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every meeting needs moderator role, especially remote meeting
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no long presentations without interactions of participants. Develop drawings etc. during presentation to create involvement and action
Moderator should know the phases every meeting should have:
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Beginning and smalltalk ⇒ check list of participants, create setting, let everybody speak
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Introduction = warmup, present goals of the meeting, explain structure and rules to follow (like "mute your mic if not speaking")
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Visualized content. Activate participants per direct speech, proactively get feedback
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Wrap up and tasks: Get agreement about the content of the meeting
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Closing
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Postprocessing and retrospective "What was good, what can be done better next time?"
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moderator has several tasks before, during and after a meeting:
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being on time one of the most important things when working remotely
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to be ready for unforeseen events: login at least 15 minutes before meeting begin (remaining time can be used with muted mic)
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makes everyone else join at least 5 minutes before begin
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introduces meeting with "Can everybody here me?" ⇒ "Yes" from everyone = confirmation that audio is great. Also great: thumbs up / down = immediate synchronous response from everybody
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if participants don’t usually meet in this constellation, make everybody talk a little via simple questions like "Everybody had a great weekend?", "What’s your favorite color/food/whatever?". Background: Surgeons do this to minimize fear of talking during a surgery. That way, nobody has a psychological fear of calling out problems.
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checks video stream of everybody
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keeps an eye to the chat - that’s the remaining way of communication for those who suffered audio failure
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makes everybody not speaking mute their microphones
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retrospective of your role as a moderator, findings during the meeting-process, specific tasks for next time
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best practice every participant sitting before his/her own webcam
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only if that’s not possible, use meeting room
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however, most difficult setting: hybrid meeting (number of persons in one room, several remote participants)
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remote-sitting colleagues have to be cared about in a special way:
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at the beginning, state names of people present
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during meeting, comment on things happening ("Joe just came in and joined us", "Michael is drawing something on the flip chart")
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moderator interrupts and eliminates auxiliary conversations in the meeting room (hard to understand and follow remotely)
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always ask remote participants first (to keep them in the loop)
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make everybody state their name when beginning to talk
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"ambassador-rule": in bigger meetings, use an ambassador who watches the chat for questions and comments. Moderator asks co-moderator from time to time if something happened, ambassador interrupts moderator if urgent questions arise.
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when video-chatting with multiple people, direct the camera to the person speaking. Alternatively, deactivate automatic zoom.
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in case of voice-only meeting AND participants not known to each other: makes everyone speaking tell their name: "This is Martin, I just wanted to add …"
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"over-communicate" ("overuse" body language, facial expressions and gestures to communicate all the time)
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also over-communicate in content: check + paraphrase what you heard: "This is Joe. Is it right that you said X, Y and Z? Just want to make sure I understood you."
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from Change Leader’s Network: " If someone yells ELMO during the meeting, then the facilitator pauses and asks for a vote. (Majority rules, although you can of course set your own decision protocol.) If the majority agrees that it is “enough, let’s move on,” then the facilitator stops the discussion and moves on to the next topic. If the majority disagrees, then you keep with the current discussion."
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gather in groups of two, max. three where every group member should be in the same project.
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Create an Amazon-rating of what is good and what is bad in the way your current meetings are held. An Amazon-rating consists of a 5-star-rating, a short (one-liner) summary and a short text.
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Analyze the root cause (for example with the 5-Why-technique) of these problems.
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Create a second list of specific, physically doable tasks to enhance your meetings. If that is not possible (for example because of lack of knowledge about the root causes), create a list of persons who could enhance the situations.
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presentation:
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read your Amazon-rating
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pick the most important tasks and present them
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organizational:
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3 minutes grouping
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15 minutes Amazon rating
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30 minutes presentation