5 Tips for Conducting a Virtual Meeting
Conducting a successful virtual meeting requires preparation and a new set of etiquette rules.
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While we're not yet controlling humanoid robots from the comfort of our homes like the characters in the 2009 movie Surrogates, increasingly our daily interactions—both professional and personal—are conducted through virtual means.
As business owners embrace virtual events as a cost-effective method to achieve a myriad of goals, including webinars, training, and conferences, it's important to ensure that effective communication isn't being traded for bottom-line savings. While it's unlikely that meeting virtually will completely replace the need for entrepreneurs to meet in person, its ease of adoption and convenience can serve to enhance your business's productivity. However, virtual meetings aren't ideal for every situation, so knowing when and how to utilize this technology is vital.
Donna Dennis, president of Leadership Solutions Consulting, and creator and facilitator of American Management Association's three-day seminar on Leading Virtual and Remote Teams, says that technology became the main focus; somewhere between people's BlackBerries and e-mail, many leaders lost sight of relationships. "Now the focus is on managing task, relationships, and technology," says Dennis, who elaborates further in her upcoming book Knowledge Management and E-Learning.
Lee E. Miller, influencing trainer and author of UP: Influence, Power and the U Perspective: The Art of Getting What You Want, adds, "The biggest mistake people make is assuming that influencing when you are meeting face to face is the same as influencing when you are interacting virtually. It's not. The rules are different because people respond differently when they are interacting virtually."
Here are some tips to help you conduct a successful virtual meeting.
5 Tips for Conducting a Virtual Meeting: How to Prepare
"The first thing we do before deciding what technologies and software will be needed is to decide who the participating audience is and what information is being shared," says Drew Bowers, a research psychologist in the University of Dayton Research Institute's Human Factors Group. "We have found that it is best for presenters to either design their data or presentation according to the environment they will be presenting in, or to choose the best environment to represent the data they have." Bowers says, "You can't simply take a presentation you gave in front of a live audience at a conference and throw it up on a video monitor for a virtual audience and expect the same results, because you're limited, to a degree, in how you can interact with your virtual audience.
Dennis points out that when you schedule a meeting in a physical location, you can be more casual about the meeting's agenda and providing materials. You also have the advantage of getting attendees up to speed in the hallway, at the coffee machine, etc. However, a successful virtual meeting requires a lot more upfront preparation. Colaric recommends that virtual meetings be planned out well in advance. "Send the agenda ahead of time, create visuals to reinforce your message and forward them to everyone before the meeting, invite the members of each team who need to be involved," she says.
Also, make sure to send log-in information (access codes, URLs, and call-in numbers) at least a day in advance so that participants can test for any software downloads needed. You may also want to ask participants to log in at least 15 minutes prior to the start to test connectivity, suggests Laura Stack, author and president of The Productivity Pro, a time-management training firm. "Conduct roll call and verify that everything is working. Review the timeline. Give out a method to reach you offline should a panelist encounter problems, says Stack.
Note: If you are hosting a single presenter with a large audience tuning in, then it is a good idea to have a facilitator designated to assist the main presenter. The facilitator can support participants with technical issues as well as monitor any chat questions that come in. Having the presenter try to read chat questions slows down the flow of the presentation.
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5 Tips for Conducting a Virtual Meeting: Technical Tools and Requirements
The beauty of online meeting technology is that even the most fledgling, bare bones operation, can use it. All that's required is an Internet connection, audio (from computer speakers, microphone, or via telephone), and a webcam (standalone or integrated with your monitor/laptop). Larger groups may also need a projection screen or large TV monitor.
When choosing a service think "small," says Susan Colaric, assistant vice president for Instructional Technology at Saint Leo University in Saint Leo, Florida. "The most effective web conferences are those that only use the technology that is needed. KIS—keep it simple— is the best way to have people focus on your message and not the technology." Some online web products include Adobe Acrobat Connect, GoToMeeting, Microsoft Office Live Meeting and WebEx.
Entrepreneurs also need to be mindful that not every video conferencing system will work together. Avoid the embarrassment of delays and technical glitches by testing the connectivity of all sites before the meeting. "Trying to use an analog video system at one end and a digital system on the other can cause a multitude of problems, and even digital-to-digital conferencing can be problematic if an older software program needs an upgrade before it can 'talk to' a newer program," says Bowers.
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