In our rush to replace same-space meetings “temporarily” with digital meetings, we may just be in danger of missing out on the real opportunity of the moment.
I have spent more than 25 years helping clients achieve moments of genius, repeatedly and on demand, in team meetings. I have spent the last decade studying how people think together in groups. For the past four years I have been deeply involved in “distance learning,” and I have come to understand that virtual connections, done right, offer possibilities we only hope for in same-space encounters. Who runs the meeting, and how, makes all the difference. Running effective meetings in the virtual world is more demanding… and that’s a good thing if we learn from it.
Three things can make virtual meetings more conducive to extraordinary results.
- The safety of digital solitude. It’s what makes it possible for the social media “you” to be less inhibited than the “in the flesh” you. Even as you are “out in the world” digitally, you are still physically in your home safe space.
- Permission to think out loud. In the physical presence of others, we are less likely to express thoughts that are only partially formed. Exposing ourselves and others to ideas as they develop in a virtual environment can accelerate and precipitate their perfection and benefit from evolving collaborative input.
- Access to collective native intelligence. With our traditional barriers lowered, we are open to including more of our total experience in the conversation. In same-space meetings we tend to offer more self-limited, uni-dimensional, participation, and constrain it by task, title, or job function.
Three things to avoid in digital conferences.
- Don’t mistake virtual meetings for lesser versions of same-space meetings. The rules are different. The process is different. The dynamic is different. The potential is greater.
- Scrupulously avoid the one-to-all model of communication. That’s what memos are for. Virtual meetings are multi-directional engagements of the group.
- Avoid going over 30 minutes. Starting a meeting with a count-down clock is simultaneously challenging and energizing. It is better to have two or three productive short meetings than to have one dreadfully long one.
Seven things you can do to achieve the full potential of the new-new normal in meetings.
- Enforce Collegiality. Virtual meetings have high potential for expanded and elevated input opportunities. A collegial atmosphere, where every attendee and every opinion is treated as equally valuable, opens the door to more, and more meaningful, contributions.
- Orchestrate Omnilogues. Work at ensuring that as many opinions as participants are voiced and heard.
- Practice and Encourage contributions in short bursts. Just like in basketball, the more hands touch the ball, the quicker it gets to the basket. The briefer and more intuitive the thinking, the greater the clarity.
- Summarize. Recognizing that most people are better editors than authors, someone needs to take on the responsibility to describe “what just happened here” in succinct form.
- Round-robin assent. Get a Yea/Nay from each attendee. Don’t assume everybody heard the same thing.
- Articulate Closure. Restate the general understanding based on (5) above
- Commitments. Ask for specific “next steps” from each participant.
NOW you can close the meeting.
A note about who should run virtual meetings. Taking full advantage of the benefits of virtual meetings requires different inclinations, skill sets, and empathies than leadership or management. The person who runs your organization may not be the best person to run virtual meetings – at least not initially and not until some learning or training can take place.
So, to begin this process in your organization, seek out the individual with a “natural” talent for understanding and appreciating the intricacies, peculiarities, and subtleties of collegial thinking in the real world and set them loose in the virtual world. Your organization will be the better for it in the moment and in the long run.
See the video below
If you would like to ‘hit the ground running’ with the new-new thing in virtual meetings in as little as one session, and within the next few days, please contact us for an immediate response.
