Having Extra Time at the Start and End of Your Meetings

Encourage people to come a little early to the meeting or stay a little afterward. Just like an in-person meeting — you don’t expect people in an in-person meeting to jump in the room exactly one minute before it’s going to start, settle into their seats, and start discussing right away. People come in a little bit early and they chat a little bit. They say, “How are you doing?”.

This is the same things you want to do for a virtual meeting. Suggest people come in a little earlier. Let them know you’re going to start the session maybe 10 minutes ahead of time. That allows people to be able to chat, connect with each other, make sure that they can get connected fine and not feel rushed.

This might help them look forward to your meetings because they can have some type of connection before or after the meeting — the social connection is very, very important as we move to this virtual mode of communicating and sharing.