ZOOM Video Breakout Rooms Strategy

Zoom breakout rooms are the virtual equivalent of breakout sessions that we would have in in-person meetings and events. Sheryl Plouffe here, Video Strategist, and in this video we're talking strategy. I have had the great pleasure and honor of not only being a participant in a variety of breakout rooms over the last while, but also being a facilitator and leader of some of these breakout rooms for global networking events. And it's been my pleasure and honor, but it's also been a realization that so many of you could benefit from a strategic look at how to use breakout rooms effectively for your business. So with that said, if you're looking for a technical setup, look for this video here from Zoom Communications. They walk you through the technical setup on how to use this. I'm talking strategy, and to do it, I've made some notes. I'll share that with you, and let's go over to the computer. So if you are a coach, a networking host, a mastermind leader, an online educator, or a virtual event host, of course, you know that you need to stay connected to to your community. And in the world that we live in now, so many of us are going online and really being forced to go online. But I think it's really exciting to use breakout rooms now and beyond what all the craziness that's going on in the world, because what I've been finding is that we have more and more people who are joining in these groups who are excited about it because they can do it from the comfort of their own home or office. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. We still can facilitate a way to stay connected through breakout rooms on Zoom. And so I'm going to be speaking about this from the perspective of group exercises, classroom sessions. Maybe you want to do brainstorming sessions. You want to do some timed small group work because you can use the timing functionality in the breakout rooms to, to set out ahead of time how long you want those breakout rooms to be as the host of the Zoom meeting that you're conducting. I'm going to speak about this from the perspective of networking specifically today, but Of course, you're going to be able to use this strategy, these strategies and these ideas for whatever function you want to use it as. But it's exciting because the breakout rooms are an awesome functionality to help you depending on the size of the Zoom meeting that you're conducting. You can automatically or manually take people and put them out into separate little breakout rooms. So just to paint a picture of the hierarchy that we're talking about, we have a Zoom meeting. Which is the, the whole meeting itself, and Zoom breakout rooms, or breakout rooms, are the functionality that allows us very easily to put people into breakout rooms, separate different rooms. Okay, now where it gets tricky is that depending on the number of people you have in the Zoom meeting, if you have 100 people who come into your mastermind session or your networking event, it can be really challenging to manually take all of those 100 people and put them into evenly distributed breakout rooms. So in that case, you may want to use the automatic function. And keep in mind, this is from a strategic standpoint. If you're looking for the technical know-how, look for the, the link to the Zoom Communications video. They've done a great job of outlining how to do that, and I'll link to it in the description as well. This is from a strategic standpoint. You're not going to want to manually disperse 100 people because that's going to take time away from the flow of the meeting and, and it will interrupt the flow of the meeting. So in that case, you'd want to use automatic. I would say anything, let's say 20 people, you know, could be a good number where you could maybe do it manually if you wanted to do that. But keep in mind, it will likely still interrupt the flow in the breakout meetings and rooms that I've been a part of, they have been done automatically by the press of a button and bloop, everybody gets put off into their breakout rooms. And even within those breakout rooms, people can be, you know, people could leave the breakout room. So I've even seen sessions where people will go into a breakout room and if they want to leave and go into another one, the host will say, if you see the same number of the same people that you've already talked to, let's say in a networking environment, You can say, leave, come back into the main session, and we'll put you in another room. So you can get really creative with how you use this function. So from a networking perspective, let's do a little bit of math here. The recommended length, in my view, for networking would be about 40 minutes. You could do 50, you could do 30, the numbers here would change a little bit, but 40 just seems to be a really good number, especially if you have between 6 and 8 participants in the room. If you have less people, then maybe a 30-minute session would work. If you had 10 people, maybe you'd want it to be 50. So let's go under the assumption that we have 8 people participating in a 40-minute networking breakout room on Zoom. As the host of the meeting, you want to— host or co-host of the meeting— you want to set out the parameters first for exactly what to do in that breakout room. And I'll talk more about that in a moment. So you want to make sure that everyone's clear about what it is that they're expected to do once they get inside that breakout room. Keep in mind, not everyone is familiar with Zoom. Not everyone is comfortable speaking in front of people, let alone speaking in front of people on video. It can be really, uh, it can cause a lot of anxiety for people. So you want to be making them feel as comfortable as possible and not leaving any stones unturned with what it is that they're expected to do and to ease their mind. So for example, if you have 8 people, One thing that you could do in terms of the setup of the breakout room is to say, we're going to each individually introduce ourselves. We're each going to talk about topic number 1, and then we're each going to talk about topic number 2, and that should time out to bring us right back into the main session. So if the introduction is 1 minute each, that's 8 minutes. Now I've added 2 minutes in there for buffer, right? That transition between one person and the next, and to give a little bit of breathing room. So 8 plus 2 is 10, right? Everyone talks for 1 minute and they do their introduction. I'll give you a template for that in a moment. Each person speaks for a minute, introduces themselves. Then we have topic number 1, and the leader of the group can reiterate what the topic is. Each person then speaks for 2 minutes each around, around the room. That's 16 minutes plus 2 minutes buffer. Now we're up to 18 there. And then another topic for a minute each. That's another 8 minutes plus 2 is 10. So we're up to 38 minutes and it goes by very, very quickly. So that gives us another 2 minutes of just kind of, you know, back and forth. One thing you want to think about as a co-host or co-host of a breakout room or a series of breakout rooms is that you don't want to not have someone's voice be heard. You want to facilitate to the best of your ability the the, the equality of everyone being able to speak, right? It's like everyone should have the opportunity to speak. And so you don't want to— and that's why timekeeping is so important, and I'll speak about that in a moment too. Timekeeping is really key because you don't want to have one person speaking for 5 minutes and then the last person doesn't get an opportunity to say anything. That obviously negates the whole point of networking, and that's why timekeeping is really, really key. So as the host or co-host, you can set out the parameters for what the breakout rooms will look like. And if you indeed do go with allowing everyone to introduce themselves, which makes a lot of sense in a networking scenario because you would do that in person, likely, the introduction can be templated out for people who need a little bit of guidance in terms of what should I say? I don't know how to introduce myself. Not everyone does, which may be the reason they're in your mastermind or in your networking group to begin with. They're trying to learn that. So you can use this introduction template to share with them. It's very simple. It's, I help blank to blank so that blank, right? So that I help entrepreneurs to increase their authority and income with video so that they can, you know, grow their business. That would be mine, for example. I'm based in city and state. I'm based in region and province. I'm based wherever I'm based. And you could then follow up with, I love what I do because I love helping people build their businesses, or whatever that case, whatever that is. So that's a little template that you can share with your attendees if they're unsure of how to fulfill on that introduction, that 1-minute introduction. The breakout room hosts and co-hosts can then also choose leaders, and the leader's name will appear on the pop-up box of the breakout room as the host sets out to automatically set them up. So it's from a click of a button. The groups then are being distributed and the hosts, or the name of one person, will come up on the box. So how it's been done when I've participated and facilitated groups is if I see my name, I know I'm a leader of that group. If I don't see my name on that box, then I know I'm a participant. Participant. And that's something that you can talk to your attendees and specifically your leaders about in advance. So let them know in advance, be it via text or email, or even you could set up a separate Zoom meeting prior to the main networking event to walk them through their responsibilities as leaders of breakout rooms on your behalf. Okay, so this is And the leaders are the people who are going to really be your voice in the breakout rooms because you can't be in a million places at once. Even though you can jump into breakout rooms, I don't always recommend that you do that because it can be a bit of a distraction to the flow of the breakout room itself. You can go in silently and watch, and that's fine, and it's really more of a personal decision on your part, but I find that it can be a bit of a distraction. What might be better would be to use the functionality where you can send a message to the breakout room, that specific breakout room at the top. You can type in something, oh, we're coming, you know, we're back in 5 minutes, or how are things going, or whatever the case may be. You can actually send a note rather than jumping into the meeting itself, because once the room is established, there's a certain flow and timing that's underway, right? So I would recommend that if you're the host or co-host, that you stand back, let the room happen as it— as you've laid it out to happen, with trusting your leader. But then also you could write a note and put that in there. So with regard to, um, the leaders, the leader's responsibilities, you know, when I've been a leader of breakout rooms I am designating a timekeeper, you know, so I'm going to go in and ask for a volunteer. You know, you could designate, you could say, you're the timekeeper, but I think it's better to ask, to say, is there anyone who would like to volunteer to be the timekeeper? And obviously that person needs to have their phone or a way to keep time, so make sure that, you know, somebody doesn't say, yes, I'll volunteer, and then find out, well, I don't have anything to keep time. So the person who's timekeeping obviously has to have that. But ask any volunteers, and there's usually going to be someone who says, "Yeah, sure, I'll do it." And so you say, "OK, great. If you could put 1 minute on the clock, that would be great. We're going to go around and do our introductions now, and we'll start at the top of the screen with Sally," right? And you as the leader can, can go in whatever order you want and name people by name, have them do their introduction. Your designated timekeeper will start the time. And what I recommend that they do is take their phones and just kind of hold it up, maybe with a 10-second, you know, 10 seconds left on the clock. They can just hold it up to the screen, or they can verbally say, "10 seconds left." And so it really, you have to feel out what's going to feel good for you as the leader of the group and as the host or co-host of the meeting. You can decide how you want that timekeeping to actually happen. The responsibilities of the leaders are to designate the timekeeper and to be a good listener. It's really important for the leaders to be good listeners because you want them to be your voice in that breakout room and to follow the parameters that you set out: introduction, topic 1, topic 2. So you need to be a good listener, and you need to have the ability to interrupt people if needed because people do tend to like to talk about themselves. So once you've got— some people are like, you wind them up and then they won't stop. Sometimes I get that way as well. So you want to make sure that you have to keep things moving and that you might have to interrupt some people to do that. And it is an art to do that in an eloquent way. But as the leader, sometimes you do have to really jump in and say, okay, great, that's awesome. Thank you so much, John. We want to just be mindful of time and let everyone have a chance to talk. Sometimes people just need that gentle reminder. Oh yeah, gee, I'm going off on I'm going— I'm taking up too much time. They don't mean to do it, it's just people get talking about themselves or a topic that they're passionate about, and then next thing you know, they've spoken far longer than they should have. Okay, and the leader again keeps things moving and on time. The— again, the co-host or co-host can jump in. I don't suggest that you do that because it can be a distraction to the breakout room. And then when everyone comes back into the main meeting, the host or co-host could ask, you know, for 3 to 4 takeaways from participants of the overall meeting and ask for some takeaways or for some aha moments to really bring things back, bring things back. Because now you just spent 40 minutes with a small group of people, bringing them back into the larger group. People are like, oh, right, right, right. We're back with the group now. And it's a way to bind and bring everything back to the center. Other considerations: you could, if you wanted to, send out worksheets, checklists, documents in advance of the meeting. However, you do run the risk of distraction and, and technical issues because not everyone is familiar with PDFs and how to download them and where they are on their computer. And so you have to know your audience, and if you don't know your audience well, I would probably stay away from sending out worksheets and checklists in advance. Unless you feel somewhat confident that they could figure that out quickly. And again, not everyone feels very comfortable doing that. So knowing your audience here will be really key. But you can also have fun with breakout rooms. They don't have to be serious all the time. I was on a breakout room not long ago where it was a scavenger hunt. So the leader of the group said, okay, we're doing a scavenger hunt. So you go find an item you love and an item that reminds you of your hometown and whatever that was. And so it was really kind of a fun way to do that. So be creative. There's lots of different ways that you can use breakout rooms. You can also ask participants to post their contact information in the chat. The chat is a really great function in Zoom at the meeting level, but also in the breakout room level. The chat can then be saved for follow-up by clicking on the three— in the chat on the bottom, there are three little dots on the right-hand side. If you click that, it will save that to your computer. And then what I've done is I've given that document to a virtual assistant and say, hey, could you go through this chat and extract out all of the contact information from people who were on that group or who were in that meeting so that we can follow up with them for maybe JV opportunities or speaking opportunities and things like that? Don't assume that because people are sharing their information in the chat that they're necessarily wanting to be on your email list. But it's definitely more from a networking perspective. It's a great way to reconnect with people because now you have their contact information. And I'll show you right now on the screen a little snapshot of a, um, the text that I have saved on my digital notes on my computer. So all I have to do is copy and paste that right into the chat when I'm participating in a breakout room or in a Zoom meeting. So you can emulate something like that, just your basic contact information. To let people know at a glance who you are, what you're all about, how they would contact you. I hope you've enjoyed this strategic look at breakout rooms on Zoom, and if you know someone in your network who could benefit, please share this video with them. And if you want more Zoom videos, I've got a whole bunch of them right here on my channel. Be sure to check those out as well, and I can't wait to see you in the next video. If you have questions or comments, leave them below.