Set Expectations for Participation

Think back to the best meeting you’ve attended recently. What made it so successful? It probably shared some of these traits: There was an agenda, and the meeting leader stuck to it. Each person had a reason for being there: something to learn or to contribute. You all interacted appropriately, posing questions or sharing input without fighting for the group’s attention or derailing the conversation. Everyone felt that the group processes were fair. For example, people saw decisions as legitimate, even if they didn’t agree. The meeting accomplished something. You solved a problem, made a decision, generated ideas, or communicated information. And, the meeting finished on time.

Sounds great, right? But these things don’t happen by chance. Group interactions work well when people behave well—that is, when everyone understands the rules and follows them.

When you’re meeting without access to the information embedded in facial expressions and body language, you need to set clear expectations for every one—including yourself—ahead of time. These standards needn’t be absolute to be useful. There’s more than one way to offer a dissenting opinion, for example, or to lead a discussion. What matters is that you communicate clear expectations—before the meeting. Call it your “code of conduct” or “meeting rules,” and circulate it in the big e-mail you send out before the meeting to give everyone a chance to understand how they can participate productively.

Assign roles

No one can competently moderate a discussion, take detailed notes, mind the clock, and fix technical glitches. Fortunately, you have assistance: the rest of your attendees.

Assigning roles to meeting participants ahead of time allows you to communicate explicitly how you’d like each person to contribute to the meeting’s goals. For example, if you want to draw out a quiet person, asking them to attend as an “expert” may give them the permission they feel they need to speak up about their specialization. To keep a chatty colleague from taking over, give them a task that will occupy their attention while making them feel important, such as timekeeper. In giving people a part to play, you give them a sense of how they should interact for the rest of the meeting. They won’t be wondering, “What am I supposed to be doing on this call?” while they listen to disembodied voices argue about a technical point that’s over their heads. They’ll think, “I’m here to share my team’s perspective when it’s necessary, and mind the clock in the meantime.”

You’ve already learned about one key role: tech czar. Participants can contribute in other ways.

Facilitator. Generally you’ll assign this role to yourself. This person leads the agenda, solves problems, makes decisions, and keeps the discussion evenhanded. The facilitator should be comfortable with virtual communication technologies and skilled at drawing out people who are less comfortable in these modes. Sometimes, it’s beneficial to assign this role to someone else. For example, you may need to keep yourself on the sidelines during the discussion of a particularly sensitive agenda item, or you might want to give another attendee a leadership opportunity. If the meeting’s attendees aren’t part of the same organization or don’t fall into an obvious hierarchy, appointing facilitators is a great way to share power, too.

Scribe. They take notes and share them, during or after the meeting. If you’re using something more complicated than a pen and paper, however, they’ll need to be familiar with your preferred note-taking technology. And if you’re recording the meeting in your teleconference app, you may still want someone to jot down highlights—they’re easier to share than the audio or video of an entire meeting. This role is a good way to engage quiet people.

Timekeeper. They track how long you spend on each agenda item and let you know if you’re going over. Since they won’t be able to catch your eye or make a subtle gesture from across the table, give your timekeeper the authority to speak up when necessary: “Sorry for interrupting—this is Ariel. We have fifteen minutes left in the meeting.”

Presenter. Give these people a heads-up about your expectations well in advance of the meeting, especially if they need to do extra work to prepare. Later, check in with them about their presentation plans: What technology will they be using? Do they know how to present a slideshow within a teleconference app or how to talk the other attendees through a complicated spreadsheet over the phone? Offer to include them in your dry run if the presentation is complicated.

Expert. They bring a special skill set or useful experience to the conversation, one you want to make sure the rest of the group hears. If they don’t need to be present for the rest of the meeting, consider asking them to call or log in at an appointed time. Either way, make sure they know in advance what input you’ll want from them, so they can prepare accordingly.

Truth teller. They help you create an atmosphere of candor by modeling an honest engagement. Ask them to pipe up with contrarian points of view when a conversation becomes static and to call out inappropriate behavior: “It seems like a lot of us didn’t read the premeeting materials. Next time, we need to do better.” Or, “So, what’s going on here that nobody’s talking about?” Offer this role to an experienced colleague who knows the rest of the group fairly well, if that’s possible.

Plant. They pose targeted questions to spark conversation. This role is especially useful if your meeting will gather many people who don’t know each other well and who may be hesitant to speak up or ask questions. Sharing your slide deck or some sample questions with your plant ahead of time will give them the information they need to help generate a lively discussion.

Contributor. They’re attending the meeting be cause they have generally useful knowledge and authority over the topic at hand, or they need information from the meeting to do their jobs.

Some roles—such as the facilitator or tech czar—require dedication and preparation, so set up a call to explain the role and to secure their enthusiastic agreement.

Establish meeting processes

The more participants and tools you’re using, the more important it is to set expectations about how you’ll conduct the meeting before you’re actually in the meeting. Most traditional meeting practices apply, but some don’t translate well to a virtual format. If you can’t see someone’s discomfort with a decision registered in their body language, how will you take the group’s temperature before you move forward on the agenda? Here are the key dos and don’ts for helping your participants understand how you’ll collaborate. Pick the ones that will work for your context and briefly add them to your meeting invitation and prep materials.

Do

• Clarify how you’ll make decisions. Some issues you discuss may require a collective decision; others may fall to one or two people’s judgment. Unless you’re meeting with a team that already has a long-standing decision-making process, decide ahead of time and clarify up front about who gets to decide what, and who has veto power. You won’t be able to look around the table and count votes. So plan how you’ll solicit each person’s opinion: a poll or survey? Orally, one by one? Prepare to keep a list of meeting attendees on your desktop to double-check. The person who doesn’t speak up in the meeting might be a problem down the line.

• Describe what kind of participation you want. In face-to-face meetings, extroverts often have an advantage over introverts: They think out loud and feed off social interaction. Introverts tend to hold back until they have a fully formed point to make, and they may find interactions with their colleagues exhausting. Don’t let technology worsen this imbalance. Let the attendees know that you want to hear from each of them, and that you’ll call people out individually when you want to hear more, or ask them to step back from the discussion when they start to dominate it.

Don’t

• Don’t schedule status updates. The social distance that technology introduces means your meetings need to be as engaging as possible. Don’t force your colleagues to listen to each other recite project updates—they’ll be bored, and you’ll struggle to regain their attention. Instead, include this information in the premeeting reading material, or use another channel (such as a team wiki) to share them.

• Don’t let the group get off track. Remote participants might miss body-language cues suggesting that their line of questioning isn’t relevant to the group at large. And if other attendees see that you allow folks to get distracted by tangents, they might bring up their own unrelated issues and spark a discussion that leads you even further afield. Let everyone know that you’ll be following the agenda carefully and that you’ll address unrelated topics elsewhere.

Clarify etiquette

What will you do when two colleagues speak at once or when one person’s poor video connection arrests the group’s flow?

To some extent, the answers to these and related questions will depend on your particular situation: how well the participants know each other, how formal or informal their work styles are, how experienced they are with virtual collaboration. But considering possible scenarios and laying down some ground rules beforehand will help everyone get off on the right foot. Some suggestions:

• Ban the mute button. Tell your participants to have their microphones or telephones on. This tip is counterintuitive, but it comes straight from the experts. People go off task if they know that no one is listening—as far off task as a trip to the restroom. (In an InterCall study, 47% of respondents admitted to the latter vice.) In addition to holding attendees accountable for their presence, the inclusion of sound helps humanize everyone. Howling sirens on the street, the cooing baby—these noises break the ice and help people form a picture of who’s on the other end of the line.

• Prohibit multitasking. You can’t prevent colleagues from checking their e-mail or playing a game on their phone. But you can make it clear that such behavior isn’t welcome and that you will call people out and follow up when someone’s attention seems to be drifting.

• Give a script for interruptions. People are going to interrupt. Things like transmission delays and the lack of eye contact make phone, video, and chat fertile ground for this species of miscommunication. So tell people how they can politely interject. Do you want interrupters to hold their thoughts or ask for permission to go on? Will the facilitator manage who speaks by calling on people? Virtual technologies can make people’s steamrolling tendencies worse, so develop a strategy for how you’ll protect the speech of quieter folks. The section “Hear from Everyone” in the next chapter offers concrete suggestions for leading a balanced conversation.

• Clarify how to use secondary communication channels. You don’t want attendees e-mailing or texting you with random observations (“Jill cut her hair!”) or unproductive suggestions (“I’m not feeling this agenda”). So tell them what you do want to hear. How should participants solicit questions, comments, or updates? Provide tips for how participants should use other tools to solicit questions, offer comments, or give updates in the meeting. Or consider reserving secondary channels for emergencies only.

Send your invitation and materials

Now that you’ve decided on the participants, platform, meeting time, roles, and expectations, draft an e-mail invitation to your attendees with all the information they need to prepare for and participate in your meeting, including:

• Meeting time and time zone

• Your agenda, which addresses not only the items you’ll discuss, the time allotted for each item, and who “owns” the item, but also the list of meeting roles (timekeeper, tech czar, and so on)

• Call-in or log-in information, including the tool’s name, how to join, and the participant passcode

• Other technology you’ll be using, including secondary communications channels, a document-sharing service, and authentication and security apps

• Contact information for the tech czar

• Details on plan B—which channel you’ll move to if your primary meeting channel fails, and all the required information (call-in details, and so on) for this backup channel

• Guidelines for the appropriate usage of the tools you’ll be using (that is, you’re having a video call, but you’ll use IM to let people know if they can’t be heard, and so on)

• Ground rules for the meeting process and etiquette

• Any materials participants need to review before the meeting (presentations, sales reports, and the like)

Send this e-mail a few days ahead of time so group members have time to review the materials, vet their setup, and ask for help. For bigger meetings share the information even earlier, at least a week in advance.

The purpose of establishing rules and protocols isn’t to intimidate your colleagues into compliance or constrain their participation in any way. The guidelines aren’t a punishment, but a set of aspirations—a plan for how each person can get the most out of the meeting’s interactions and meaningfully contribute to them. Next we’ll see how all of the elements you’ve planned with such care work together.