Conducting Effective Virtual Meetings

May 4, 2012

More and more meetings are now and will continue to be conducted without the benefit of being in the same room together. People are working from home or the other side of the planet, and it’s important to make these virtual meetings effective.

Virtual meetings, which I define as anytime we discuss something with two or more people outside of the same room, can be done over the phone or on the web. And though there are many advantages to meeting with people in this way, there are also obstacles to making them work well.

For example, it is more difficult to fully understand each other because even the use of video can hide a great deal of non-verbal communication. We also interact differently when we’re not in close proximity to one another. Distractions abound and can easily be hidden from others. And the ability to build trust and camaraderie are especially difficult.

As I discussed in a previous post, effective virtual teamwork requires great communication, respect, trust and camaraderie. These are important for any team to be effective, but may be even more important when interacting face-to-face is not an option.

When conducting a virtual meeting, I believe you should be especially vigilante at following rules for any effective meeting and then include additional ones as well.

All Meetings Should Include:

  • Agenda. Nothing frustrates people more than attending a meeting where there is no clear reason for it and no logical progression of topics to be discussed.
  • Check–in time. Take five minutes or so in the beginning for everyone to say something about what’s going on with them—professionally or personally. This gets everyone talking right away and helps facilitate camaraderie.
  • Schedule. Start and end the meeting on time, and keep the agenda moving forward. Don’t meet any longer than necessary. If the meeting is scheduled to be an hour and you’ve finished everything on the agenda after 40 minutes, end the meeting.
  • Focus. Remember that the meeting is taking people away from tasks they would otherwise attend to and respect their time. Recognize early when certain discussions should be taken offline between fewer participants.
  • No multi-tasking. Nothing keeps a meeting from staying on track and remaining effective when individuals are reading and sending text messages or emails while trying to stay engaged. Even though technology enables it, we can’t be nearly as effective when doing more than one thing at a time.

Virtual Meetings Should Also:

  • Engage everyone. At the beginning of the meeting ask everyone to remove themselves from distractions. Keep each member involved in the discussion and call on those who are quiet to get them talking. Give each person a task such as timekeeper, minutes recorder, “parking lot” manager, and rotate these every meeting.
  • Avoid using mute button. The mute prohibits spontaneous contributions to discussions and often encourage multi-tasking as people can hide out. There are exceptions, for example, when someone is in an especially noisy environment that would only distract everyone.
  • Use video whenever possible. Video conferencing can definitely aid communication and make people more accountable for staying engaged. These web conferencing products are easily available and affordable so there should be no reason not to use them now.
  • Build trust and camaraderie. Check in before, during and after meetings to get to know each other better. This is especially important when you are unable to connect face-to-face with members of your team. It can be as simple as a short call or email to ask how it’s going.
  • Check in with the group. During meetings, check in with the entire group to ensure the meetings are an effective use of their time. It’s harder to read cues as to whether people are tuning out when you’re not in the same room together. Ask what could be done differently to make them more effective.

The reality of more virtual meetings means we need to find ways to make them work as effectively as possible. Following these rules can help.

Effective Teamwork in Virtual Teams

September 28, 2009

Whether you lead a virtual team or simply participate on one, there are several ways to make your teamwork more effective. Given the added complexities of working in disparate locations—often across time zones and borders—it is challenging to establish strong communication, mutual trust, and overall camaraderie.

As I stated in an earlier post, a virtual team can be defined as a group of people who work interdependently with a shared purpose across space, time, and organization boundaries using technology. Virtual teams face unique challenges at every stage of their incarnation, but developing effective teamwork early is especially important.

Like all teams, a strong foundation for a virtual team requires a solid and agreed upon purpose (mission, goals, etc.), clarity among stakeholder expectations, a common understanding of team membership, clear roles and responsibilities, an opportunity to build rapport and relationships, and agreed communication protocols. But unlike co-located teams, virtual teams need to be more proactive, deliberate, explicit and disciplined in every aspect of working together.

Here are some tips when building an effective virtual teamwork environment:

  1. Get to know each other by discovering commonalities. Without water cooler conversations or running into each other in hallways, getting to know one another needs to be more intentional than with co-located teams. Find out what you share in common by talking about things outside of the task at hand. Team building exercises can be conducted to encourage participants to open up and see each other outside of their workplace role.
  2. Encourage trust among all team members. Trust is earned over time and cannot be mandated, of course. Take the time to allow for this trust to build on your virtual team. Ensure that every member of the team feels appreciated and comfortable speaking openly and honestly. Hold every person accountable for what they say they will do. Again team building exercises can help make building trust more intentional and therefore accelerate the process.
  3. Ensure that team members interact with each other. Simply accomplishing individual tasks does not make for an effective team member. Each team member needs to know the group’s current priorities, they need to share knowledge, skills and experience with each other, and they need to learn from each other. Virtual team members don’t work alone, but together apart from one another. A virtual team is about a group of people working interdependently and therefore they need to interact in order to accomplish the group’s goals.
  4. Create a virtual community. The duty and responsibility team members have toward each other helps create a sense of belonging, which is essential in any community. It is no different in a virtual environment. Enable and encourage communication outside of standard methods and channels. Consider virtual rooms, online bulletin boards, instant messaging and video conferencing in addition to standard conference calls. If at all possible, get individuals together in the same physical space and make time for non-work conversations, particularly at the beginning or end of a project.
  5. Make it fun to be part of the group. Provide a “check-in” opportunity for everyone to speak up and be recognized at team meetings. Encourage humor and story telling among team members. Practical jokes can build camaraderie and ease tension as long as it is done in a respectful manner. And don’t forget to celebrate milestones and accomplishments both privately and publicly.

Effective teamwork may boil down to simply great communication, trust, respect and camaraderie. Implementing these five tips will go a long way in making teamwork on your virtual team more effective.

Mark Craemer                                                                            www.craemerconsulting.com

7 Keys to Highly Effective Virtual Teams

September 2, 2009

Virtual teams are on the rise in every industry and with good reason. The ability to accomplish goals as a team without being located in the same physical location can accelerate processes, reduce costs and enable true global collaboration. However, the challenges of virtual teams are also greater than those in co-located teams.

A virtual team can be defined here as a group of people who work interdependently with a shared purpose across space, time and organization boundaries using technology. However, all the existing technology that connects people on virtual teams has limitations. Without the benefit of sitting next to or across a conference room table from others, much is lost in terms of clear communication, mutual trust, and overall group dynamics. Communication is especially difficult without nonverbal clues such as body language and facial expressions. And anything that can go wrong face-to-face can also go wrong with virtual teams—only faster and less gracefully.

The key requirements for highly effective teams (co-located or virtual) include:

Trust – People work together effectively because they trust one another. With trust, groups converse easily, organize tasks more quickly, and manage themselves better. Without face-to-face clues, trust is harder to attain and easier to lose.

Respect – Everyone on the team has something to contribute and everyone’s opinion needs to be welcome. Only through this mutual respect can teams expect to function well.

Cooperation – In order to function effectively as a team, it is vital to fully cooperate with one another. This means allowing for disagreements and welcoming challenges with regard to one another’s view.

Commitment – Perhaps the most important requirement for a highly effective team is the commitment we each make to the team. Only through our commitment will we persevere through difficult periods when we otherwise might lose hope.

To be highly effective, virtual teams need all of the above as well as the following key requirements:

1. Appropriate Technology – Using the right technology to enable effective collaboration and communication is vital. This technology may include email, conference calls, video-conferencing, remote presentations, text messaging, chat-rooms, bulletin boards, web-conferencing, and other tools. Encourage the use of a variety of them to deepen collaboration and broaden perspectives.

2. Outstanding Communication – Choosing the appropriate medium (video conferencing, email, telephone, etc.), depending on the message, can be as important as the content itself. You should also carefully consider your audience and the context for your message. Then ensure that the words you use will not be confused or misinterpreted.

3. Shared Vision & Goals – Establishing a clear and inspiring vision as well as team goals shared among all members is vital to optimal performance. In addition, clarity among individual roles as well as group and individual expectations are necessary for all members to be on the same page.

4. Sense of Community – Every community requires mutual trust, respect, fairness, and affiliation. These are essential on virtual teams because individuals can often feel isolated across time and space, and requires creative ways to build a sense of community among all members. This can often be accomplished through team building and team bonding exercises, but requires continual attention.

5. Strong (and Shared) Leadership – With the absence of an opportunity to “manage by walking around,” leaders should check-in with individuals spontaneously to discuss issues or opportunities that arise. Leadership on virtual teams is often shared and this should be encouraged whenever possible so bottlenecks don’t slow progress.

6. Coordination and Collaboration – Because we don’t physically see each other working on a specific task, it is essential for a greater level of tracking and coordinating on projects in virtual teams. This coordination often transcends organizational boundaries and requires the collaboration of every team member.

7. Appropriate Electronic Body Language – Our tone of voice in conference calls, word choice and sentence structure in emails, and the speed of our response can all impact how our messages are received and interpreted. Virtual teams require that we are mindful and more deliberate in how we convey our messages.

All teams require trust, respect, cooperation and commitment to be highly effective, and virtual teams require this and more. By paying particular attention to the seven key requirements, your virtual team can be highly effective as well.

Mark Craemer                                                                               www.craemerconsulting.com