Chris Palmisano shows how to run a check-in round in Zoom or Teams: have everyone raise their hand, call on them in order, they lower it after speaking. It keeps airtime equal, makes it clear who's talked, and frees you from taking notes.
I've got a trick for you for running a silky smooth check in round in your next remote meeting. A check in round is a thought provoking question that the facilitator poses at the top of the meeting and asks each attendee to answer. It could be something like what was your first job? And the intention is to provide space for equal airtime and also set the intention that meeting attendees are going to be actively participating in this event. Now, the JV approach for running a check in round is to have the facilitator call on each person. The facilitator now has to shift their attention away from the people in the meeting and instead focus on note taking, which isn't great. I have a better approach using the hand raise feature in Zoom or Teams. I think it's in the other meeting conferencing tools as well. Here's how it works. First, get everyone in the meeting to raise their hand using that hand raise feature. And then you as the facilitator will call on the first person to check in and ask them to lower the hand raise button after they finish their check in round and call on the next person. So then the next person checks in, lowers their hand and calls on the next person after them. And this continues in a round robin fashion until everyone has finished the check in round. So the benefit here is that that hand raise feature acts as a visual signal to tell meeting attendees who who has and has not checked in. And as a meeting facilitator, this simple trick helps me stay focused on the people in the meeting and away from note taking and other administrative tasks. I'm Chris Palmisano with Kai Rise and that is your remote meeting hack.
