Tips for Telephone Meetings
In today’s working world, it has become commonplace to communicate with others outside of the office and to collaborate with remote employees or teams. Email can get a lot done, but sometimes a phone meeting is your best bet. Here are some tips for maximizing your efforts in telephone meetings.
Understand that communicating by phone is a double-edged sword. It can take away some of the pressure and anxiety of in-person meetings. It can also become detrimental due to the communication barriers and approaches many people take when it comes to meeting over the phone.
There are some people who feel like they work better under pressure and love to just wing it when it comes to presentations. Since your meeting partners can’t see you though the phone, it can be tempting to just read from your computer screen as you speak or do your preparation as others are speaking. Don’t give in to that temptation. It’s actually more important to prepare ahead of time. Since your voice is the only way to communicate, you won’t want to give any reason for others to think you aren’t confident about your subject matter. Furthermore, since your voice is your only ally, make sure to enunciate, speak loudly, and use a pleasant voice. If you have a face and voice made for radio, now is your time to shine.
Body language can carry a lot of information when communicating with others, but on the phone, you won’t have that luxury. That is why it is important to choose your words with great care. The best way to avoid slang, jargon, and ambiguous phrasing is to rehearse or map out your topic points before hand.
Listen actively, don’t interrupt, and don’t multi-task. That advice works not just for phone meetings, but all meetings (and conversations for that matter).
Play the name game. Announce yourself before speaking. Always. It may seem foolish and, in some ways, ego-centric, but the reality is that not everyone can identify you by your voice. When phone meetings include more than two people, it can be hard to distinguish who is speaking, especially if they have similar dialects and this is your first time meeting with them.
When you ask questions or move to a new topic of conversation, name the person you are referencing. This will not only help the flow of the conversation, but will keep the meeting on point while avoiding the awkward moments of silence when no one knows who should be speaking. Naming names when directing comments and questions also serves a purpose of pulling people back into the conversation if, don’t let this be you, they have let their minds wander and have started checking their emails.
Run the telephone meeting like a physical one. State the reason for the meeting at the beginning of the call and make sure everyone is on board and has prepared for that purpose.
Cross talk can derail a meeting quickly. Make sure there is a leader or a designated facilitator that can act as a moderator and help run through the meeting agenda.
