Top 15 Ground Rules For Your Team’s Virtual Meetings

During virtual meetings, background noise can be a significant distraction, particularly when everyone is working from home. Background noise can affect the overall flow of the conversation and cause confusion, ultimately degrading the meeting’s productivity. As a result, it is essential to keep your microphone on mute when you’re not speaking.

Keeping your microphone on mute might seem obvious, but many people overlook this simple step. Fortunately, there are several ways to address this issue. One solution is to leverage noise-cancelling tools such as Krisp and NVIDIA Broadcast, which can help remove any unwanted noise from your audio input. Asking family members to keep their noise to a minimum during the meeting is another effective solution.

However, even with noise-cancelling tools or a quiet environment, you should still mute your microphone when not speaking to ensure that no distracting background noise enters the conversation. Here are a few best practices for when to mute your microphone:

Mute all device notifications: During online meetings, it’s best to mute all notifications, as the ping of a notification sound can break the flow of the conversation. This could involve turning off notifications on your phone, laptop, or tablet before the meeting starts.
Inform family members: Let your family members know that you will be attending virtual meetings, and ask them to minimize any noise or interruptions during the meeting.
Use Vowel’s Comment feature: Some virtual meeting tools, like Vowel, have a “Comment” feature where you can provide notes or comments during the meeting without disrupting the conversation.

11. Steer clear of distractions

In today’s remote work environment, virtual meetings have become a crucial part of communication and collaboration. However, the productivity of virtual meetings can be significantly reduced if there are multiple distractions during the call. Understanding and managing distractions is essential to make the most out of virtual meetings.

Common distractions during virtual meetings include using the phone, typing, excessive movement, unmuting without anything to say, and distracting background noise. These can all lead to a lack of concentration and could cause attendees to miss vital information that could lead to a loss of productivity. It is essential to avoid these distractions during virtual meetings to maintain focus and concentration.

A distracted team member can affect the concentration of all the attendees, thus leading to more time-consuming meetings. When people lose concentration or miss important information, it can result in delays in decision-making and impede the task’s progress. Therefore, it’s crucial to steer clear of distractions to make virtual meetings more efficient and effective.

One way to help team members stay focused is to encourage them to avoid multitasking. Multitasking may seem like a great way to get things done, but it can affect concentration and lead to avoidable distractions. During virtual meetings, it’s important to limit any interruptions to avoid losing concentration on vital information.