5 practices for effective virtual meetings
We often see “this meeting should have been an email”, and there’s a lot of truth in that. But it’s true, not because meetings aren’t important, but because the meeting itself isn’t anything more than someone basically reading an email, or people feel like they can’t engage or are actively minimized or excluded. That’s not the best use of anyone’s time and energy or the disruption to their day and work, and can even be actively harmful.
Good meetings though are essential to people working effectively together. Projects where people bring diverse perspectives, are heard, and then those ideas are integrated into the outcomes are more successful. That happens through relationship building, communication, and collaborative decision making.
In a virtual work environment, our meetings become even more essential, because they’re one of the only places where this type of work occurs. In virtual meetings, we need to be even more intentional about how we structure them, because being virtually in a room together does require more coordination. Even after all the years of remote work, it’s a skill we’re still learning. I’ve been working remotely across global time zones, with work colleagues, volunteer communities and boards, both leading and participating in meetings that work well and ones that don’t. I’ve also learned from The Carpentries and CSCCE who have great guidance on inclusive virtual meetings. The key, I’ve discovered, is that it’s not the meeting content that’s the differentiator, but the meeting ‘container’. How the meeting is organized and run changes it from something where I wish I’d had that time back in my life, to an effective and even enjoyable time.
Creating the virtual meeting ‘container’
So, how do we create this virtual meeting container? This is a long post, because these practices are intertwined and overlap, so I wanted to put all of them in one post. It’s also long because I’m still on my journey of trying not to write about everything all at once, but I’m still on that journey, so here we are. (I also think this could be better as a ‘virtual meeting handbook’, so I started that.)
When I say ‘meeting’ in this post, what do I mean? I’m talking about the meeting with 3-10 ish people, so something like a team meeting or a project meeting. We’re also going to assume that the goal of this meeting is to share ideas and get feedback or have discussion. If your goal is just to present information without any response, or a large community event, then that’s a different type of meeting.
The key is to use a set of practices that create the space, or the container, for this meeting. It’s going to hold all the things you want to do in the meeting. It’s about creating safety and space for sharing and questions. You could have amazingly kind people who all care about the work and each other! Still, this doesn’t happen on its own. If you’re thinking, yes, it does, I always feel like I can share and discuss in a meeting and a lot of other people talk too, think about who rarely participates. Do they feel that way too? And why is that person in the meeting if you don’t want to hear what they have to say? Sure, learning is important, but asking questions is part of learning.
What I say here is not going to fix it if people generally feel unsafe to share in their workplace or on their team. If they’re belittled for their ideas, or are constantly talked over, one good meeting structure is not going to change that. But being intentional and setting up a meeting structure could be a part of a pathway to improvement - both through the meeting structure itself and an intentional and stated shift in how you work together.
This structure also helps with ‘invisible work’ and makes that work explicit, values it and rotates it, so you don’t have the same two, usually women or minoritized members of the team, doing this work and more people have the opportunity to learn these skills.
So, let’s finally get to it!
The 5 practices for creating an effective virtual meeting
Create a meeting agenda
Establish meeting roles
Curate the first 3 minutes
Plan for participation
Follow up
Create a meeting agenda
Why is an agenda important? It ensures you are able to discuss the things that are most important, lets meeting participants know what the meeting is about, and gives them a chance to prepare before the meeting, even if that’s just thinking about that topic for a few minutes so it’s fresh in their minds. If you have scheduled a meeting, then you should create an agenda, or ask the relevant person to create an agenda.
The “light-weight” meeting agenda
The meeting agenda can vary depending on the meeting goals. Meeting goals you say? How do I know what my meeting goals are? One quick way to think about it is “this meeting will have been a success if…” and fill that in for yourself.
Template agenda
Adding the amount of time per agenda item is optional. With a bigger group that meets less frequently, adding times to topics is helpful.
Welcome and meeting goals (2 min)
How the meeting will be be facilitated (1 min)
Introductions if needed (1-5 min)
Topic 1 (X min)
Need a decision on A
Topic 2 (Y min)
Identify any issues with B
Wrap up and next actions (2 min)
Establish meeting roles
The second item in that agenda list is ‘how the meeting will be facilitated’. This is the most important part for an effective meeting and creating that meeting container. You need clarity on who is doing what and how people can participate. That can be achieved by setting meeting roles and being clear on the expectations of these roles. This is not something I made up! There’s a lot of good information on meeting roles out there already.
These roles should rotate! They should rotate because it’s more difficult to participate in the meeting if you have one of these roles, so you don’t want someone to always be in that situation. Also, this work isn’t always as valued, so the people with less power on the team sometimes fall into these roles, which then can limit their participation. Also, importantly, people won’t be equally good at all of these roles, but these are skills that can be learned! And that takes practice! So, it’s an opportunity for growth of individuals and your team.
The Facilitator:
Starts the meeting
Welcomes everyone and shares meeting goals
Shares a link to the agenda
Lets people know if/how notes will be taken
Lets people know how to ask questions and participate (more on this in a separate post)
Goes through the agenda items
Wraps up the meeting and summarizes next steps
The Notetaker:
Takes notes on the meeting in the designated note taking location. Often this can be in the same place as the agenda.
Usually notetaking captures key points that are being shared, especially decisions and next actions. This is a skill! So, guide people, or provide feedback as people learn this.
The Time Keeper:
You need this when you have an agenda with time allocated for different topics. As a facilitator, it’s difficult to both pay attention to the people for facilitation and keep track of the time. So, the timekeeper just focuses on the time.
Keeps track of the time for each agenda item
Starts the time when a topic starts, lets people know when there’s one minute left, and when time is up.
If the facilitator says at the end of time “let’s spend another minute on this to wrap it up”, keep track of that time too.
Curate the first 3 minutes
So, you’ve done some light weight planning and know who’s doing what in the meeting. Here’s the next most important part of the meeting, the first 3 minutes. Well, the first three minutes after people have successfully joined, and you’ve done the ‘can you hear me’. That’s important too! It’s making sure everyone can participate fully. But this is the 3 minutes after that.
The first 3 minutes sets the tone for the meeting - how safe will people feel participating, will they feel included and understand the goals?
So, do these 3 things:
Start with a welcome: Welcome people to the meeting. Something like “thanks for coming, good to see everyone” works.
Share goals: Share the goals of the meeting. Something like “today we’re going to sync on project A, and get ideas for next quarter’s goals”, or “today we’re doing our usual roundtable updates, so people know what we’re working on and we can identify any blockers that we can help each other with”
Share how to participate: Let people know how they can participate, and if there are any participation expectations. Example: “Here’s the agenda for today (link to agenda). Person A and Person B are going to present on these topics, they’ll share, and then we’ll have time for questions and discussion. Person C is the meeting facilitator and Person D is the notetaker. To ask questions, raise your hand with the ‘raise hand’ feature and the facilitator will call on you in the order you raise your hand. We also have the meeting document, and you can type questions or feedback there, in the section under that agenda item. We’d love to hear from everyone, you’re here because you’re an important part of this project. So, I’d also love to hear from you after the meeting today, if you have more ideas”.
Then start with the agenda, let people know you’re starting with the first agenda item. “I’m going to hand it over to Person A to discuss the first item on our agenda”.
Subtopic: Introductions
Introductions should be the first thing on your agenda if you have new people or people haven’t met before. Introductions do take time, but you really can’t skip them. People can’t talk as easily with each other if they haven’t met. In The Checklist Manifesto, having the team meet each other before a surgery is one of the most successful actions for good outcomes from a surgery.
An introduction should be brief and not too personal. This is a work context, and people get to decide how much of themselves they want to share. An easy one is: name, pronouns, where you live, your role in the organization or project. Let people know in advance that they’re going to introduce themselves, so they can think about what they want to say. Also, have an order for the introductions, so people know when they’re coming up.
Plan for participation
Now that you know the goals of the meeting and who will be in it, do you know how the people in the meeting work best? Some people are best in a live meeting, some people need time to think about a topic and share their ideas. Some people are more comfortable sharing in a document than verbally. Meeting members may also have different accessibility needs. How can you ensure that everyone can participate and you can get the discussions and information you need?
One way to expand the ways people participate is through providing reading and writing time in the meeting. Introduce a topic, give people 5 minutes of just cameras off, and everyone can review the materials, and provide a Google doc for them to share questions or ideas as they review. Others are using surveys or polls, or creating a question that everyone will respond to. More on this separately (this is where I started to see that a handbook might be useful).
Follow up
After the meeting, share out a summary, particularly if there are decisions or next actions. This too should be brief. “Thanks for the meeting today. We discussed X and Y. We decided Z. Next actions are that Person A will share a document by Tuesday, and Person B will check on the status of Z and let us know via Slack.”
Wrapping up
And that’s it for effective virtual meetings! Ok, it seems like a lot to say “that’s it” when I’ve just written multiple pages on the topic. It will take more time to do this when you’re starting, but then it will just become something you and your team do, and it won’t be something that takes as much to plan. It’s also still good to do all the parts of the first 3 minutes every time, but once you’ve been doing that regularly, that will be faster and easier too.
Maybe I’m the rare person who is excited about how meetings can connect people and ideas, but I hope some of these practices can make your meetings more effective and enjoyable for you too.