Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 24:37 — 33.9MB) | Embed
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | Android | Pandora | iHeartRadio | RSS | More
Making virtual meetings and events engaging can be an arduous task. You must have some key strategies to work with. I discuss some of them with my guest, John Chen.
John is the author of the #1 Amazon Hot New Book Release, Engaging Virtual Meetings. He’s been meeting virtually for over 38 years. He has produced over 4,000 virtual meetings including an EIGHT language meeting and the only 100% LIVE virtual conference in the training industry. He’s one of only 400 Certified Speaking Professionals designated by the National Speakers Association.
We Dive into Topics Including:
- John’s origin story for getting into the virtual event space.
- What most companies do wrong with virtual meetings and how to avoid their mistakes.
- Pro-tips for virtual event facilitation.
- How to create truly active and engaging virtual meetings.
- The importance of “psychological safety” in virtual meetings and how to create it.
- What you need to do in the first five minutes of any virtual meeting or event.
- How to define the purpose of your meetings and address a problem that needs to be solved.
- The ideal part of any engaging meeting or event.
- The structure of a great agenda for a meeting and how to create one.
- Why the sequence of the activities in your meetings and events is of paramount importance.
- The importance of vulnerability from the event facilitator/speaker to create open discussion with your audience.
- How to close your virtual meetings and events strong.
- The one thing, above all else, that you must do to have a successful virtual meeting or event.
…and other golden nuggets of advice!
John’s Origin Story in the World of Virtual Events
John wrote a book called Engaging Virtual Meetings. Before that he had a rich and illustrious career in corporate team building using “geocaching” (it’s a high tech scavenger hunt using GPS receivers to find containers all around the world).
John turned geocaching into a team building event to teach teamwork and leadership and did over 4,000 events. He did 160 events in 2019 alone. And then the pandemic showed up in March of 2020 and devastated the meetings and events industry.
Opportunities Opening Up Because of the Pandemic
John had over 15 cancelled programs in one month. One of his favorite strategies when faced with uncertainty is to look at the past. John’s been online for over 38 years. In addition to that, he wrote a book in 2011 called 50 Digital Team Building Games. For decades John was trying to tell people we can actually meet online, do valuable work, then have dinner with our family and friends and avoid all the traffic in the meantime.
Everyone said, that’s a great idea, John, but the reality is that you need to fly to be on location and deliver a live program. So now, because of the pandemic, John finally had the opportunity to create and facilitate virtual events. He knows how to make your virtual meeting better. He put a class called Virtual Team Building on Eventbrite, and over 5,000 people took it in 2020.
After that his publisher, Wiley and Sons, came to him and said, “Hey John, can you write your second book?” He said, sure. They said they don’t know how long “this pandemic thing” is going last and they asked him to rush the book. John wrote 60,000 words in nine weeks. An important point here is that he wrote the book pre-AI. When the book came out it hit the number one Amazon hot new release in October 2020. In under a year John changed his entire business from team building to planning, producing, speaking at, and emceeing virtual, hybrid, and in person meetings.
Pro-Tip for Virtual Event Facilitation
When you’re giving virtual keynotes, find a way to stand up, even if you just lift your laptop up. You’ll be in the top 20% of all the keynotes. Because when you stand up, you get a whole different energy than when you sit down.
How to Get the Most Out of Your Virtual Meetings and Events
John believes the number one thing you must do before the meeting is to ask your client a very simple question: “What do you want?” It sounds simple, but as a consultant, the number one question you can ask is, “What do you want?”
John says the funny thing about that is a lot of meeting planners don’t know what they want. They say things like “I want a bunch of people together. I want us to have some energy.” None of those things are really results.
John believes it starts there and that’s when you can begin to create a results-driven plan. Once you clearly define an outcome, let’s say it’s to create a plan for the company for their next 30 days during the pandemic, you know what you want. In that case the client needed to deal with a worldwide pandemic that they had no idea how to deal with. With that they had a meeting and a plan. Then they did all sorts of things inside of that to make it engaging, such as telling people what the agenda is and why they were there in the first place.
Number two is creating a process for the meeting. John’s seen events where the lead speaker pontificates for 58 of the 60 minutes in a meeting. If that’s the way your meeting is running, just create a video instead of having people attend a meeting and send it to everyone and they will thank you.
Have a Plan for Your Meetings and Events
One of John’s theories around meetings is to do the things that we can’t do right with just another video, which is all of to brainstorm, to discuss, to find out where everyone’s at in relation to the unfolding plan, to actually agree on an idea and a plan, and then, you know, end the meeting so everyone can follow through with it and see if that’s the right result for everyone involved.
Those are some of the early indicators of what John believes must happen in engaging virtual meetings and events to make them a success.
That’s just the beginning of the story!
Listen to or watch the episode for the rest of the story and more golden nuggets of advice!
You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”
About My Guest
Meet the recognized thought leader on engaging meetings; John Chen.
He’s the author of #1 Amazon Engaging Virtual Meetings – he’s been virtually meeting since 1977.
He’s 1 of 600 National Speakers Association Certified Speaking Professionals in the world.
He can juggle 24 screens of information at a time.
He’s the in-person producer for Jay Abraham’s, who clients include Grand Cardone, Daymond John and Tony Robbins, mastermind.
He produced the most engaging hybrid conference for 300+ attendees for The Gottman Institute.
He has planned the only 100% LIVE virtual conference in the training industry for 1,200 people.
He’s produced an eight-language virtual webinar.
He is the Wiley and Sons author of “Engaging Virtual Meetings” and “50 Digital Team Building Games”, top selling business books.
His work has earned him multiple awards and his more than 450,000 clients across the United States and in countries including Spain, France and Taiwan have experienced breakthrough results.
When you meet him, you will encounter a dynamic, energetic and effective facilitator who makes friends with everyone.
He will help you and your team have the most engaging meeting, conference or masterclass.
He’s the CEO of Engaging Virtual Meetings since 1997.
“Your virtual and hybrid meetings can be as good as, or even better, than face to face meetings” – John Chen
Click here to learn more about Engaging Virtual Meetings!
Click here to connect with John on LinkedIn!
