Leading a team meeting can be tough even in the best of circumstances. You have to make sure everyone stays engaged, feels welcome to participate and can comfortably raise any issues. But you also have an agenda you need to get through and objectives to accomplish.

Meetings with remote teams can be even trickier to manage.

When was the last time you multitasked in a meeting? Drifted off? Got annoyed? Wished you were anywhere else but there? Or come down with a case of Zoom fatigue you just couldn't shake?

If any of that rings true for you, you’re not alone. In a Verizon Conferencing study, 91% of respondents admitted to daydreaming during meetings, and 39% said they’ve napped in them. Overall, research shows that employees waste a staggering 31 hours of unproductive time in meetings every month.

In Verizon Conferencing’s “Meetings in America” study, 91% of meeting attendees admitted to daydreaming during meetings. Nearly 40% of the respondents said they’ve taken a nap during a meeting. Are people sleeping through your meetings?

With attention at a premium in today’s world, keeping people engaged, even when they’re sitting right in front of you, is one of the biggest challenges you face when leading a meeting. If they’re not literally asleep, your participants might be texting, checking their emails or just generally tuned out. Telling people to put away their phones isn’t the answer. Making your meetings more effective is.

Saturday morning, my spinning class was raucous, a cacophony of conversation. The instructor had a hard time breaking through with her standard and ever increasing challenges. The spinning room had recently expanded from a surprisingly small group of bikes 7 to 9 bikes and none of us thought it would make any real difference.

The din of Saturday’s session proved us wrong. When there is more than seven in a group, interaction becomes much more complex to manage. In the case of our spinning class, it really did not matter as long as our instructor could speak loud enough to break through the noise. In working with teams and workgroups on the other hand, it can make or break the productivity.