What Is a Virtual Meeting?

Leading an effective virtual meeting is no easy task. There’s the ghostly presence of other people on a conference call—a silent chorus that says hello at the beginning of the discussion and then never chimes in again with a question or an idea. The ding of an incoming e-mail from a teleconference participant who’s not bothering to hide the fact that they’re using the time to catch up on correspondence. Awkward, lengthy gaps as overly polite participants try to avoid speaking over one another. The colleague who takes a lagging video connection as license to interrupt other speakers whenever there’s a pause in the transmission. And those are just the people problems. Slow internet service, software bugs, pixelated video—how do we make any progress on our agendas?

Problems like these can plague a meeting when you can’t gather all the attendees in the same physical location. Whatever the purpose of your conversation, its dynamic will be fundamentally determined by the medium that brings everyone together. Video, conference call, messenger apps—as communication tools evolve, so do your options. Even if you work in a traditional office alongside your colleagues, you may spend most of your time in conference with people who aren’t physically present: negotiating terms with the client who lives two time zones away; discussing a project with a colleague who regularly works from home; or just checking in with the coterie of collaborators who, like you, work out of coffee shops and libraries.

Though they’re part of our regular workdays, these meetings aren’t always as successful as they could be. There’s a lot that can, and does, go wrong.

What are the key challenges?

You know what it feels like when an in-person meeting isn’t going well. You’re bored, you’re frustrated, you’re confused. Virtual meetings are susceptible to the same problems, but the causes are often different.

Technology. The success of a virtual meeting depends on the communication tools we employ. Picking the right technology is like picking a good meeting spot. You wouldn’t ask colleagues to gather in an abandoned warehouse, at a members-only club, or at a restaurant an hour away from the office. Those aren’t accessible locations, and your team won’t feel safe or comfortable meeting there. Likewise, if your technology doesn’t suit the group’s needs, it can actually prevent people from participating. And even with the right tools, you’ll have to deal with the usual run of problems, from dropped phone service to malfunctioning software.

Protocols. Meetings work best when people clearly understand the process and culture that they’re expected to comply with. But when you’re not face to face or in an office with established rhythms, your colleagues won’t necessarily share your expectations and conventions. Who’s moderating the conversation and has the right to recognize a speaker or ask someone to be quiet? What’s the polite way to register disagreement—should they interrupt the flow of the meeting, or stay silent and follow up by e-mail later? As the leader of the meeting, you’re responsible for clarifying these norms ahead of time and enforcing them as the meeting unfolds.

Engagement. Technology and protocols create a good space for virtual meetings; engagement is what happens in that space. But without in-person contact, your remote collaborators can easily become distracted or tune out. And if some people are attending the meeting in person and others are joining remotely, you face another set of difficulties. If you succeed in keeping the people in the room highly engaged, the virtual collaborators might be unsure how to participate in the group’s vibrant dynamic and fall silent or feel excluded.

Why hold one?

If virtual meetings are so much trouble, why are they worth your time and attention? Because the way we’re working requires them. As organizations extend their global reach, workers in diverse locations must work together to accomplish shared business goals. And as more and more cloud-enabled collaboration tools make their way to market, they offer a time- and cost-effective way to get that work done. If you need to assemble colleagues in London, Nairobi, and Mumbai, there are simply no other options.

But don’t think of these meetings as your choice of last resort. Collaborate with people across town or an ocean away, and everyone reaps great benefits.

You’ll build personal connections. For colleagues in different locations, virtual meetings are the only place to build rapport in real time. Whether you’re using a video service or a chat app, these interactions let you engage in the small talk and rapid back-and-forth that’s so essential to building trust—but so hard to accomplish over e-mail.

You’ll take the onus for virtual collaboration off e-mail. We’re accustomed to thinking about virtual meetings as serving the same functions as a “real” meeting, but they have another analogue: e-mail. For all its virtues, e-mail is not well suited for complex or technical discussions, and one-off questions or comments can get lost in the inexorable tide of new messages. Virtual meetings solve both these problems. They’re a good forum for complicated conversations, and their low barrier to entry lets you initiate minor, but useful, interactions that otherwise wouldn’t be worth the trouble.

You’ll get more out of your time. You don’t need to travel to your colleagues, or they to you. Carry out routine information-sharing without the hassle of a cross-country flight—or a ride up the elevator. Work with a corporate security specialist who has the skill set you need to navigate local regulations and infra structure for the new office location you’re planning. Invite your boss to address your team during its weekly hour-long meeting—then patch them in during the ten minutes they’re available to talk.

What this book will do

Virtual meetings are challenging to facilitate, yes, but you can make progress on your work. Whether you’re hopping online to meet with teammates in Japan or calling into the office on a work-from-home day, you can spark participation and engagement and lead better virtual meetings. Running Virtual Meetings is for you if you:

• Lead a virtual team

• Host meetings for the people you collaborate with, who work from various locations

• Give virtual presentations

• Have a direct report or colleague with whom you work closely and who works in a different location

To derive the most from these remote experiences, you’ll need to prepare, conduct, and follow up on the discussion as you would for an in-person meeting. But as the leader of a virtual meeting, you need to:

• Plan your meeting, working around multiple time zones to schedule it and looping in the right people no matter where they are

• Choose the technology you’ll use to host the meeting, and ensure it works

• Set—and enforce—expectations for participation

• Foster engagement, so that everyone contributes fully and feels ownership over the meeting’s outcome

In the rest of this book, you’ll learn practical tips for every step of taking those meeting basics and using them to run an effective virtual meeting. We’ll begin by evaluating whether hosting a virtual meeting will help you achieve the goal you have in mind.