9.
Meetings
Meetings. We all love them or hate them. Well, mostly hate them. And while the virtual workplace is many things, it’s not exempt from the need and importance—and sometimes drudgery—of meetings. So the least we can do is offer some best-in-show solutions for how to tackle meetings in the virtual workplace. It’s something that takes a little more planning and tact than you might have realized, but will set you on the path to make the best out of a situation we often happily villainize.
Let’s Level Set, Shall We?
In the virtual workplace you have a variety of mediums to leverage for hosting and conducting meetings. From IM to social media platforms, conference lines to video conferencing, there are a variety of ways to approach meetings in the 21st century, and not all of them are suitable for your needs and purpose depending on the circumstances.
Instant Message
Assuming your group isn’t too large and you’re not trying to deliver a ton of nuanced or heavy information, you can host meetings on an instant message platform. IM is a great way to host a brief meeting to tackle short, simple tasks, such as what to eat for lunch or where to meet for a working session. You can also use IM to quickly get initial impressions from co-workers or employees about a candidate after an interview session or following the release of some breaking organizational news.
Our point is that it’s a meeting forum that works for pithy, quick, small meetings.
Social Media Platforms
There are a wealth of platforms that allow groups to gather online in threads or group chats to host meetings or discussions; Slack, Yammer, and Jive are just a few of these messenger-styled platforms. These platforms allow for meetings where everyone’s input needs to be captured more cleanly and in order, but also allows people to link articles, photos, documents, and more for other users or storage. You can also use these platforms to facilitate virtual collaboration for meetings and more, assuming everyone has access.
Conference Calls
The conference call is the classic “virtual” standby. The granddaddy, so to speak. But it’s also the one that gets the most flack and is made fun of the most. Not every conference call system is built the same, and things like dropped calls, overlapping muting, and not being able to see who is and isn’t on the call can make this platform frustrating. Having said that, the conference call is still a strong platform for hosting meetings of all kinds no matter the size or purpose. It’s still—in many ways—the perfect meeting equalizer because people are often most comfortable with this medium, which allows them to fully participate with ease. And while not always ideal, also allows for some level of multitasking when appropriate.
I worked with a professional membership group of international doctors; their work was virtual by default because they were located all over the world. One of my responsibilities was planning their mid-year in-person meeting, which was one of only two opportunities they had each year to be physically together. However, one year there just wasn’t money in the budget or time in the doctors’ schedules to meet in person, so the president decided to hold the meeting via video conference. We took two consecutive Mondays for four hours at a time and held our mid-year meeting on camera.
This was such a fantastic way to accomplish what they needed to, save money, and still experience the next best thing to actually sitting next to one another. Even breaks were fun. Everyone would take the time they needed to get up and stretch or use the restroom, but then grab a snack or a drink, come back to their cameras and socialize with each other for a few minutes before getting back to business.
—Kathy
Video Conferencing
If conference calls are the granddaddy, video conferencing is the smart, but rowdy teenager—confident in its own abilities, but in such a way that it makes everyone else feel awkward and slightly unconfident. That being said, video conferencing is the bridge between the stationary and virtual workplace. And as Ben (weirdly) likes to say, “If you say you miss stationary workplaces but you won’t go on video, then I guess you’re just awkwardly saying you miss the way people smell?”
But all jokes aside, video is a great medium for just about any meeting type, size, group, need, purpose, and goal. The advancements in this medium have come in leaps and bounds. Today, not only can dozens of people be on camera at once, but you also have the ability to digitally share documents, have off-camera texting and conversations, pose questions, take polls, and much more.
There’s a lot that can be missing in communication without being in person and we’ve found that it is important to recognize that and check in with folks to ensure we are understanding one another and are all clear in ways that are either more explicit or more frequent than we might if everyone was in person. Part of this means defaulting to video all the time. Staff are very rarely on the phone with other staff; instead, we are on video conferences (Google Hangouts, for example). Building a culture where the immediate response to a potential conversation is to get on video with one another helps remote staff feel more included, and supports better communication because everyone can see one another’s faces.
—Amy Sample Ward, CEO, NTEN
A Few More Thoughts
Beyond picking the right medium for your meeting, we want to make sure you have a wealth of other solid tips, tricks, and ideas for running a successful virtual meeting. You may already know some of them, but they’re all worth mentioning:
Have an agenda. People want to know what meetings are about and why, what role they might play, and why they’re invited. This fact doesn’t change for virtual audiences.
Respect everyone’s time. Time is money and time is precious. Virtual or not, start meetings on time and end them on time. This is another fact that’s not virtual-specific but universal in nature.
Solicit ideas and insights from all involved. Unless the meeting is top-down—and then it could be an email or perhaps more like a training session—it’s important to provide opportunities for people to contribute.
Send supporting documents in advance. Depending on your meeting medium, sending documents in the middle of a meeting or expecting folks to read things—or worse, being read to during a meeting—is a waste of valuable time. Sending documents early if possible is smart so people can familiarize themselves with everything, helping the meeting run more quickly and smoothly.
Test equipment or conferencing platforms in advance. Mistakes happen, failures happen. But if you simply don’t know how to use the platforms or are unsure of how to manage them well, you’ll do more than ruin the meeting, you’ll likely tarnish your reputation in the virtual workplace.
Don’t forget introductions. If some of your employees are not on camera or if it is a voice-only conference call meeting, make sure everyone announces themselves so all are clear on who is in “the room” and how to best proceed.
Press record. Recording meetings in the virtual world is a wonderful thing. It gives you the opportunity to send the recorded meeting to participants later instead of sending notes or in addition to notes. It also helps the notetaker because they can stay more engaged during the meeting and refer back to the recording for more details if necessary.
Take it offline—online. When something can be addressed in smaller groups or handled in different meetings or more one-on-one, run your meetings in a way where those situations are recognized and the rest of the meeting can continue to take place.
Signing Off
Meetings get a bad rap, but it’s because they’re often just seen as groups of people getting together to talk. Nothing more, nothing less. Virtual meetings can be the absolute worst if there is no plan of action, bad management, and the wrong virtual medium. You need to make sure that your virtual medium is being employed correctly and matches the purpose or size of the meeting. If you really need to “meet,” think smartly about how, where, when, and why. And we promise that while you’ll never singlehandedly make meetings cool or valued, you’ll at least make sure your meetings aren’t despised.