Point Lookout: a free weekly publication of Chaco Canyon Consulting
Volume 16, Issue 42;   October 19, 2016: Toward More Engaging Virtual Meetings: I

Toward More Engaging Virtual Meetings: I

by

Keeping attendees engaged in virtual meetings is a widely sought but rarely achieved objective. Here is Part I of a set of simple techniques to help facilitators enhance attendee engagement.
Images of people captured in a phone

Although most facilitators of virtual meetings regard attendee engagement as a desirable goal, some of their techniques for achieving it carry unfortunate risks. For example, some try to surprise attendees by calling on people unexpectedly to ask for comment. Such methods might be effective in the short run, but they can create an atmosphere of tension, because they single out individuals. In the case of surprise questions to specific attendees, the hidden (possibly unintended) message from the facilitator is that the individual designated for comment hasn't been contributing much. In effect, the facilitator risks shaming the designated individual. The facilitator's true intent is irrelevant. Attendees are free to interpret the facilitator's actions in any way they choose.

Engagement Engagement enhancement techniques that
single out individuals suspected of being
disengaged put at risk the quality of the
relationship between facilitator and attendee
enhancement techniques that single out individuals suspected of being disengaged thus put at risk the quality of the relationship between facilitator and attendee. Safer methods for enhancing engagement share two common attributes: they treat everyone alike, and they bear no resemblance to punishment. Here's Part I of a set of simple techniques to help facilitators enhance attendee engagement.

Recruit assistance
Conducting virtual meetings of more than three or four is too much work for a single facilitator. Roles that lighten the load include scribe, parking lot valet, site facilitators, action item scribe, attendance scribe, timekeeper, Designated Digression Detector, technology facilitators, and agenda manager.
Recruiting assistance also enhances attendee engagement, because people who accept these roles must remain engaged and attentive to fulfill their responsibilities.
Restrict the agenda to items that need discussion
Distribute announcements or reports (or report summaries) in advance by posting or email. We sometimes do include such items on agendas because we want everyone to hear them. But if meetings are the only reliable channels for distributing information, then there are performance issues too complex to be resolved in meetings.
Agenda items that don't require discussions or decisions can usually be removed from the agenda. Don't spend meeting time reciting what people can read in email messages, reports, or report summaries. That kind of activity causes people to disengage.
Maintain a parking lot visible to all
The parking lot is a list of topics that arise during the meeting, but which aren't immediately relevant to the agenda. We capture them for two reasons. First, we want to remember them and deal with them later. Second, we don't want them to arise again in the current meeting.
In face-to-face meetings, we maintain parking lots on flip charts or whiteboards that all can see. They remind everyone that the listed items aren't suitable for the current meeting. But in virtual meetings, we tend to forgo visibility, which means that some items arise repeatedly. Don't let this happen. Devise some way to make the parking lot visible to all.

We'll continue next time with more techniques for enhancing attendee engagement at virtual meetings.  Next in this series Go to top Top  Next issue: Toward More Engaging Virtual Meetings: II  Next Issue

Leading Virtual Meetings for Real ResultsAre your virtual meetings plagued by inattentiveness, interruptions, absenteeism, and a seemingly endless need to repeat what somebody just said? Do you have trouble finding a time when everyone can meet? Do people seem disengaged and apathetic? Or do you have violent clashes and a plague of virtual bullying? Read Leading Virtual Meetings for Real Results to learn how to make virtual meetings much more productive and less stressful — and a lot shorter. Order Now!

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More articles on Virtual and Global Teams:

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Participating in or managing a virtual team presents special communications challenges. Here's Part II of some guidelines for communicating with members of virtual teams.
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When we have to terminate someone who works at a remote site, sometimes there's a temptation to avoid travel — to use email, phone, fax, or something else. They're all bad ideas. Terminating people in person is not only a gesture of respect. It's good business.
Dr. Jerri Nielsen at Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station in 1999On Virtual Relationships
Whether or not you work as part of a virtual team, you probably work with some people you rarely meet face-to-face. And there are some people you've never met, and probably never will. What does it take to maintain good working relationships with people you rarely meet?
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Toxic conflict in virtual teams is especially difficult to address, because we bring to it assumptions about causes and remedies that we've acquired in our experience in co-located teams. In this Part II of our exploration we examine how minimizing authority tends to convert ordinary creative conflict into a toxic form.
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Virtual teams — teams not co-located — do sometimes encounter difficulties maintaining unity of direction, or even unity of purpose. When they fracture, they do so in particular ways. Bone fractures provide a metaphor useful for guiding interventions.

See also Virtual and Global Teams and Effective Meetings for more related articles.

Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout

A meeting that's probably a bit too largeComing March 20: Top Ten Ways to Make Meetings More Effective
Meetings are just about everybody's least favorite part of working in organizations. We can do much better if only we take a few simple steps to improve them. The big one: publish the agenda in advance. Here are nine other steps to improve meetings. Available here and by RSS on March 20.
An informal meeting in a loungeAnd on March 27: Allocating Action Items
From time to time in meetings we discover tasks that need doing. We call them "action items." And we use our list of open action items as a guide for tracking the work of the group. How we decide who gets what action item can sometimes affect our success. Available here and by RSS on March 27.

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