What should meetings achieve? You have 10 seconds. Go!
What did you think of? If you’re like most of us, you probably wrote qualities such as:
* Team communication
* Task clarity
* Assessing progress
* Team cohesiveness
* Idea exchange
* Question/concern assessment
* Delegation and organization of tasks and projects
If all your virtual meetings achieve such feats, feel proud.
For the rest of us humans, we secretly realize this is unrealistic. The truth is, the expectations for a smooth meeting are too idealistic. There is no such thing as a “perfect meeting”. But sadly, when a meeting is not “perfect”, team leaders tend to blame it on themselves. They may begin to feel that the exercise was unsuccessful because of his or her competency. Understand this now: it’s not your fault!
Here’s why you shouldn’t have a “great meeting”. Have a realistic one instead! Let’s walk through FOUR virtual meeting myths that may be holding you back from the truth.
Myth #1: Ideal Meetings allow great communication
An ideal meeting is complicated…and even more complicated for virtual teams. In terms of a virtual meeting, where no one can see each other without a webcam, a team leader may never fully know if the meeting participants are fully engaged or cognizant of the delegated tasks. This means communication may not be as successful as you had hoped.
Many virtual meetings don’t have any visual cues—which means a critical dimension of communication is completely lost: vision. Communication requires listening and seeing. According to Learning Through Listening, the most important type of listening is reflexive listening. A reflexive listener not only hears, but also interprets meaning based on visual information. This provides a deeper insight as to what is being said. Thus, for proper communication, you need to hear and see.
But videoconferencing may not always be the solution; although video conferences are helpful, they may easily become costly—especially when investing in high quality and long lasting equipment. So what do you do without video? Try these alternatives strategies that are equally as effective for maintaining a strong leader-to-team member connection:
Virtual Whiteboard – with a virtual whiteboard, the team can formulate and brainstorm ideas and simultaneously share the information with all meeting participants. Try free online tools such as Wiggio that offers this service (as well as integrated video/voice chatting functionalities).
Breakout groups – Breakout groups are a great tool to engage team members. These allow a passive meeting to immediately become active. Schedule 10 to 15 minutes for team members to break up and exchange their thoughts and ideas within smaller groups. Then regroup and share any new insights achieved from the smaller conversations.
Ask Questions – Every 6 minutes or every 3 slides, engage meeting participants by asking their opinion. You can also select specific people by name for their input. But be careful. Make sure that person is willing to speak. Also avoid being too persistent.
Another thing to keep in mind is to stay away from questions like “does everyone understand?” or “Is that clear?” This usually leads to the ambiguous blur of mmhmms and yeahs from the group. Instead, ask team members to briefly summarize what they understand. Ask active questions such as, “Can everyone go around and explain their responsibility in a sentence or two?”
Or better, prompt certain teams to initiate a discussion at the meeting. Try to take turns as to who speaks first. If your team from Ottawa, for example, spoke first during the last meeting, ask your New York team to speak first this time.
Myth #2: Long Meetings Achieve More
Although it is surprising, a longer meeting is far from conducive. Think of all the effort that goes into the planning alone. It requires a great deal of preparation in terms of deciding which issues need to be addressed as well as identifying any sub-issues and specialized, critical details.
As the meeting leader, you will need to spend much more time organizing your opinions and concerns regarding each individual discussion point. And as for the employees, longer meetings not only cause restlessness and disinterest, but also detract time from getting work done.
The solution? Keep meetings brief. Decide beforehand what the meeting should be about. Prioritize key points within a meeting agenda. Meetings should be used for decision-making and brainstorming—not for routine updates. More importantly, remember to keep the agenda realistic. Do not attempt to address everything at once during a single sitting.
Also, don’t invite everyone! Consider if the information at the meeting really requires all participants to be there or not. Perhaps you should only talk to a specific group of people. If you need to gain a status report on all the different projects running concurrently, ask yourself: do I really need to address this ina general meeting? Or can this information be successfully extracted (or conveyed) through an email instead?
Meetings should be an active exercise—they should be used to push projects forward by means of brainstorming and exchanging ideas. Keep meetings specific.
In addition, although meetings should be specialized, also avoid planning too many short meetings throughout a week. Although brevity may be alluring, scheduling too many meetings can be equally as time consuming and ineffective. Time is valuable, so use meetings wisely.
Ask yourself, does everyone need to be at the meeting? Can some issues be addressed one on one, or perhaps through an email?
Myth #3: The smooth virtual meeting
Some attempt to have a completely smooth virtual meeting. Don’t be one of those people.
Always plan for the worst case scenario.
The nature of the virtual meeting brings with it an inherent layer of complications: the internet. How many times have you used such phrases during your meetings: “Sorry, the connection dropped.”, “Can you hear me?”, “Can you send that file again?”, “That email bounced.”
Because virtual meetings are completely web based, we rely on web based technologies to communicate. The web is unpredictable. While you may have scheduled a meeting for an hour, consider whether it will actually take an hour. Think of all the other variables that may change when planning the meeting. For instance, you may have a key team player, working remotely from India during the Monson season. Due to this, she may experience a wavering internet connection at the time of the meeting. What will you do?
The solution? Have a back-up! What’s critical is that everyone should know what route to take before being told. All the details must be pre-planned, and all team members should be aware of this plan. This requires that everyone is thoroughly briefed, especially new incoming team members. For instance, if a web call fails, all team members should automatically know how to join an alternative teleconference line. Moreover, also have a third option to your back-up plan. So in this case, if the teleconference doesn’t work, find a way to reschedule or postpone the meeting. This back-up plan should come into effect like a reflex action.
Myth #4: Meeting minutes save hassles
Often, virtual team leaders take down meeting minutes or ask other team members to do so. Minutes are supposed to act as a reference point for all the topics discussed and the decisions made during a meeting. Meeting minutes are supposed to save hassles.
They don’t.
Note-taking while attending a meeting distracts from understanding what’s going on. Conversations move fast. In the time it takes to listen, understand, synthesize and write, important information may be skipped over or go unregistered. In addition, the note-taker cannot contribute to the discussion as he or she will be too busy writing.
The information can also be misinterpreted. Because only one person is responsible for recording how the meeting progresses, the note-taker’s understanding of what is said can vary vastly from the intended meaning.
The solution? It’s a virtual meeting, folks! This means everything is digital. There are many tools on the Net, such as MP3 Skype Recorder, that can record virtual conferences as they happen directly from the computer’s sound card. (Remember to ask everyone if they are okay with being recorded, first). Tools such as VoiceBase, also transcribes MP3 files to text. This allows you actually search an audio file for keywords and then play the file at the relevant point.
And there you go! Four meeting myths demystified! We hope these help. Let us know what you think in the comments below! We would love to hear from you.
