Making Your Virtual Meetings More Productive and Engaging
Feeling a little bit Zoomed out? You’re not alone. Several researchers and social scientists have weighed in recently on why virtual meetings can be so draining.
First, you experience a cognitive dissonance as your brain thinks you’re with someone but you can’t pick up all their non-verbal cues. Second, you typically have more distractions coming to you through the devices you’re using for the meeting. And finally, you’re processing the meeting while navigating bandwidth issues, technology features, audio quality, and what you look like on screen.
It can make the entire experience awkward and exhausting.
Perhaps you can just avoid them altogether. But for most of us, we either resign ourselves to the pain or take a stand for doing what we can to make virtual meetings as effective as possible. I’d recommend the latter. Don’t be a Zoom victim. Make virtual meetings work for you. Here’s how…
Make Sure the Content Is Compelling
First, let’s consider the content of the meeting itself. This applies to WebEx trainings, board meetings in Microsoft Teams, or Zoom happy hours. (And it applies when you’re all together in the same room, too.)
Patrick Lencioni explains in his book Death by Meeting that meetings don’t captivate your attention like a movie or show because meetings lack drama.
Great shows begin with a hook. They set the stage with a problem, an opportunity, or a mystery. That’s drama. Meetings—virtual or otherwise—need it too. Imagine if every meeting you joined started with a clear reminder of what’s at stake:
“Good morning, everyone. We’re here today to discuss the launch of our new product, which has the potential to revolutionize the way people receive healthcare.” or “Thanks for being here as we try to reduce the isolation we’re all feeling and strengthen our relationships despite the distance between us.”
Drama also includes conflict. You wouldn’t watch a show if it didn’t have conflict, whether it’s between people, with external forces, or inside of people. Your meetings need conflict, too. Conflict avoidant? Sorry, but you need to have it. If everyone is perfectly content, safe, and unanimous, there’s no reason to have a meeting. To bring it out, Lencioni suggests “mining for conflict.” Ask each other questions like, “What do you disagree with here?” “Who has another perspective?” or “What’s not going well?”
When conflict or tension surfaces, people benefit from getting real-time permission. A good facilitator (though it could come from anyone in the meeting) will reassure the person who brings up a hard topic or differing perspective: “Thanks for saying that, Jim.” “This type of conversation is exactly the one we need to be having right now.” “I’m glad we trust each other enough to talk honestly.”
Practical Considerations for Productive Virtual Meetings
Now, let’s look at some specific virtual meeting considerations to complement good meeting content.
- Don’t hide behind the mute button. Obviously, a big part of meeting tact is being aware of the ambient noise coming from your line. You may need to invest in a headset, find a quieter location, or put yourself on mute. Nowadays, though, the bigger issue I find most people face is keeping their sound TOO silent. Imagine if you were in person with someone who was able to mute any sounds until they were ready to speak. It would probably limit your comfort and connection with them! We crave hearing something from people, like, “Oh” “Uh-huh” “Yeah” “I agree” “Hmmm” or “I hear you.”
- Get with the video program. While there remains a time and place for audio-only meetings, increasingly the expectation is that everyone’s on video. Not all meeting platforms make this easy, but you can optimize your video so that others feel more connected to you. Center the video on your face, position yourself to have a neutral background, limit the use of distracting virtual backgrounds, and then stop looking at yourself.
- Mind the group size and meeting duration. Think about the purpose and what you’d like to get out of the interaction. Typically, if you’re having a meeting where you want everyone to provide lots of input and feel psychologically safe to do so, you shouldn’t invite more than seven to ten people max. A skilled facilitator can create an engaging and diverse dialogue in a group of up to 50 but realize that several participants will likely disengage, particularly in a virtual setting. That said, the use of chat, whiteboarding, and polls can help, especially for larger groups. To keep engagement levels high, limit your virtual meetings to two hours or less, unless you can provide frequent breaks.
- Generate cross-talk among participants. Too many virtual meetings miss valuable opportunities for participants to interact with each other. Cross-talk is when people start engaging with one another. They ask follow-up questions, comment on other ideas, and disagree. To foster cross-talk, leaders should ask assumptive and open-ended questions like “Who has a thought on this?” or “What ideas do we have?” These questions invite more complete responses than a closed-ended question, and they assume that several people have input. It’s much better than asking, “Does anyone have an idea?” Also, don’t be afraid to call on people to contribute, and step back once the cross-talk develops. Allow silence and let the conversation unfold without you controlling it.
People’s mental health and personal productivity depend on effective virtual meetings right now. Organizations may literally survive or die by how well we can keep meeting and collaborating in a virtual environment. We owe it to ourselves to get this right. For more ideas on making your virtual meetings more effective, check out my previous post here.
What will you do to ensure an engaging and productive virtual meeting?
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