We all know, 2020 was the year of Zoom
and that line you're on mute. You're on mute. And 2021
isn't very different. Is it? So it's no surprise that
over the last several months, I've received quite a few requests
on Zoom etiquette in English and what are effective phrases you can
use to have a successful discussion on video conferencing platforms. So whether you've been tasked with
leading a business meeting on a video conferencing platform, or maybe you've decided to organize a
group of friends to listen to some English podcasts and then talk about them and
you're going to be using something like Zoom to do that. Today's Confident
English lesson is for you. If you don't already know, I'm
Annemarie with Speak Confident English, everything I do is designed to help you
get the confidence you want for your life and work in English. That definitely includes conversations
on video conferencing platforms and making sure you know exactly what
to say no matter what happens by the end of this Confident
English lesson today, not only will you have a better
grasp of Zoom etiquette overall, but you'll also have essential phrases
that will help you minimize technical issues, handle interruptions, and take control of any situation
that may come up successfully. To help give us a structure. Or a framework for this video today, we're going to look at seven different
phases of a typical video conferencing meeting or different scenarios
that may arise that require some effective phrases to help
ensure smooth communication. So again, whether you're leading a business meeting
or you're participating in an English conversation in a Zoom classroom, let's start first with what to
do at the beginning to prepare for a successful discussion.
Before you even get started, there are definitely steps you can
take to help minimize the potential for technical disruptions
during the conversation. If you're the one leading the discussion, of course you want to test the
software, your microphone, your video, everything related to the
video conferencing platform
before the meeting starts. In addition to that, you should ask
your participants to do the same. And there are two ways you can do
that in a very polite way. First, you can send a simple, quick
email to all of the participants, asking them to test the software,
their video and microphone in advance, especially if this is their first
time using the particular platform. One very easy sentence you can use
in your email is something like: if you've never used this video platform
before we'll open the meeting room early, so that you have time to
test your microphone and
your video before the meeting starts. Secondly, it's important to follow through with
that and make sure that you're able to open the meeting five or 10 minutes early, give your participants time to get set up. Rather than just having a blank
screen while your participants join, you could create a slide
or an image in advance and share that with your participants
so that they see a note that says we will start our meeting, or we will
start our discussion right on time. Please be sure to test your microphone
and your video before the meeting starts. In addition to making sure everything
technical is prepared for an advance, the second thing you can do in this
phase is to review the agenda and share that in advance as well. If you have others who
will be contributing to the
discussion or that you know you will ask to share some key details, let them know in advance, give them time to be prepared so that
they can be concise and clear in the meeting. This same rule applies
to any effective discussion. So before the meeting, make sure that you take time to
consider what the key topics will be, who will be responsible for talking
about those topics or giving updates. And what, if anything will be
expected from the participants? Are you expecting everyone to
participate in the discussion? If so, let them know in advance. The next phase is your welcome and
greeting phase plus introductions. Just like you would do in
any professional environment. Definitely start with a greeting
a quick, hello, good morning, or good afternoon. If you're
the host of the discussion, and there are participants
who are new to you, you should definitely introduce
yourself at the beginning. The same is true for anyone who
may be presenting, speaking, or contributing significantly
to the discussion. Because it's important to
get right to the agenda, you want to make sure that the
introductions are quick and concise. So here are two simple
formulas to help you do that. If you're hosting a professional
meeting, you could use something like, hi everyone. I'm Annemarie, the
director of Speak Confident English. And I'll be your host for the discussion
today. Or good morning, everyone. I'm Lina. I'm a junior analyst at KPMG and
I'll be leading the discussion today. Do you notice in both of
those, I'm including the name, the title or job position and the
organization where someone works. Now, if it's a more casual
discussion, for example, a book club or a podcast listening club, you definitely want
something more informal. So rather than focus on your
professional background, you'll probably talk more about where
you're from or some kind of a fun fact. Here are two quick examples. Hey
everyone, I'm Annemarie. I'm from DC. And I joined this book club
because I love mystery novels. Here's another one. Hi
everyone. I'm Annemarie. I'm from Washington DC
and I love mystery novels. I've read everything by Agatha
Christie. In both scenarios, after you've finished your introduction, it's a great practice to
end with something positive. You can keep it simple with something
like I'm happy to join you today. I'm looking forward to our discussion
today, or I'm thrilled to be here. Now, if it makes sense for your
particular meeting or discussion, you could ask every
participant to introduce him
or herself. When you do that, it's important to tell your participants
what they should include in their introduction. It will help
keep everyone concise. A great way to do that
is with something like: there are some unfamiliar
faces here today. So let's do a quick
round of introductions. Then be sure to call on
each individual person. This will ensure that the process
of introductions flows smoothly. The third scenario in a typical online
meeting is establishing ground rules to ensure smooth communication and
to help minimize distractions as the host or leader. Not only do you want
to demonstrate active listening skills, but you also want to encourage your
participants to utilize active listening skills as well. Now in an online meeting, active listening skills are a bit
different in face-to-face conversations. English, speakers love using
verbal cues to indicate active listening. You'll hear a lot of
English speakers use things like, huh? Hmm. Oh, that's interesting. Right? These cues are fantastic in conversation, but they don't always work
in an online platform. Sometimes they do. It
depends on what you're using, but if everyone's on mute or if there
are too many people in the meeting to utilize verbal cues, you can also encourage your
participants to use active body language and utilize other features of
your video conferencing platform. For example, on Zoom, there are reactions that people
can use to indicate a thumbs up, clapping their hands or other emojis
to indicate that they're an agreement or that they like what someone has said. These are all signs that someone is
listening carefully and they're engaged in the discussion. If you want to encourage your
participants to do something like that, here are a few statements you can use. If you have any questions
during the meeting today, the easiest way to let me know
is to use the raised hand emoji. And don't hesitate to let
others know if you agree, or like something that they said by
using the clapping hand or a thumbs up. If you have any difficulties
or need to leave early, please let us know by sending
a quick message in the chat. By sharing all of this upfront, you're establishing ground rules to
help ensure smooth communication and minimizing potential disruptions. Now just like an online meeting may
not be the best place for verbal cues. It may not be the best place for
using those reaction emojis either. If you're giving a presentation
to hundreds of people
that might not be the best place to do that. So instead you can encourage your
participants to use visual cues or body language and facial expressions.
If you see a hundred faces on Zoom, but everybody's doing this. How would that make you feel? As the speaker, it would
definitely be uncomfortable. So encourage your participants to
turn off other distractions and be focused on the speaker. Lastly, if you're hosting a meeting that is
more of a discussion where you want participants to jump into the
conversation, ask questions, share their ideas, tell them
that that's, what's expected. To do this, you want to
encourage effective turn-taking. What that means is that one
person is allowed to speak, say everything that they
need without interruption. And then it's the next
person's turn to speak. You can encourage them to do that by
using the raised hand emoji. So, you know, who wants to contribute or asking
individuals to share a comment in the chat so that, you know, they want to contribute whenever
possible it's best to avoid interrupting, but
sometimes we need to do it. Now I have a whole lesson on how to
politely interrupt someone on English, but here are three quick ways
to do that with all of them. I recommend that you include
some kind of a visual cue. We often use our body language to
indicate that we're about to jump in. You'll see someone lean forward and maybe
even put their hand up something like this. So you might say,
I'm so sorry to interrupt, but I'd like to ask a quick
question or I'm sorry to interrupt, but I'd like to add one more thing to
what you said before we move on a third example. I apologize for interrupting, but I want to clarify something
that you said, all right. So at this point you've
prepared in advance. You've greeted or welcomed
all of your participants. Maybe you've led some introductions
and you've established effective ground rules to ensure there's clear
communication and you're minimizing distractions. The fourth scenario is to practice
effective time management. At the beginning, we talked
about preparing in advance
and providing the agenda, doing that in advance will ensure a more
effective discussion because everyone's ready to talk about the key issues. Time management also includes
that turn taking that. We talked about making sure that your
participants know how and when they can best contribute to the conversation
from time to time individuals ask questions that take you away from
the main discussion or get you off topic. And here's what you
can say to manage this. That's a great question, but I want to make sure that we have
time to get through our full agenda. So let's come back to it at the end
today. Thanks for asking that question. I'll make sure that we save time at the
end of our meeting today to answer any questions that are outside
of the agenda. Similarly, you want to ensure that no one
dominates the conversation or takes the conversation off track. If you notice
that someone starts to do that, you can jump in and say something
like that's a really great idea, or that's a great suggestion hold onto
that thought because I'd like to come back to it at the end of the discussion
today, or I appreciate your comment, Sue. That's a really good point. Let's
see what others have to say on that. And lastly, if you know, there's just a little bit of time left
and you still have topics that you need to discuss on your agenda. You can say something like we are
almost at the end of the meeting. So let's try to get through
the last three items. This will help everyone return
their focus to the meeting agenda. The fifth scenario that you need
to be prepared for is how to handle interruptions because they will
happen. It might be a dog barking, someone at the door, knocking a baby
crying, construction outside your window, or some unexpected technical issue. When any of those things happen,
here are some ways to handle it. I'm so sorry. You'll have to
forgive the noise in the background. Could you come back to me in a moment? I need to put myself on mute for a
second. If someone interrupts you, you can respond with, sorry,
let me finish my thought. And then you can go ahead.
Or one moment, please. I'd like to mention one more
thing before we move on. Sometimes interruptions are caused by
technical issues that are completely out of our control, and we may even lose the ability to
stay connected to the online meeting. And those situations, it is always a good practice to
let everyone know what's happening. You can send a message in the chat
to let everyone know you're having a technical difficulty or if necessary,
send an email when you do that, always let them know what
you plan to do going ahead. If you're a participant, you can let the
host know that you'll review the notes. If you're the host or the leader, you can let them know when you
will try to reschedule the meeting. The sixth common scenario for an online
meeting is asking other people to wait while you do something. For example, if you're the host of the
meeting or in my case, if you're the teacher and you
want to share your screen, or you have a presentation
that you want to share, you'll often use phrases like
bear with me for a moment. I seem to have lost my
presentation slides. Please wait for a moment while
I get ready to share my slides. I apologize for the wait. Please give me
a moment so that I can share my screen. Then when others have waited, make
sure to thank them for their patience. And you can simply say thank you so
much for waiting or thanks for your patience. And finally, to bring a
close to effective Zoom etiquette, and must have phrases is end
your or your discussion on a high note. What that means is to
end with something positive. If you're the host of the meeting, you can end by providing a quick
summary or highlighting the key takeaways. You can do that
with a sentence starter, like let's go over the priorities...
To summarize, we will... And then give your action
steps. To quickly recap... And then again, give your key
takeaways or the key points. After you've done that, you can thank everyone for their
time with something simple. Like we got a lot done today. Thank you so much for your time and
patience or thanks everyone for coming. This was a fascinating
discussion. And finally, just like you started with a typical
greeting you would use in any situation, you can also end with
a goodbye. For example, I hope you all have a great weekend. I'll see you next week or
have a great day everyone. And with that you have over 30 must
have phrases for effective online meetings in English before we
finish. I'd love to hear from you. If you've hosted, led or
participated in an online meeting, is there a phrase that you always
use that I didn't mention today? If there is I'd love to know, and you can share it with me
in the comment section below, if you found today's lesson useful to you, be sure to give it a thumbs up here
on YouTube and subscribe to the Speak Confident English channel. So you never miss one of my
Confident English lessons. Thank you so much for joining me today. And I look forward to
seeing you next time.
