Run Effective Meetings in Slack

Is your organization considering making the switch to Slack meetings in the near future? Or are you already running your organization on Slack and just looking to make your meetings in Slack more effective?

If so, you might be interested in finding out how to make the best use of this collaboration tool. The truth is, to run effective meetings in Slack, or in any other application, takes lots of practice. You can’t expect to become a meeting expert overnight. It also greatly depends on your team and on their receptiveness.

In today’s article we will go over some of the top tips for running more effective meetings in Slack.

How To Schedule A Meeting In Slack?

At the very start, you need to open up Slack. Once in Slack, you can start a call with an individual or a few members of your team. However, to formally schedule a Meeting in Slack, you would likely need to download an add-on such as x.ai for instance. Unlike in Outlook for Office 365, the application does not offers a Scheduling assistant, which displays everyone’s availability. However, you can chat directly in any channel and then plan a meeting with that whole channel and call them all instantly.

How To Run Effective Meetings In Slack?

Slack developers regularly release new features that help to host more productive meetings. Indeed, their objective is to outrank all other platforms to become and remain the ultimate team collaboration tool.

Prepare And Stick To An Agenda

It’s a basic concept, but one that people often overlook. To set up an agenda takes some preparation, but it also ensures that a meeting will run smoothly. It sets the tone and the expectation. If you also add time limits to each item, it even helps you keep the pace and stay on schedule. Nobody likes a meeting that just drags on!

Creating an agenda helps people be prepared. Sticking to an agenda creates rigour and accountability. It is a great facilitating took and make help teams make the most of their time together. It’s a simple key to achieving effective meetings in Slack, or on any platform for that matter!

Check In With All Participants 

In a meeting, it’s important to not just have a one-way monologue. To hold an effective meeting, the organizer or facilitator should ensure that his or her audience is engaged. Ask questions. Check in on the meeting attendees to make sure they’re still following! Allow for small breakout groups so that people can discuss amongst themselves. This is possible for in person meetings as well as remote ones.

Before you even start, check in with everyone and make sure that they are in a receptive state of mind. Hold an ice-breaker at the beginning of the meeting, to put everyone at ease and to make them feel relaxed.

Get Rid Of Background Noise

Have you ever been on a call or online meeting with a large group of people? Were there a lot of distractions and background noise?

Anything from crying babies to barking dogs, to car engine noises or chewing can easily disrupt a group meeting. You can make it a rule in your organization that anyone who joins in after the meeting has already started should automatically mute themselves.

However, as the discussion or meeting progresses certain people can become un-muted. In these instances, it is entirely acceptable to remind the individuals to mute themselves again. Certainly, users can un-mute themselves at anytime if they need to speak their mind.

Screen Sharing Do’s and Don’ts

If you have a million tabs open in Safari or just have a very messy desktop, you probably should clean that up before running a meeting.

Of course, you might not be willing to close all those tabs. If you don’t want to appear disorganized on a video call with screen sharing, Slack offers a few simple solutions. In order to share only the essential information from your screen, you can select the screen you are sharing.

This feature allows meeting leaders to share only specific windows instead of their entire screens. Conveniently, it also hides any notifications that may pop up on your screen while you’re presenting.

Last but not least, attendees of the meeting can draw on any part of the shared screen with a virtual marker This is especially useful when reviewing documents or sharing ideas. Also, at any point in a presentation, another user can request control of your screen.

There are many more ways to run effective meetings in Slack. Their official community site is an excellent resource for tips and tricks.

Kristina Ousmanova

Kristina recently left behind fast-paced life of Human Resource Business Consulting to freelance as a Content Writer. A regular Vacation Tracker contributor, she can be found working remotely from her home in Montreal, usually while eating a variety of snacks.