Simple Tips to Improve Remote Team Meetings (and Save Time!)

Connecting with your team and setting up simple systems can help to improve remote team meetings, and save time during the week.

Consciously connecting with your remote team – and encouraging them to engage in your meetings will really help to improve remote team meetings.

They can boost your team’s productivity by:

▶︎ answering short questions quickly
▶︎ brainstorming issues around possible obstacles so that progress can continue
▶︎ highlight any roadblocks
▶︎ identifying any processes that aren’t documented, so that work can continue without interruption
▶︎ or just highlight the strengths that your individual team members have to everyone in the team, so that they can resolve issues together – instead of asking you.

These days, remote teams are so much more common. The meeting is also a reflection of how your business works. It’s where all of the information and people collide (and collaborate) and when it’s set up to run with ease, the team work flows.

Team meetings that are unstructured can reflect disorganisation, miscommunication and clunky workflows, which would no doubt be frustrating for the team members as well as the business owner.

Here’s 5 tips to improve remote team meetings, to empower your team, help them connect, and ultimately streamline your business towards achieving great customer service and delivering profit.

#1 Create a Weekly Agenda

Creating a clear and consistent agenda for your regular team meetings allows you or your OBM to cover all of the info that needs covering. It’s an opportunity for everyone to ask questions so that they can clarify exactly what they need to do.

If you have a remote team, the conversations that you might usually have in an office, or in passing don’t happen as naturally.

If you set up your agenda in your PM platform, you can add to it all week when you think of items to discuss, and your team can also have the opportunity to add items.

It’s then an easily duplicated or templated task that recurs weekly – the structure is always there, and you’re always prepared.

You can cover:

wins for the week

upcoming deadlines

over due tasks

upcoming projects & their status

content review

The main focus of team meetings is to bring the team together, refocus progress towards the goals you’re working towards and review any issues that have appeared, or may appear.

Each team member will already know what they are doing for the week, so this is to inform and reduce any blockages, as well as a visual check that your team are ok!

#2 Check in on all of your team members before getting down to business

When you have team members all over the country, or all over the world, it can be really difficult to get people to gel.

One way to learn more about your team, and for everyone else in the team to know more about each other is to take 5-10 mins out of the start of your weekly team meeting, or daily team huddle to check in on how they are.

You can do this by asking them to share a pic of a pet, or share something they did on the weekend, or a yummy meal.

These questions can still help team members connect and warm up to each other, without giving away anything too personal.

Don’t forget that you need to lead the way and answer the question too!

It’s like an ice breaker!

You can mix it up a little each week to keep it interesting too.

#3 Encourage everyone in your team to contribute to the team meeting.

When you have zoom meetings, it can be easy to hide behind a messy room and turn off the video, or only pay half attention whilst you do other work, but I don’t recommend encouraging this long term.

Team meetings, especially remote ones, are the one time that everyone is together, so it’s the perfect time to

a) connect with each other a little more and get to know them

b) model better meeting etiquette by turning on your video

c) encourage your team members to get involved

You can handover the reporting and updates to your team, so that they can update everyone, or encourage them to ask and answer questions.

The team meeting is the perfect time to quickly brainstorm any issues that might block progress over the week – and will also reduce the hours you spend on slack during the week!

#4 Acknowledge great work and celebrate wins – and build them into your agenda

I touched on this in Tip #1, but am extending it here because it’s so important!

You may feel like team meetings are to focus on all of the tasks that are still to be completed, but taking time out to acknowledge the good work your team do is crucial.

It’s another form of feedback, that encourages them to continue to work on your common goals, and helps everyone stay motivated.

Adding this into your recurring agenda just makes it easy to remember, so that it becomes standard practice.

#5 Trust your team!

Your team are not there to highlight your weaknesses, they are working with you to complement your skill set.

Give them the authority to make decisions, empower them with the information they need to get the outcome you’re working towards, and encourage them to ask questions if there’s anything they are unsure of.

Set up your team so that everyone is clear on what they need to achieve and what they are working towards.

Transparency and trust support the people, processes, platform to manage projects and planning.

Your team meeting is a reflection of all of these elements – make sure they’re evident!

Your Next steps:

Set up your team meetings so that they actually DO save you and your team time.

Download the Remote Team Meeting Blueprint here so that you can set up your team meetings to run smoothly and get the advantages of streamlining your team meetings.