their favorite stuffed animals on screen, and whenever someone shared, it was either too-loud shouting or too-soft whispering. After 45 minutes and only answering two simple questions, everyone was exhausted and ready to be done.

Minus the stuffed animals showing up randomly (which might still happen!), I basically described nearly every virtual meeting happening across America today.

VIRTUAL MEETING FATIGUE

As the working world largely continues to work from home, you’ve probably noticed the incredible difference between an in-person meeting versus a virtual meeting. It can be clunky, disjointed, unfocused, and take significantly longer to accomplish anything of substance. If you are leading the meeting, you may feel frustrated and helpless, wondering if it’s worth even trying.

If you try and apply the same standards and practices of an in-person meeting to a virtual meeting, you’re going to struggle and, most likely, fail. As a leader, you need to be able to adopt new roles within the virtual meeting to compensate for the differences. Check out the five new roles you need to take on in order to make your virtual meeting a success for all involved:

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Leaders, here is an important mindset shift you need to make: you are consistently under-communicating.

Differentstudies have shown that it can take anywhere between 3 and 20 times before a message resonates with the recipient. Likewise, marketing experts swear by the Rule of 7: action won’t be taken until a message has been heard at least 7 times. There is value in the repetition: a single message can’t be fully absorbed and acted upon in a way that makes an appreciable difference.

Leaders can fall into the trap of believing that their message has been heard loud and clear the first time. The carefully crafted message makes sense to you, why not them? Here’s the reality: you’ve spent way more time pondering, crafting, and internalizing the message before you’ve even considered delivering it.

Those 3 to 20 times? Done on the drive home from work.

The Rule of 7? All 7 have been consumed by you before lunch.

So when you step up to the proverbial or literal mic, YOU have done the repetition work well in advance. Your people, however, are hearing it all for the very first time. If your message lives and dies by a single delivery, most likely, your workplace struggles with communication and it’s because you are under-communicating.

You may be saying to yourself, “Well, I can’t talk AND listen: they have to do a better job of hearing me!” There may be some truth to that, but do you really want to shift the onus of communication off of your shoulders? Leaders need to ensure that they have done everything possible to allow for good communication to take place.  Check out the simple, 4-questiont test to give yourself to make sure your message is clear, concise, and well-communicated:

Continue reading “A Simple 4-Question Test to Ensure Your Message Is Heard” →