In this week's newsletter

• Six powerful ways the chat can transform your virtual meetings
• Q&A: How do I keep the chat from going off the rails?
• Warm-up and checkout questions you can use today (in the chat, of course)
• Your weekly bird break

For my whole career I’ve worked with people in other states or countries. Pre-pandemic, my team was dispersed across the US and we periodically held heavily facilitated team retreats remotely. While being together in person absolutely has its benefits, I’m dedicating today’s newsletter to a remote meeting feature that doesn’t get enough love: the chat.

The chat makes a lot of things easy in a virtual meeting that are harder in person.

1. Instructions that stick. Ever been in a meeting where people totally miss the instructions and eat into valuable meeting time with questions or don’t do what the leader asked? Preparing ready-to-paste instructions for the chat gives people something to refer back to and helps those who process written instructions better than spoken ones.

2. More participation. Only one person can speak at a time, meaning most of your attendees are waiting for their turn, and some never get one. In person, a side comment would be a distraction, but in a virtual meeting, the chat opens a parallel channel. With clear norms and a meeting leader paying attention, the chat becomes a way for people to contribute ideas, reactions, and questions without interrupting the flow.

3. Inclusion for introverts, shy folks, non-native speakers, and more. Not everyone is comfortable jumping into a live conversation. Maybe they’re processing in a second language. Maybe they need a moment to organize their thoughts before sharing. Maybe they come from a culture where interrupting a speaker feels disrespectful. The chat gives these folks a real way to participate.

4. Capturing commitments, questions, and key takeaways. Strategically using the chat can be a great way to have your meeting participants capture notes for you. For particularly important insights or commitments, ask everyone to type it out in the chat. You can also jot down key takeaways there yourself as the meeting moves along. When it’s over, export the chat and use it as your starting point for meeting notes. That way you can stay present during the meeting.

5. Coordinated meeting leadership. Private chat features can be a helpful way to keep your meeting running on time and share the load with other leaders. You might message someone and say, “we’re running over, can you shorten your section by 5 minutes?” ⚠️ Often the organizer can see private chats in the overall meeting record, so use this feature wisely. ⚠️

6. Celebration, connection, and fun. The chat can be used to celebrate others’ contributions, make jokes, and reinforce team and org values, all without slowing down the agenda. Encouraging people to ask and answer each other’s questions, coordinate connecting offline, or share a reaction to what someone just said builds relationships and deepens context among teammates. Whether through emojis and GIFs, links and quick answers, or genuine positive feedback, the chat can drive culture and momentum.

Now that I’ve made my case for the chat, you might be thinking: But how do I keep the chat from going off the rails? Fair question. Keep reading below for my answer.

Next time you’re leading a meeting in your video call software of choice, ask yourself:

Meeting Minute

​Warm-up question​

Ask everyone to type their question in the chat. This question gives you a quick read of the room so you can manage expectations about what the meeting is about and tailor your approach real-time. The chat becomes an easy log of questions so you can revisit. Say, “I’ll save the chat and commit to getting back to you about questions we don’t get to today over email or in our next meeting.”

​Check-out question​

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You can paste this whole question and options in the chat as the leader. It closes the loop with the warm-up question and gives you instant, visual feedback on how the meeting landed. If you see a lot of 🤔, you know you have follow-up work to do. If you see 💡, that's a sign your meeting sparked thinking, which is often a good thing.

You can acknowledge the results in real time: "I see a handful of folks still have unanswered questions. I'll add more time for this topic next week."

Q: How do I keep the chat from going off the rails in my meeting?

A: The good news is, a few clear norms and facilitation moves are all it takes to keep the chat working for you, not against you. Start by being honest about how much you can monitor. If you’re facilitating, presenting, and taking notes, you probably can’t also watch the chat closely. That’s OK.

• Do you want to commit to monitoring and managing the chat? You might say, “I’ll review the chat periodically to make sure I’m keeping up with any questions.”
• Do you want to ask 1-2 others to be your chat monitors? If so, be clear about how you want them to handle the different types of communication listed below. You can let everyone know you've asked people to monitor to delegate sufficient authority and keep things on track.
• Do you want to set the expectation that you won’t be monitoring the chat at all? You might say at the top of the meeting, “I won’t be able to see the chat. If you can answer a question from someone else there, please jump in. Otherwise the chat is for celebration and the parking lot and I’ll review later.” This helps people understand how to engage.
• Do you want to plan moments for chat engagement? Think about where in your agenda you’ll invite people to contribute in the chat and what instructions you’ll give. For example, “Type your answer in the chat but don’t hit send until I say go,” or “Drop your questions in the chat and I’ll address them after this section.” Giving people clear, specific prompts throughout the meeting sets the foundation for productive chat use.
• Do you need a norm for side conversations? If your meetings tend to spark debate threads, you might set an expectation up front: “If a thread in the chat exceeds 3* back-and-forth messages, I may ask you to bring it into the live conversation or schedule time to discuss separately.”

Once you’ve set your norms, it helps to know what kinds of chat activity to expect and think through how you'll handle each one.

General affirmations. These are the fun emojis, “great presentation!,” and “go team” sentiments. If you want to encourage this on your team, you might prompt people to contribute this way: “can we get some emojis in the chat to congratulate X on their promotion?” If you don’t want a constant flow of emojis, you can normalize that, too. You might say, “to make sure I don't miss any questions and contributions, I want us to prioritize using the chat for those.”

Logistical questions. Ex: “Can someone send me the link?” “What were the instructions?” To preempt these, anytime I’m giving instructions or sharing a link in a virtual meeting, I prepare what I want to paste ahead of time. I then usually paste it at least twice, depending on how fast the chat is moving. Pro tip: paste instructions before using breakout rooms so people can reference them.

Relevant questions or contributions. The chat is a powerful way to include a lot more people in the discussion, especially those who may have previously been excluded. It can be helpful for the leader to amplify what someone contributed in writing by summarizing it aloud and asking for additional context if needed. You might say, “Great point in the chat from Taylor. Taylor said X" OR "Taylor can you tell us more about that?”

Parking lot questions or contributions. A parking lot is a list of topics and questions that we don’t have time for in the scope of the meeting. Once use of a parking lot is established, you can encourage people to contribute questions and ideas in the chat and actually label them “parking lot,” or you might read the chat and say, “I’m seeing some good contributions that we’ll keep in the parking lot.”

Side conversations/debates. This is the one that can become spiciest and requires the most intervention from the meeting leader. When chat engagement turns into a 3+* message thread, it starts to become distracting both for those engaged in it and for those witnessing the engagement. There are a few approaches when one of these comes up: invite the conversation to come off mute into the meeting, put it in the parking lot, or ask those involved to follow up separately.

With a little bit of planning and some clear norms, you can make the chat work for you. Have a chat tip I missed? Reply to let me know and I might feature it in a future issue.

*3+ chats is a recommendation based on experience, not a scientific number!

Additional reading on the chat

Article: Side Chats During Online Meetings: A Minefield for Leaders​

Study: Virtual voices: Exploring individual differences in chat and verbal participation in virtual meetings​