Anatomy of a Virtual Meeting
With summer in full swing, I have to admit that I found myself lacking motivation to put together this week’s post. So, I’m going to draw on a portion of a recent virtual training session that I presented for today’s post on the anatomy of virtual meeting.
Virtual meetings are a big part of everyone’s life, especially since COVID had pushed everyone to interact more in an online world. And we know that virtual meetings are just not as effective, because they are missing some key ingredients of personal interaction. So we all hear and see lots of information about how to make virtual meetings more engaging so your meeting participants keep their attention on the meeting. Or, we try to simplify the topic so that the discussion doesn’t take as long (which may actually make meetings less engaging).
What’s I’d like to suggest is a structural difference to a virtual meeting that takes some of the fundamental meeting activities and shifts them up into a preparation phase, so that they don’t occur during the meeting itself.
A Look at Meetings
In general, all meetings have three basic parts: preparation, meeting, and post-meeting. During the preparation stage, the meeting’s purpose is defined, the steps to achieve that purpose are planned out, and the specific needs and logistics are organized. I would argue that there should also be a mindset step where organizers consider how they will empower collaboration during the meeting. These steps aren’t always discrete from one another, as they are often blended during the creation of an agenda, but they are the basic ingredients that come together in advance of any virtual or in-person meeting.
During the meeting itself, there are six parts: establishing safety, communicating or defining the problem, gathering perspectives to understand how others see the problem, exploring perspectives and possible solutions through discussion, deciding what to do, and taking action. Again, these steps can often be muddled together, and some steps may be missed, especially if a team has been working together for some time. These steps may not be sequential either, as later steps highlight a need to go back to earlier steps.
The post-meeting phase also has a couple of steps that focus on implementing any actions from the meeting and gathering feedback. The feedback step is very often missed, which means organizers are left to guess whether the meeting was effective or not.
So, how is the anatomy of a virtual meeting different?
The biggest thing to remember is that people have a drastically reduced attention span for a virtual meeting. It’s super easy for your attention to be drawn away to any one of the dozens of things happening around you. I’ve sat in virtual meetings, with my webcam on, and been totally disengaged and looking at my phone.
Among all of the various tactics for keeping people engaged during a meeting, you first need to make a shorter meeting; one that doesn’t require an extended period of attention.
One way to do this effectively is to shift some of those activities that normally occur during the meeting so that they occur prior to the meeting (pre-meeting phase). Specifically, you can shift the safety, problem, and gather steps so that they no longer need to happen during the virtual meeting itself.
This approach requires the organizer to take deliberate steps to gather and distribute the information from these steps prior to the virtual meeting. I use these three questions to help frame my thinking and my approach to the added pre-meeting steps:
Safety: How will I enable my participants to feel valued and heard when they meet?
Problem: How do I find out how my meeting participants see the problem and share those perspectives with everyone?
Gather: How do I find out some of the potential solutions my participants might have in mind and share those perspectives with everyone?
In thinking through these questions about how to gather and share specific information ahead of a virtual meeting, you’ll likely realize that you are getting deeper, more considered responses that when meeting participants are asked in a ‘live’ setting. You may also see people respond who are normally quiet during meeting discussions.
Who knows, maybe this front-loaded meeting approach will take root for in-person meetings as well. As always, if you have thoughts to share around this topic, please leave a comment.
Happy collaborating!
Scott Millar often works as a "peacemaker" by gathering people with different experiences and values and helping them navigate beyond their differences to tackle complex problems together. Through Collaboration Dynamics, he offers a program in High Performance Collaboration, where he guides groups to explore the nature of collaboration, inclusivity, and innovation, and acquire new abilities to create the conditions that enable groups to contribute and thrive in challenging environments.
