8 Tips for Effective Virtual Meeting

The pandemic has challenged organizations of all sizes and maturity. One of the common pattern across all organization during the pandemic has been a paradigm shift to Remote Working. The workplace today is most distributed and teams need to be more diverse and dynamic than ever before.

While organizations are preparing for fundamental change in their business plans to adapt and refocus for "New Normal" world. Each one of us need to start preparing for the Hybrid Work culture (powered by empathy, transparency, compassion), location independence and flexible working pattern with unsaid expectation of being available for business resiliency. Which effectively mean we need to learn to be effective in Virtual Meetings. Being in the virtual meeting rabbit hole would remain much longer than what most of us anticipated initially. Even so, in the post-vaccine era, some of these working realities would continue to stay and this new phenomenon on Virtual Meetings is not going away.

 The need for “Digital Work Transformation” is no more a temporary arrangement — its real, its immediate and its going to evolve".

With Remote work and virtual meetings, Collaboration and Communication (no doubt innovation in tools like Microsoft Teams, Zoom is easing few aspects) is especially difficult now, during the pandemic. According to me tools like Microsoft Teams are going through a transition from being Unified Communication to Collaboration platform to something what I call as Co-habitation Platforms. But still facts remains that "Organic collaboration is almost impossible when you’re working remotely".

Moreover running (or attending) effective virtual meetings is not easy as “normal” rules are complicated by the lack of “physical” presence. However, some guidelines you should follow to ensure that your next virtual meeting is an efficient use of everyone’s time. 

 By failing to prepare for Virtual Meeting, you are preparing to fail.

Read through the article further where I share my experience and perspective on Effective Virtual Meeting.

8 TIPS for Effective Virtual Meetings

1. Virtual meeting design is more than agenda planning

• Send invites well in advance.
• Ensure your meeting invite has time duration, participant list, clear agenda and structure, objective or expected outcome of the meeting, any pre-read or action items from previous conversation.
• Have a notification systems or reminder.
• Keep the meeting short and simple. Don't combine too many agenda items into a single meeting. Stay focused.
• Do budget 2 minutes for any technical glitch. Technical glitches are a normal part of virtual meetings. They should be handled with persistence and grace, rather than panic and blame.
• Keep last 5-10 minutes for wrap-up and Q&A.
• Choose a meeting time that’s best for everybody.
• My recommendation would be as compared to your normal in-person meetings; put 20% fewer items on virtual meeting agenda, allowing 20% more time for the meeting and conversation.
• Share rules of engagement or virtual meeting norms including the technology platforms and any additional toolset (polls, screen share, co-creation tools like Mural, Whiteboard).

2. Right People for the meeting

• Ensure you have participants with clear expectation and role.
• Leverage the fact that meeting is Virtual (no constraint of travel budgets). You can avoid follow-on meeting by expanding your set of participants to include right SME to join the discussion.

3. Focus on what's important. Create "psychologically safe environment"

• With so much going around globally, a great virtual meeting starts with a great icebreaker. Engage with participants beyond simple Hi/Hello/How are you mode. Help create psychologically safe environment for participants to relax and ease people into a group meeting or learning situation. 
• Coordinate the discussion based on the key topics, the bigger picture, or progress blockers. If something can be solved through a Google/Bing or intranet search it shouldn’t be on your meeting agenda. 
• Share the meeting context upfront.
• Ensure people know each other (except for meetings with >15 participants) their roles and expectation.
• Don’t be afraid to tackle tough issues. Virtual Meetings is a learned behavior, and you’ll be amazed what and how much you can get out of it if you can create psychologically safe environment for the participants.
• Set the expectation upfront for any background noise, partial unavailability.
• Don't Multi-task. Research shows that multitasking harms your performance. It’s no longer a desired skill, and should definitely not be allowed during virtual meetings.
• To make actions more likely to be carried out, agree how actions will be documented and followed up, right at the start of your virtual meeting.
• If you need feedback on material/content, share it before the meeting for offline consumption and feedback.

4. Respect the choice of Video-on or Video-off

• Facial expressions humanize your virtual meetings so using video in your virtual meetings is a good practice but with Covid-19 everyone has unique challenges and context; so please respect the choice of people to keep Video-on or Video-off.
• Though my experience shows meetings with Video-on are more effective and have higher probability of achieving the set objective of the meeting.
• If you are joining the meeting with Video On, then ensure you are professionally dressed and visible to others (your background, bandwidth, camera quality and angle of camera makes a huge amount of difference).
• If you are not the presenter; then don't be the only person with Video on.

5. Acknowledge everyone in the Virtual meeting

• It’s crucial that you, as a leader, acknowledge everyone who is present at the meeting. Be sure to take the time at the beginning of the meeting to introduce everyone on the call. 
• All participants should have the opportunity to offer their input. Do not allow your meeting to be dominated by the more extrovert individuals, allow the quieter members of the team their screen time too. Their opinion might be the solution to the problem that your team is facing. 
• Do not tolerate disrespect.
• Make sure virtual participants aren’t left out in hybrid meetings.

6. Keep People Engaged By…

•  Pause as you ask questions or request opinions.
• Engaging people is to give them things to do. Roles such as timekeeper and scribe can be rotated around the team. Different people can facilitate different parts of the virtual meeting.
• Use storytelling format and right mix of Text and images.
• Use techniques for virtual brainstorming, voting, feedback, and energizers.
• Capture real-time feedback.
• For meetings with more than 45 minute duration; ask participants about their energy level and then ask them and choose an appropriate option (based on meeting context and duration), to do a simple stretch movement to help replenish energy or may be engage them some fun virtual energizers and games that make it fun.

7. Avoid Technology fallout

• Test your Video, Mic and Speaker before the meeting.
• Do invest in the required software, hardware and bandwidth for professional audio, video and throughput.
• Ensure your content is readable (use right set of font and color themes).
• Get yourself comfortable with basic capabilities of Screen share, intent to ask question, Mute / Unmute capabilities, private / public chat, sharing document and screen.

 8. Agree on next steps and summarize the action items

• Actions are far less likely to be done after virtual meetings compared to face-to-face meetings. It appears to be much more difficult to get people to take action after remote meetings compared to face-to-face meetings. 
• All action points must be written down, deadlines agreed upon and tasks distributed amongst team members.
• Always reserve 5-10 minutes for wrapping-up and follow-on actions. Determine if and when a follow-up meeting should be planned.
• I’m sure you are not surprised: no one reads meeting minutes. Most people rely on what was mentioned verbally in a meeting, which can lead to miscommunication.
• So always, Run through the actions at the end and check that everyone is clear on what they need to do and when. It is worth checking people's intentionality: On a scale of 1 to 10, how sure are they that they will carry out each action? 
• A brief, concise follow-up email that summarizes who is working on what is a lot more effective than meeting minutes.
• If possible attach a shared Notes reference points for easier tracking and pre-read, follow-ups.

Virtual and remote working is here to stay. Meetings are by no means the solution to all issues but can be vital for moving complex projects forward. Make these principles the eight commandments of your next team meeting.