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Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of IHeart Radio.

Good morning.

This is Laura.

Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.

Today's tip is that when you are waiting for a virtual meeting to start, use the time for connection, rather than talking just to fill blank space.

So for in-person meetings, people naturally tend to chat as they arrive. Indeed, people

sometimes encourage new employees or junior employees to arrive early at meetings in order to build

connections with senior colleagues. But somehow, chatting before a virtual meeting can feel

more awkward. How many times have you been in a silent Zoom call, where all the participants are sitting there, muted, and looking bored?

Maybe the host will awkwardly greet people as they arrive, but the conversation doesn't really take off.

Worse, when people are late, you can find yourself sitting silently on the screen for a lot longer. The poor meeting host may start

polling people about the weather in all their different locations, or the host drones on and

about the purpose of the meeting and how glad they are to see

everyone until the latecomers finally arrive and the actual meeting can begin.

This can feel like a waste of everyone's time. That tends to sour the mood, which can lead

to less effective meetings. Instead, if you are leading a virtual

meeting, aim to use the arrival time for building relationships and connection. There are a number of

ways you can do this. One option is to pose a question and invite people to respond out loud or in the chat.

This gives people something to do in little ways to connect with each other.

Sometimes a topic will catch fire in the chat or in the live discussion.

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