Learn More

Quick hits

Frisch, Bob and Cary Greene. “Before a Meeting, Tell Your Team That Silence Denotes Agreement.” HBR.org, February 3, 2016. https://hbr.org/2016/02/before-a-meeting-tell-your-team-that-silence-means-agreement.

Virtual meetings give attendees an excuse to withhold their active participation and reframe themselves as observers. But when people conceal their opinions in the moment, they’re unlikely to buy into the outcome of a discussion afterward. Frisch and Greene show you how to thwart this dynamic. They suggest that you tell your colleagues that silence has a clear meaning, and they offer tips to increase engagement, from administering polls to breaking into smaller groups.

McKee, Annie. “Empathy Is Key to a Great Meeting.” HBR.org,March 23, 2015. https://hbr.org/2015/03/empathy-is-key-to-a-great-meeting.

To compensate for the loss of context in a virtual setting, your emotional intelligence must work overtime to read the group and manage its emotional dynamics. McKee explains how empathy helps you understand how participants are relating to each other and why staying attuned to other people’s feelings may require you to regulate your own more effectively.

Samuel, Alexandra. “Digital Tools to Make Your Next Meeting More Productive.” HBR.org, July 3, 2015. https://hbr.org/2015/07/digital-tools-to-make-your-next-meeting-more-productive.

Samuel walks you through a handful of tools that can help you map ideas, engage participants, tweak processes, and turn goals into concrete tasks. Illustrated with screenshots from a variety of tools, this article will help you select something new to try at your next meeting.

Books

Duarte, Nancy. HBR Guide to Persuasive Presentations. Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2012.

To improve your virtual presentations, first master the basics. Presentation expert Duarte shows you how to win over tough crowds, organize a coherent narrative, create powerful messages and visuals, and more. This book takes a big-picture, strategic look at a common activity and breaks it down into practical action steps.

Harvard Business School Publishing. HBR Guide to Making Every Meeting Matter. Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2011.

Running any type of meeting effectively requires preparation. But it doesn’t have to be painful. Drawing from multiple HBR contributors, this guide offers a range of tips to make your meetings easier to prepare for, more enjoyable to run—and more productive.

Molinsky, Andrew. Global Dexterity: How to Adapt Your Behavior Across Cultures Without Losing Yourself in the Process. Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2013.

To facilitate virtual meetings across cultures, you have to be open to new ways of doing things. But effective leadership depends on authenticity—on your ability to speak to, and act on, your real values and beliefs. Molinsky expounds a new approach to this problem. His study of global dexterity shows readers how to try out new behaviors when crossing cultures without triggering emotional and psychological barriers.

Articles

Conger, Jay. “The Necessary Art of Persuasion.” Harvard Business Review, May 1998 (product #98304).

In a virtual environment, it’s hard to tell whether your ideas are landing accurately. Since you can’t rely on implicit feedback to tighten a pitch or to refine an argument, you need to come prepared to persuade. Conger’s seminal article explains how persuasion really works—it’s a process of negotiation and mutual learning, not a hard sell—and describes how four best practices, ranging from establishing credibility to framing common ground, will help you reach even the most pixelated colleague.

Halvorson, Heidi Grant. “A Second Chance to Make a First Impression.” Harvard Business Review, January 2015 (product #R1501J).

When you lead a virtual discussion, you’re constantly managing other people’s perceptions—of you, of each other, of the business at hand. Halvorson dissects how human perception works and what biases are at work when we make judgments about one another. Her advice on how to leverage these biases to your own advantage will help you plan your meeting strategy and mend fences between unhappy collaborators.

Leonard-Barton, Dorothy and William A. Kraus. “Implementing New Technology.” Harvard Business Review, November 1985 (product #85612).

This classic article examines the problems you face when you ask meeting attendees to adopt new communications technology. Your colleagues look to you to explain how this innovation works—and why they should bother to use it. Although the technology has changed since this article was published, the problems it describes still apply today. By viewing yourself as an internal marketer, as the authors suggest, you’ll have better luck getting buy-in for new platforms and overcoming resistance to change.