Why do some virtual team meetings feel like a waste of time while others feel essential and productive? When leading a team, it is crucial to be mindful of your meeting design to increase the chances that the meeting is a good use of everyone’s time.
Here are some steps to include that distinguish the most valuable virtual meetings from the rest:
1. Plan. Decide if a meeting is necessary. Most things do not require meetings – if you are giving information or have made a decision that does not involve others’ input — an email will do. But some things require human interaction and collaborative thinking, like problem-solving or addressing conflict not fully explored. If we need to take time to let creative solutions emerge, a meeting may be required. Adam Grant said that meetings should be for learning, doing, bonding, or deciding.
2. Determine Meeting Duration & Number. No rule says meetings need to be 30 mins. or 1 hour. Good meeting hygiene is to make meetings 15, 25, or 50 minutes because the shorter time will allow you to be more intentional about using your time wisely. Having that buffer before the next meeting can help replenish energy. It is also good to set the number of meetings suitable for the team, defining a healthy range for the week will allow people to plan time to do their best work.
3. Connect. Each meeting should have connection time dedicated to them. You can begin with a check-in question, such as what is something you have done this week that got you excited. If you could play any Olympic sport and be the best, which would it be? The goal is to get to know each other besides their role because people who know each other and can find commonalities usually work better together.
4. Clarify norms around meetings. What are the expectations around participation? Do you have a video camera rule where you want cameras on most of the time (say 90%) because it helps create a connection? What are the guidelines around when cameras are off? Do you want to grant professionalism to people and trust that when they have their cameras off, it is because of a good reason? Should they drop a note in the chat about why their cameras are off, such as they have not had a chance to eat and will turn it on after, or kids are in the background since they stayed home from school, so it is a bit noisier than usual. When cameras are off, how do you show you are still present? For the presenter, it can be hard to stare at a bunch of black zoom boxes and wonder if people are present or even paying attention. What is the behavior that you want to give and get? When you ask questions, do you expect to hear from everybody by adding their views in the chat? If you suspect people are disengaged because their camera is always off, and when you call on them, they do not respond or do not add to the chat, what is the process for addressing your observation? There are so many ways to do meetings well, and it starts with clarifying your expectations and inviting them to offer what would work best. Once you have an agreed system, any deviation should be discussed until you are on the same page and making the most of your time together.
5. Prep in advance. What are the 1-2 big questions you want to be answered in the meeting? What should people read, prepare, and be ready to contribute? Amazon has a narrative culture where at the beginning of the meeting, all people will read a document together for a few minutes and make comments and be ready to discuss ideas. This allows for the discussion to be much richer and meetings more efficient because people are caught up to speed faster.
6. Create an inclusive environment. There are things you can do to hear all voices. First, telling them their point of view matters so that when they weigh in, the best decisions can be made. Before the meeting, send any relevant info, an agenda, and questions in advance so you can give time for the introverts to think through problems/challenges. How do you ensure turn-taking is happening effectively and that some dominant voices are not crowding out the introverted voices? You can utilize the chat for more inclusivity and encourage people to put hashtags before their contribution to organize their ideas. Adam Grant offers these helpful hashtags to organize comments:
· #Question – you want to ask a question
· #Debate – you want to challenge what was said or share a different perspective
· #Aha - which indicates a new learning
· #On Fire - means the floor is yours because you have something burning and timely to share.
This helps to keep the flow and momentum of the conversation because it is related as opposed to going in order, and comments are not directly related. Remote work benefits us because it gives us this second communication channel.
7. Save time by starting with the agreement. If a meeting needs a critical decision, you can invite team members to send their responses in advance so you can review them and find the places of agreement. Then, during the meeting, instead of reviewing everything, you can dial into the point of disagreement by saying, I know we are all on the same page with deciding this project is a go and like A, B, and C elements, let’s talk about element D since there were many different perspectives. The ideal outcome would be deciding on the next step to advance this project. After that preamble, you can begin a rich discussion for a decision to occur and save a lot of time in the process.
8. Encourage disagreements. Productive disagreements can lead to the most innovative ideas, but sometimes they do not just naturally happen, so you can introduce some process to induce it. Here are a few things you can do:
· You can tell people you want to hear their disagreements and give them the space to offer any.
· After people raise an idea, you can ask if anyone can think of an alternative perspective.
· You can assign a devil’s advocate role to address any weaknesses of the idea.
· When somebody says I think we should do X, you can acknowledge their contribution and challenge them to brainstorm to come up with several different other ideas. When you get in the habit of saying, “great, what else is there,” you don’t get anchored to the first ideas leading to quality and innovation.
· You can focus the disagreements on the task or process and reinforce the idea that it is not personal and is in service of pursuing the best ideas.
9. Amplify others’ voices. You can set the stage and let people know in the beginning that you will call on all people, starting with those you have not heard from so you can be sure to get diverse perspectives and so it is not a surprise when you call on them. If somebody is not speaking up, you can call on them or send a private chat and preface your question with, “I’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic, what would you like to share? Also, as a facilitator, be mindful of those who are trying to talk but may be a little slow to get in, you can give them an opening by saying, “Danielle, it seems as if you want to share, I would love to hear from you.”
10. Give space for the introverts to share. Create time for people to write down their ideas privately before they verbally share or add to the chat channel to have that necessary processing time.
11. Facilitate turn-taking. Making sure people get their turn goes a long way to feeling validated and included. You can have people raise their hands so cue forms and each person can speak in order. When somebody speaks, you can have them call on others. When you get questions, you can allow others to answer before you do, so it is not just a ping-pong effect going from one participant to you and then another participant to you, rather it is more of a network approach where they are answering each other’s questions, and you are in the background. Watch out for interrupters, and be sure to jump in to prevent that behavior and allow people to finish their thoughts
12. Give praise. Reach out to at least one team member after the meeting to recognize them for sharing their different view during the conversation. When you reward the behavior you are trying to encourage, you will invite more of the same and create a great team meeting culture.
13. Reflect. Watch a recorded video of a team meeting and pay attention to who is talking, who is talked over, who is listened to, and who is ignored. You can see what the team is noticing and put any necessary changes in place to make meetings more inclusive.
Many people will tell you that meetings can be the worst part of their day and week, but when they are done right, they can be an energizing experience. Designing the right processes can help create effective meetings that are inclusive, innovative, and foster the best ideas.
Quote of the day: “Meetings should be like salt - a spice sprinkled carefully to enhance a dish, not poured recklessly over every forkful. Too much salt destroys a dish. Too many meetings destroy morale and motivation.” – Author Jason Fried
“When leaders know how to lead great meetings, there’s less time wasted and less frustration. We have more energy to do the work that matters, realize our full potential, and do great things. – Entrepreneur Justin Rosenstein
Q: What are your best remote meeting practices? Comment and share below; we would love to hear from you!
The next blog in this series 8/11 will focus on getting noticed remotely.
As a leadership development and executive coach, I work with leaders to create enjoyable remote work experiences for themselves and their teams, contact me to explore this topic further.
How do you run inclusive remote meetings?