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If I have to sit through another hour-long remote meeting, I’m going to have to make my third peanut butter milkshake of the day.
The transition to digital meetings has revealed just how bad we are at meetings in general. When was the last effective remote team meetings you sat through? They either seem pointless, too impersonal, or drag on with no end.
Most managers have never been trained how to effectively lead virtual team meetings. You can’t replicate what seemed to work in the office. Conducting effective virtual meetings requires you to level up the way you collaborate as a team.
Two truths and a lie about effective remote team meetings
- Meetings are sacred. In a human-centric approach to work, something special happens when we get together. Especially in remote teams, having regular personal interactions is extremely important.
- Meetings take time. Time and attention are your most precious resource. A day spent on someone else’s agenda will wipe you out fast. Bad meetings steal your time, but good remote meetings are a great use of it.
- You will be naturally great at conducting effective virtual meetings. Please…
After decades of leading meetings, we are still horrible at making them effective. Just adding technology is not going to make them better.
A step-by-step guide for how to effectively lead virtual team meetings
1. Before the meeting
Do you need to have a meeting?
In pre-digital times, meetings were one of the only options for sharing information and collaborating.
- If you hit a roadblock, you called a meeting.
- If you needed to make an announcement, you called a meeting.
- If you needed a decision, you called a meeting.
But in a digital age, a meeting is just one of many tools at your disposal.
A meeting is synchronous, hi-fidelity, non-durable communication. Because it’s one of the more expensive choices you can make, you want to get the most out of it.
Steven Rogelberg says leaders should recognize that they are stewards of others’ time. This means you must think hard before demanding their time.
The first step in conducting effective virtual meetings is asking if you need one at all. Think about why you are hiring this meeting. What’s the job you want it to do? Is a meeting the best option?
Would another format such as a message thread or announcement allow for more in-depth, slower thinking? Would it give people more agency over their time?
Or, will one synchronous meeting save hours of wasted time trading messages back and forth?
Write an agenda
Once you’ve decided that a meeting is the best option, write your agenda. David Burkus suggests using questions instead of headings to organize your agenda. Questions ensure that your meeting centers on discussion and not disseminating information. Steven Rogelberg adds, “Once the questions have been answered, you know when to end the meeting — and you can easily gauge if the meeting has been successful.”
The agenda should include explicit ways you want people to prepare for the meeting. Is there pre-reading or pre-work they can do to make the virtual meeting more effective? It’s not a good use of everyone’s time to read slides aloud for the first 15 minutes. Send those ahead of time and jump into the discussion as soon as the meeting starts. Give participants a ‘packing list’ of what they should bring to the meeting.
Check out our virtual meeting agenda template here.
As you create the agenda, think about what will be the visual center of the meeting. Will everyone need to see the same screen? Or do you plan to rely on a virtual whiteboard? Is it best if everyone has their video on? Or could this be a walking meeting for some? Planning the visual experience makes the meeting more engaging and prevents distractions.
Determine who needs to be there
Review the questions you created as your agenda. Who will add the necessary insight and context to those discussions? Invite those people to the meeting.
There may be others who will benefit from knowing what was discussed, but don’t need to be there live. Those people can attend if they wish, but may only want a notification with the results of the meeting.
David Burkus suggests keeping your invite list small, but making information about the meeting widely accessible.
Effective virtual meetings can be recorded and transcribed for people who need more context.
One exception is the osmosis rule of leadership development. In digital environments, young leaders still need to see their mentors ‘in the wild’ to pick up how they should act. Consider who might benefit from attending just to observe.
Schedule the meeting
Look at your agenda to see how long you think the meeting should be. The ideal time for a well-planned effective remote team meeting is about 25 minutes. In-depth discussions may need to extend to 45 minutes. Once you hit an hour, you’ve probably lost the plot and it’s better to regroup later.
Use a shared calendar service to see when everyone is free. If there are no open times, don’t schedule and assume everyone else will accommodate. Suggest a slot and ask people if there are things they can reschedule. For non-regular meetings, give plenty of time to prepare.
2. Managing an effective virtual meeting
Preparing for a remote meeting takes a lot of planning, but there’s more to do when it’s actually taking place.
Start the meeting on time, but reserve the first few minutes for a check-in question. This allows everyone to reset and start fresh.
Follow your team meeting ground rules about:
- if video is on
- the use of chat
- what happens if a cat or child comes in the room
- and other common virtual meeting etiquette
Have a document open that captures key decisions and action items. Ideally, this is a shared document that everyone can see and work on at the same time.
Your agenda of questions should help to keep the focus of the meeting. If you sense the topic is veering off course, reset and suggest a separate meeting if required.
Be inclusive. If you only ask questions to the entire group, you’ll likely get the same people responding. Ask questions to individuals to make sure everyone gets more equity in speaking time.
3. After the meeting
Even if it seems like you had an effective virtual meeting, you’ve still got to finish strong.
Give time to debrief. One great part of in-person meetings is what happens immediately after. People get together in groups of two or three and debrief the meeting, or catch up on life. Effective remote team meetings should have time built in for this. Consider using breakout rooms after the meeting to give people a chance to decompress with each other.
Complete and store the meeting documentation. Write down decisions and action items. Store these in a durable location and format where anyone who needs to can access them. Keep the meeting recording in the same place for people who need the full context.
Onward
You’ve probably never been trained on how to effectively lead virtual team meetings. Don’t be hard on yourself if it seems like they aren’t going well. Conducting effective virtual meetings requires more planning and intentionality than in person meetings.
The shift to digital meetings has shown us how sloppy our approach to meetings was. We have a lot of catch up to do before we can start having effective remote team meetings.
If you have more ideas for how to make virtual meetings more effective, let us know on Twitter or LinkedIn!
If I have to sit through another hour-long remote meeting, I’m going to have to make my third peanut butter milkshake of the day.
The transition to digital meetings has revealed just how bad we are at meetings in general. When was the last effective remote team meetings you sat through? They either seem pointless, too impersonal, or drag on with no end.
Most managers have never been trained how to effectively lead virtual team meetings. You can’t replicate what seemed to work in the office. Conducting effective virtual meetings requires you to level up the way you collaborate as a team.
Two truths and a lie about effective remote team meetings
- Meetings are sacred. In a human-centric approach to work, something special happens when we get together. Especially in remote teams, having regular personal interactions is extremely important.
- Meetings take time. Time and attention are your most precious resource. A day spent on someone else’s agenda will wipe you out fast. Bad meetings steal your time, but good remote meetings are a great use of it.
- You will be naturally great at conducting effective virtual meetings. Please…
After decades of leading meetings, we are still horrible at making them effective. Just adding technology is not going to make them better.
A step-by-step guide for how to effectively lead virtual team meetings
1. Before the meeting
Do you need to have a meeting?
In pre-digital times, meetings were one of the only options for sharing information and collaborating.
- If you hit a roadblock, you called a meeting.
- If you needed to make an announcement, you called a meeting.
- If you needed a decision, you called a meeting.
But in a digital age, a meeting is just one of many tools at your disposal.
A meeting is synchronous, hi-fidelity, non-durable communication. Because it’s one of the more expensive choices you can make, you want to get the most out of it.
Steven Rogelberg says leaders should recognize that they are stewards of others’ time. This means you must think hard before demanding their time.
The first step in conducting effective virtual meetings is asking if you need one at all. Think about why you are hiring this meeting. What’s the job you want it to do? Is a meeting the best option?
Would another format such as a message thread or announcement allow for more in-depth, slower thinking? Would it give people more agency over their time?
Or, will one synchronous meeting save hours of wasted time trading messages back and forth?
Write an agenda
Once you’ve decided that a meeting is the best option, write your agenda. David Burkus suggests using questions instead of headings to organize your agenda. Questions ensure that your meeting centers on discussion and not disseminating information. Steven Rogelberg adds, “Once the questions have been answered, you know when to end the meeting — and you can easily gauge if the meeting has been successful.”
The agenda should include explicit ways you want people to prepare for the meeting. Is there pre-reading or pre-work they can do to make the virtual meeting more effective? It’s not a good use of everyone’s time to read slides aloud for the first 15 minutes. Send those ahead of time and jump into the discussion as soon as the meeting starts. Give participants a ‘packing list’ of what they should bring to the meeting.
Check out our virtual meeting agenda template here.
As you create the agenda, think about what will be the visual center of the meeting. Will everyone need to see the same screen? Or do you plan to rely on a virtual whiteboard? Is it best if everyone has their video on? Or could this be a walking meeting for some? Planning the visual experience makes the meeting more engaging and prevents distractions.
Determine who needs to be there
Review the questions you created as your agenda. Who will add the necessary insight and context to those discussions? Invite those people to the meeting.
There may be others who will benefit from knowing what was discussed, but don’t need to be there live. Those people can attend if they wish, but may only want a notification with the results of the meeting.
David Burkus suggests keeping your invite list small, but making information about the meeting widely accessible.
Effective virtual meetings can be recorded and transcribed for people who need more context.
One exception is the osmosis rule of leadership development. In digital environments, young leaders still need to see their mentors ‘in the wild’ to pick up how they should act. Consider who might benefit from attending just to observe.
Schedule the meeting
Look at your agenda to see how long you think the meeting should be. The ideal time for a well-planned effective remote team meeting is about 25 minutes. In-depth discussions may need to extend to 45 minutes. Once you hit an hour, you’ve probably lost the plot and it’s better to regroup later.
Use a shared calendar service to see when everyone is free. If there are no open times, don’t schedule and assume everyone else will accommodate. Suggest a slot and ask people if there are things they can reschedule. For non-regular meetings, give plenty of time to prepare.
2. Managing an effective virtual meeting
Preparing for a remote meeting takes a lot of planning, but there’s more to do when it’s actually taking place.
Start the meeting on time, but reserve the first few minutes for a check-in question. This allows everyone to reset and start fresh.
Follow your team meeting ground rules about:
- if video is on
- the use of chat
- what happens if a cat or child comes in the room
- and other common virtual meeting etiquette
Have a document open that captures key decisions and action items. Ideally, this is a shared document that everyone can see and work on at the same time.
Your agenda of questions should help to keep the focus of the meeting. If you sense the topic is veering off course, reset and suggest a separate meeting if required.
Be inclusive. If you only ask questions to the entire group, you’ll likely get the same people responding. Ask questions to individuals to make sure everyone gets more equity in speaking time.
3. After the meeting
Even if it seems like you had an effective virtual meeting, you’ve still got to finish strong.
Give time to debrief. One great part of in-person meetings is what happens immediately after. People get together in groups of two or three and debrief the meeting, or catch up on life. Effective remote team meetings should have time built in for this. Consider using breakout rooms after the meeting to give people a chance to decompress with each other.
Complete and store the meeting documentation. Write down decisions and action items. Store these in a durable location and format where anyone who needs to can access them. Keep the meeting recording in the same place for people who need the full context.
Onward
You’ve probably never been trained on how to effectively lead virtual team meetings. Don’t be hard on yourself if it seems like they aren’t going well. Conducting effective virtual meetings requires more planning and intentionality than in person meetings.
The shift to digital meetings has shown us how sloppy our approach to meetings was. We have a lot of catch up to do before we can start having effective remote team meetings.
If you have more ideas for how to make virtual meetings more effective, let us know on Twitter or LinkedIn!
