In this chapter, I describe when to use virtual meetings, how to decide among different virtual meeting technologies, identify the special challenges of facilitating virtual meetings, and explain how to effectively address the challenges.
By virtual meetings (also referred to as online, electronic, distributed, or remote meetings), I'm referring to synchronous meetings—ones in which all members are online at the same specified time, but not all in the same physical room or in the same time zone. You can use virtual meetings with groups or teams that don't typically meet virtually or with groups or teams that consider themselves to be virtual, rarely if ever meeting face-to-face. This chapter doesn't address asynchronous meetings, in which members may not be online at the same time; nor does it address using computer technology as part of face-to-face meetings. Finally, the chapter does not address how to create effective virtual teams, which rely heavily on asynchronous meetings.1 All of these topics are important but beyond the scope of this chapter.
Finally, virtual meeting technology is constantly changing, but this chapter—even if you're reading it on a virtual page—is not. Researchers at the University of Arizona, pioneers of virtual facilitation technology, have facilitated virtual meetings since the mid-1980s, and the field is still developing. Use this chapter to consider the issues involved in using virtual meetings, including congruence with mutual learning. Then go online or consult with others to learn about the most recent versions and functions of virtual meeting technology.
You can hold a virtual meeting using different kinds of technology. The technology you and the group use—and whether you decide to use any technology—determines the opportunities and challenges you face.
There are several broad categories of virtual meeting technologies. Here is a list identifying the functions each provides:
In the rest of the chapter, I focus mostly on the choice between using an EMS or working face-to-face.
When you and the group decide which technology to use, you are trying to find the best fit among several sometimes conflicting criteria: (1) technology that is most effective for the group's task, (2) technology that is available to participants, and (3) technology that participants can use effectively. Here are questions to answer:
No matter how useful the technology is, it's useless if participants can't access it. For example, participants may not have a webcam for web conferencing or may be located in an area without Internet access. Even if participants have access to the group's technology, they may not be able to use it reliably because they don't have a fast enough Internet connection or have out-of-date hardware or operating system software. To avoid spending time considering technologies that your group can't use, it helps to know the user requirements for the technology and quickly learn whether your group and you meet them.
As the number of participants increases, so does the need for technology that can be used to efficiently accept input from all the participants and organize and make sense of it so that the group can act on it. This often means shifting away from video and using web conferencing or EMSs. The number of people who can videoconference and see each other (assuming each person uses a separate webcam) is significantly less than the number who can audioconference or use an EMS. In audioconferencing, videoconferencing, and even face-to-face meetings, it's also difficult for a group of more than about 15 people to hear from everyone on the same topic before people become disengaged. Facilitators often address the problems of limited time and potential disengagement by creating breakout groups, in which each group addresses the same or related topics at the same time. The breakout groups briefly summarize their work to the large group, which seeks to converge on the various group ideas. One of EMS's defining features is providing simultaneous (often called parallel) input to manage these tasks efficiently, even in large groups.
My father, who was an engineer by training, used to tell me, “Use the right tool for the job.” If your process requires people to view a video or document, web conferencing can be an appropriate choice. But if participants need to simultaneously work on a document or generate data that become input for this decision-making process, EMS technology is a better fit. EMS tools structure various elements of the problem-solving and decision-making process, such as brainstorming, organizing and refining ideas, prioritizing, converging on options, and building consensus.
For any meeting technology to be effective, group members need the skill to use it. Although the skill required to use any virtual technology has reduced as these technologies have been refined, as the technology moves from face-to-face, audioconferencing, videoconferencing, to EMSs, the level of skill required to use the technology increases. Asking the group members whether they have used the proposed technology before or performed similar functions on a computer or smartphone, and if so, how comfortable they were using it will help you and the group decide if the technology will ultimately contribute to or detract from the meeting process.
EMS providers tout user anonymity as a key feature of their software. They explain that when users anonymously enter their comments or votes, it increases the dysfunctional dynamics in which some members' comments are given more attention and credence while others are ignored. In short, it levels the playing field, leading to more creative, higher-quality decisions.
Unless you've skipped the chapters before this one, you know that mutual learning considers anonymity inconsistent with accountability. Although it may be true that anonymous comments reduce irrelevant disparities in how participant's comments are evaluated, they do so by preventing participants from using member's names to create context for the comments. Anonymity comes with a price. In addition, anonymity is a solution that does not address the cause of the problem; it simply bypasses it, leaving it to surface another day in another setting. In contrast, mutual learning is designed to address the undiscussable issues in groups and teams that undermine their effectiveness.
During the early development of EMSs, I collaborated with some of the designers of EMS software and shared my concerns about designing EMSs that did not allow users to identify themselves by name. At least one system's designer designed the software so that the group could choose to identify everyone individually. Some EMSs may not allow individual users to identify themselves but do allow individuals to be identified according to the team they belong to. In this case, you may be able to assign each member a unique team name—his or her own individual name.
Where the group meets, how members are able to communicate with each other and what skills and processes they need to accomplish their task all affect how you need to design the meeting. The technology that makes virtual meetings possible also creates a different meeting “space” that changes how people communicate with each other, and that requires additional skills to accomplish their tasks.
Let's look at how virtual meetings create challenges that the group and you will need to address.3
Participants in different locations can't see everything going on in the meeting because there is not a physical meeting room that members can observe. If you're in a face-to-face meeting, you can quickly scan the entire room and the people in it, glance down at the agenda of the person sitting next to you, and use other cues to figure what the group is focused on. There are fewer natural cues in virtual meetings to tell you what agenda item the group is discussing. This requires facilitators to be much more explicit about where the group is in the process at any given time.
While this is true of face-to-face meetings—people are not good at making statements and combining questions—the problem is exacerbated in virtual meetings. Technology often makes it difficult to hear what someone has said or identify who said it and to ensure that the group responds to a member's comment or question. With EMSs, it's very difficult for participants to ask the group to respond to your input or to point out that the group has been ignoring your comments, although the facilitator can intervene on behalf of participants. Finally, if the group is using older meeting technology that includes half-duplex technology or certain types of speakerphones, people using different microphones cannot be heard at the same time.
During face-to-face meetings, participants often are on their smartphones conducting other business or nonbusiness activities, even when there are group norms about not using these devices. Group members can easily convey their displeasure verbally and nonverbally. In virtual meetings, it's more difficult for members to get the full attention of all group members and to name behavior that is inconsistent with group norms.
Even when people aren't distracted, they can become disengaged. If the effort needed to attend to the content and process of the meeting and to participate is too great, it's easy to disengage. And this assumes that the meeting process is effective, which it may not be.
When a majority of people are meeting in one room and the minority are meeting in one or more other rooms, it's common for the majority to forget that the others are present. This is made worse when the remote members are not connected by video.
One of the key features of EMSs is that group members' input is anonymous (at least by default with some software), which has the unintended consequence of reducing accountability, one of the mutual learning core values.
When people use meeting technology tools, they can quickly create large amounts of information. Meeting technology tools are like Post-It notes on steroids; group members can simultaneously create a large amount of information that becomes challenging to organize and also poses more difficulties to developing a common understanding.4
Developing trust within a team is critical for its development, and building trust is particularly challenging for virtual teams.5 When teams effectively address challenging issues, they observe and test their inferences about each other's verbal and nonverbal behaviors. Virtual teams create greater risk for team members because it's difficult to see many of these behaviors and respond to them. This makes it particularly difficult to address issues of trust, defensiveness, and other typical undiscussable issues. In general, experts on virtual teams advise against using virtual meetings to launch a team. Trying to rebuild trust in a virtual team can be even more difficult.6
Because EMS technology enables participants to simultaneously enter their thoughts and respond to each other's comments, facilitators are unable to read all the data in real time as they would in a single group conversation.7 This increases the chance that participants' comments will be incongruent with mutual learning behaviors and lead to negative consequences of unilateral control. This problem is exacerbated when participants' comments are anonymous.
Although technology is becoming increasingly more stable, members may not be able to get an adequate connection or may lose their connection, software can freeze and may need to be rebooted, and the entire system can crash. I've experienced all of these problems, as have most facilitators who conduct virtual facilitation. Having a backup plan is essential.
As a facilitator, consultant, or coach, your task is to jointly plan and design the meeting, and to use your facilitative role during the meeting so it addresses the challenges I described above. The solutions to some virtual meeting challenges are the same for face-to-face meetings. I won't repeat them here. Instead, in this section, I revisit some previous chapters and describe additional or different actions you can take for virtual meetings.
Virtual meetings requires an expanded facilitative role and additional competencies that stem from the expanded role. That said, most online facilitative competencies are the same as regular facilitative competencies, but there are a few additions.
My colleague Mark Adkins and I identified 12 facilitative functions that were common to EMS and non-EMS meetings and only three facilitative functions that were specific to EMS meetings. These were:
To be clear, there are facilitative functions and competencies specific to virtual meetings, but they are required in addition to the much larger set of functions and competencies that apply to all facilitative roles. In other words, a lot of what makes you effective online in your facilitative role is what makes you effective offline in your facilitative role.
Given the extra demands of virtual meetings, working with a partner is very helpful for you and the group. If you do work with a cofacilitator, you will need to decide how to divide and coordinate your roles. In virtual meetings, it's common for one partner to serve as the group process partner and another to serve as the technical partner.
As the group process partner, you're performing the tasks of a face-to-face facilitator that we've explored throughout the book. This includes ensuring that group members' contributions are congruent with the task and the group's ground rules; helping the group distill, make meaning of, and make decisions based on the group input; and jointly modifying the agenda so it continues to meet the group's needs. As the technical partner, you focus on the meeting technology, including setting up the technology before the session with the appropriate tools, initiating these tools for the various group tasks during the session, helping group members use the technology, monitoring problems with technology, and responding to participants' problems using the technology.10 If you plan to work with a partner, this becomes part of the contracting conversation with the group.
Most of the contracting questions you would ask in face-to-face work are relevant for virtual meetings, except for questions about where the meeting will be held. Instead there are other questions to ask about the virtual meeting technology the group will use:
Designing the virtual meeting begins during the first stage of contracting, continues with the second stage during the planning meeting, and continues after the planning meeting as you and your partner design the details of the meeting process. Remember that if you're planning a virtual meeting, the planning meeting in stage two is more likely to be virtual.
Here are six recommendations for designing virtual meetings so they address the virtual meeting challenges I described above:12
Your facilitative role includes maximizing the advantages of the technology you use with the group while reducing the challenges associated with it. Some of the challenges of virtual meetings can be addressed through design while others need to be addressed during the meeting stage or in both stages. Here are eight recommendations for your facilitative role during virtual meetings so they address the challenges I describe above:14
Virtual meetings offer groups the ability to accomplish work when they aren't physically in the same place. Although face-to-face interactions provide participants information and an experience not currently available through virtual meeting technology, the technology is constantly improving. EMSs provide helpful structure for many group tasks. Research has shown that when using an EMS, structuring verbal and electronic communication improved the quality of the output, reduced time to completion, and increased satisfaction with the planning process.15
In this chapter, I described several types of virtual meeting technologies that you can use with groups that are not able to meet face-to-face: audioconferencing, videoconferencing, screen sharing, web conferencing, and electronic meeting systems (EMS). I described the functions of each technology and how to decide which technology to use. I described the challenges that virtual meeting technologies presents and how you can address these challenges through contracting, design, and during the meeting.