Preventable Mistakes You Can Avoid Making When Showing Up Screen to Screen

You wouldn’t know unless it happened to you. That moment in time when you embarrassed yourself, someone else, or your entire organization. Just as if you were learning to drive, being an effective Zoom meeting host or active participant takes time to safely drive with someone else in the car. If you were thrown into a non-stop Zoom meeting schedule, you know it hasn’t been easy. And the likelihood of you making mistakes has been high because it’s a totally new experience. But don’t worry. You don’t have to ruin your reputation, lose your job, or unintentionally breach someone else’s confidentiality because you didn’t know how to manage what’s on your screen. Let me share with you some of the mistakes I have made in the past so that you don’t have to make them too.

Have you made any of these mistakes?

1. Turn on the setting that activates the participant camera upon the start of each meeting.
2. Go into presentation mode without building rapport with the participant(s).
3. Forget to zoom in when using screen share mode to display the best legible font size for text on a web page.
4. Neglect the lighting for the best possible camera-input feed quality.
5. Perform a computer task while someone else is talking.
6. Assume it is the other person’s internet speed that is hindering the quality of the meeting.
7. Send a meeting invite through the Zoom software instead of using the meeting scheduler in my calendar management application.
8. Use the whiteboard feature in Zoom to facilitate conversations instead of the one I’m most familiar using.
9. Use the green screen background feature in Zoom while inside my in-home studio.
10. Record a conversation without being clear on the intent used for the recording
    not say anything #screentoscreen.
11. Enable desktop notifications for messaging apps, calendar app, and other frequently used apps
12. Fail to follow up with actionable next steps or recommended resources
13. Not have a backup for the internet connection
14. Allowing the meeting to run overtime by not focusing on the results and agenda of the meeting
15. Make someone else wait for me to find a webpage, document, video, or any other visual asset used to help advance the understanding and implementation by participants
16. Watch someone else think that they are on screen share mode when they forgot to active it themselves or are using the wrong monitor and not say anything
17. Forget to check my audio settings to ensure the correct audio input feed is coming from my soundboard switcher
18. Rely upon the meeting host (other than me) for the opportunity to share my screen when I can share my screen inside the video input feed
19. Send the meeting invite without verifying the time zone(s) for the other participants
20. End a meeting without offering something of value.