Online Meeting Problems (and Solutions!)

Online Meeting Problems (and Solutions!)

by | Aug 11, 2020 | Facilitation Skills, Leadership Skills, Managing Conflict, Meeting Tools

Most have you have seen the hilarious, but oh-so-real “A Conference Call (in Real Life)” by tRIPP and tYLER (22 million views) that mocks dozens of common online meeting problems. While most of us now use video conferencing platforms like Microsoft Teams and Zoom, the problems are remarkably similar.

Whether you have seen it or not, the humor wraps around online meeting problems we’ve all had, continue to have, and will have again . . . 

Online Meeting Problems -- and Solutions!

Online Meeting Problems — and Solutions!

THE PROBLEMS

Online Meeting Problems . . . the First Minute

  • Uncomfortable small talk responses and inability to “connect” over copper.
  • Being interrupted by participants arriving late.
  • Echo and shrieking feedback from the audio give participants headaches.
  • Discussion about the source of the echo.
  • Notification sounds and other audible alarm distractions should be silenced in advance.

Online Meeting Problems . . . the Second Minute

  • Interrupted again by more participants arriving late.
  • A file link that becomes inoperable for those who are “required to download a plugin.”
  • Uncomfortable and delayed pauses waiting for the other person to speak again.
  • Participants talk over one another in an attempt to help.
  • Inability to determine the Operating System version, required to match up with the correct plug-in version.
  • Everybody then jumped in at once—again.
  • Voice and video get jumbled and no one understands the content contribution. or admits it.
  • Participant gets bumped offline and keeps talking because they don’t know it.

Online Meeting Problems . . . the Third Minute

  • Screen sharing causes the presenter to lose non-verbal feedback from participants.
  • Participants cannot see the speaker well because they have not “pinned” the speaker.
  • Group discussion spent on whether the contributor has been “lost” or “frozen” (again).
  • Participants made a significant contribution, only to discover they were on mute.
  • Others going adrift because of checking email, playing solitaire, etc.
  • Participants shout one set of fix-it instructions for Windows when they participant is using Mac OS (or vice versa).
  • Loudly barking dog (really loud that is, not a whimper or quick bark).
  • Interruption while the dog owner shouts disciplinary instructions to the dog.
  • An espresso machine in the background drowns out important content.

Online Meeting Problems . . . the Fractional Final Minute

  • Participants depart before the meeting ends.
  • Unsuspecting participant speaks up, previously unacknowledged, but attending the entire session.
  • Eager to add content, they discover key personnel now gone or missing, and therefore unable to share valuable content.

THE SOLUTIONS

You and your organization will NOT be able to do everything required. Most cultures simply won’t allow disciplined behavior, such as preventing meetings from going overtime. However, if you don’t try, the problems above will repeat themselves, and slowly become seen as “normal”, thus expected and tolerated by most employees.

Incredibly, most of your solutions have little to do with specialized business expertise. Rather, the discipline required derives from basic communication skills and interpersonal respect. There is no federal law, or ethical standard for that matter, that demands employers treat employees with respect. For most “at-will” employees, they have the liberty or option to simply quit if they don’t like the way they are being treated.

In addition to some basic online etiquette such as silencing your Notifications and No Hiding (turning off the video), here are some other solutions.

Communication Basics

  • When listening, do not assume. Rather, confirm. All too often we proceed as if everybody else understands the same words and situations as we do. Prudently, assume the opposite. There is typically at least one person in any meeting who views the meaning of terms or interpretation of the situation differently. Probably caused by different backgrounds, upbringing, and other life experiences, we should embrace and leverage the alternative point of view. Breakthrough and creativity are with new thinking. Innovation results from plurality, incongruity, seemingly unrelated, and other patterns of perception that represent the opposite of cloning yourself.
  • Structured icebreakers and warm-up exercises have proven the value of discipline. Simple structure such as having everyone answer an icebreaker question can create value and strengthen connections among employees. Small talk will not increase productivity like structured introductions, such as some form of an icebreaker. Studies are showing that icebreakers are particularly valuable when meetings are consistently held online, such as mandated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
    • Active listening mitigates many of the problems mentioned. By providing consistent and reliable reflection, everyone gets heard, and everyone hears what the other person said. With luck, the facilitator has also reflected WHY they said it. Remember, people speak about symptoms, not causes. You build consensus at a causal level, not by focusing on symptoms. People think “stink”, not prevailing wind. Likewise, people think “spicy”, not Scoville Units. And people think the “cost of living”, is not disposable income after all the bills have been paid.

Leadership Requirements

  • Meetings require leaders and the very best embrace a servant-leadership mindset that reflects the skills necessary to be an effective facilitator. Facilitators above all protect the participants. Someone needs to interrupt the interrupter. While it remains both unavoidable and acceptable for some to speak briefly about items not within the meeting scope, when the talk becomes a distraction, nuisance, or puts the meeting objectives at risk, the side conversations need to be effectively reined in by the facilitator.
  • Proper documentation should precede meetings. While difficult to imagine, participants should never agree to attend a meeting without a deliverable and an agenda. How many completely unstructured discussions have been worth your time? If so, then your time might not be worth as much as it should. Meeting invitations should include the meeting purpose, scope, objectives, agenda, and other necessary information such as access numbers, passcodes, PINS, SharePoint, file attachments, etc.
  • Virtual seating arrangements can be leveraged to ensure more effective “Round-Robins” so that all participants are afforded an opportunity to speak. Always provide participants with permission to say “pass.” Facilitators also need to be more effective and frequent with their use of Breakouts to stimulate and keep people moving. A multitude of activities, auditory, and visual stimulation adds to the Zen of the online experience, providing valuable texture in an otherwise flat world of flat screens.

Cultural Factors

  • Punctuality, time management, and respecting others’ time should become commonplace within your culture, rather than the exception. In team sports, much like team businesses, if players arrive late or miss the spot they should occupy, the team scores less often or yields itself to its competitors. Is business that much different? Extensive studies have correlated innovation, eco-sensitivity, and other factors with increased growth and profitability. We’re willing to bet that timeliness also correlates highly with profitability.
  • Effective facilitators enforce ground rules. Whether policing electronic leashes or challenging participants to make their thinking visible, ground rules help teams get more done faster. Enforce standards that playing games and multi-tasking are unacceptable behavior—clear violations of fiduciary responsibility.
  • Perhaps alone on this, common and brief background noises such as doorbells or brief barking don’t bother us at all. They are natural and mostly unavoidable in both our remote and office environments. Common household noises are no different than hi-rise elevator noise, PA (public address) systems, or shouting across cubicles. If they are not a distraction, who cares? (flushing toilets is a different matter entirely). We waste time fumbling with mute buttons, in addition to repeating content previously muted. Standard background noise such as a child running down the hallway causes few delays or wasted moments.

Equipment Issues

  • Enterprises and organizations need to step up and provide employees with more robust online tools. Cheap cameras and microphones waste time and money. Online meetings are here to stay. Even in a post-Covid world, the benefits to individuals, organizations, communities, and the planet are clear—working remotely can add value. Not everyone and not every day perhaps but ZOOM and TEAMS are not going away—ever (Until replaced by holographic equipment or some other, improved technology that benefits remote workers and reduces carbon displacement). Is there anything more annoying than a reverberating echo or loud screech caused by inferior equipment?
  • With some luck, manufacturers will improve their acceptance and use of universal keyboard commands. How do I pin that? Where is the mute? How do I switch cameras? We could go on and on, but it will benefit everyone to use and embrace some common keyboard commands, icons, and shortcuts so that we can seamlessly go from MAC to PC to iPad to phone without needing to completely re-orient ourselves. Is it too much to ask for a common keyboard command that pins the speaker or another that provides a Gallery view?

Finally: Specialized Training Helps

First, don’t expect to facilitate successfully online if you don’t have the training and skills to facilitate a meeting in person. If you’re not a trained meeting facilitator, now is the time to step up your game. Check out our calendar of professional ONLINE and on-site classes HERE.

That said… There are tips specific to connecting with your participants online. We attended Daniel Mezick’s class, Connect and Communicate: How to Teach ONLINE which will help you better connect with all your virtual people, and yourself. Daniel is a special person and a superb teacher.

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Don’t ruin your career by hosting bad meetings. Sign up for a workshop or send this to someone who should. MGRUSH focuses on meeting design and practice. Each person practices tools, methods, and activities daily during the week. Therefore, while some call this immersion, we call it the road to building high-value facilitation skills.

Our workshops also provide a superb way to earn up to 40 SEUs from the Scrum Alliance, 40 CDUs from IIBA, 40 Continuous Learning Points (CLPs) based on Federal Acquisition Certification Continuous Professional Learning Requirements using Training and Education activities, 40 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from SAVE International, as well as 4.0 CEUs for other professions. (See workshop and Reference Manual descriptions for details.)

Want a free 10-minute break timer? Sign up for our once-monthly newsletter HERE and receive a free timer along with four other of our favorite facilitation tools.

Go to the Facilitation Training Store to access proven, in-house resources, including fully annotated agendas, break timers, and templates. Finally, take a few seconds to buy us a cup of coffee and please SHARE with others.

In conclusion, we dare you to embrace the will, wisdom, and activities that amplify a facilitative leader. #facilitationtraining #MEETING DESIGN

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With Bookmarks no longer a feature in WordPress, we need to append the following for your benefit and reference

5 Highly Effective Words for Business Meetings: Warning, Proceed With Caution!

5 Highly Effective Words for Business Meetings: Warning, Proceed With Caution!

by | Jul 2, 2020 | Communication Skills, Facilitation Skills, Leadership Skills, Managing Conflict, Meeting Structure, Meeting Support

Research conducted by professor Cynthia Rudin of M.I.T. and student Been Kim, on highly effective words for business meetings, found that the words yeah, give, start, and meeting have a larger impact in meetings than other words.

However, while the discussion also made their list of effective words for business meetings—we warn you to be cautious. 

Effective Words for Business Meetings

Discussion or Concussion?

The word discussion is closely related to the terms concussion and percussion. Discussion signifies unstructured meetings.

WARNING: Unstructured discussions are the primary reason most people don’t look forward to meetings.

Unstructured Headaches

How’s that unstructured discussion approach working out for you? When you have a headache departing a meeting, it’s probably because the meeting was not structured and you’re not sure what, if anything, was accomplished. Even lousy movies or novels have three components: a beginning, a middle, and an end. Ever been in a discussion without one of those components? Unfortunately, all too often, we all have.

Therefore, let’s embrace the first four words and strive to avoid the fifth. In order to structure discussions, consider the analogy of the three activities of professional brainstorming:

  1. List (diverge)
  2. Analyze 
  3. Decide (converge)

One Activity at a Time

Groups can successfully complete any of the three activities, but they cannot complete them all at the same time, and certainly not without structure. Therefore, stop using the term “brainstorming” as a verb (and its surrogate term: discussion). Do NOT brainstorm something any more than you do NOT do Agile. You may be Agile and do Lean or Scrum, etc. Likewise, do NOT brainstorm or discuss, rather—list, analyze, or converge—but have your meetings focus on one activity at a time.

“Yeah” — M.I.T.’s Effective Word Number One

As a positive affirmation, Yeah comes as no surprise. We spoke personally with Dr. Max Bazerman at length. At the time, he was our Negotiation professor while attending the Kellogg School of Business in Evanston. His research affirms that some of the guttural expressions can be the most effective words used during negotiations as well. 

For example, the simple expression Huh, will incite the listener to respond. Note that the speaker is not saying “no” nor are they saying “yes.” Therefore, the speaker continues to unveil their position, providing additional insight into their true demands. 

The next time you are negotiating a major purchase, try it. For example, let’s take a new or used vehicle purchase. The sales associate stops with their reasons for you to purchase from them and you say huh. You have indicated that you are not rejecting their offer, nor accepting it. The term huh motivates them to continue, likely sweetening the deal even further with additional concessions or better pricing.

The word huh really says, “Tell me more.” When parties exchange more information the likelihood increases that they will find an integral solution, one that benefits them both. Without open communications, the participants treat the negotiations as cutting a pie, determining who gets the largest piece. Collaborative negotiators understand that carefully exposed positions during negotiations can lead to a bigger pie for both parties.

Neither party should expose themselves entirely up front, but be willing to barter and exchange for more information that leads to higher quality decisions. Expose too much up front, without reciprocity, and you risk being taken advantage of.

“Give” — M.I.T.’s Effective Word Number Two

People love to receive. Go to a major trade show sometime in Frankfurt or Las Vegas and watch people waiting in line to get a “free” chotsky or promotional product. People like to receive free stuff so much that there are dozens of terms and spellings used to describe what others give them including:

  • Bauble
  • Chotsky
  • Doodad
  • Freebies (free stuff)
  • Gewgaw
  • Gift
  • Giveaways
  • Goodie bag
  • Handouts
  • Knick-knack
  • Ornament (“ornamental festoon”)
  • Promotional product
  • Souvenir
  • SWAG, swag bag, ”Stuff We All Get” (the PG version of two variations)
  • Tchotchke, tshotshke, tshatshke, tchachke, tchotchka, tchatchka, chachke, tsotchke, chotski, or chochke 
  • Trinklet

While dictionaries want you to believe that such items are tacky, nondescript junk, and have “inconsequential value,” the eBay sales site proves otherwise. Plus, we’ve all heard about free iWatches and similar quality items that are given away at the Academy Awards and other award ceremonies. Free stuff can provide value.

“Research has uncovered that ‘grateful’, ‘happy’, ‘good’ and ‘awesome’ are some of the top words that come to mind after somebody receives a promotional product as a gift, and these are the type of feel-good emotions that people will generally want to pay back in terms of brand loyalty. It’s a real win-win for everybody.”[1]

Tell your participants that they are being given something and you will have their immediate attention. As always, however, avoid saying “I” and absolutely do NOT say that “I am giving you something.” After all, giving is about them, not you.

“Start” — M.I.T.’s Effective Word Number Three

Being from Indiana, you would soon discover that few, if any words have literally launched more horsepower among land vehicles than “Start Your Engines”, the command issued annually in May at the Running of the Indianapolis 500 (rescheduled in 2020 for Sunday, August 23). 

The word start signifies the transition from being passive to actively doing something. Borrowed from common dictionaries, we’re talking about . . .

  • To begin to work on, 
  • Cause (something) to begin,
  • To produce or give attention to (something), and
  • Set out on a journey.

The term start both incites and motivates. For example, more people look forward to the start of the fütball season than to the end of the season. While the ending games are well-watched such as the World Cup or Super Bowl, they also bring a bit of melancholy with them. Fans really don’t want the Big Game to end, but they always look forward to the start of a new season because it signifies a fresh opportunity. 

For you non-sports fans, you might equally look forward to the start of a movie, a party, or reading a treasured novel more than the end. Starts are universally acclaimed because everyone has hope and opportunity at the start. Especially if you are a Cincinnati Bengals fan, when there is much less to look forward to at the end, except at the start of the next season.

“Meeting” — M.I.T.’s Effective Word Number Four

Amplify your formality. Facilitators cannot afford to be lax and informal. Announcing the ceremony or event as a meeting or workshop carries serious implications we need to get something done. Frequently, the DONE is called a deliverable. Nobody wants more meetings but we meet a lot. Why? We need deliverables.

Substitute your use of the term meeting with two components:

  1. The deliverable or meeting output, what DONE looks like. A clear understanding that the primary reason for the meeting is not because we enjoy meetings, rather it’s because we need deliverables to accelerate the development of the products and projects that support our livelihoods.
  2. The agenda or meeting design, HOW you are going to lead your group from the start to the conclusion that builds a robust deliverable and concludes the meeting. Nobody wants more meetings or more time in meetings.

Summary: Effective Words for Business Meetings

Their research also indicates that . . .

  • You use these words in the right way and at the right time,
  • When used at the beginning of a meeting, they grab attention and increase focus, and
  • When used at the end of a meeting, they prompt a positive response.

Other interesting findings and conclusions from Rudin’s and Kim’s research include:

  • Compliments that are used to offset negative comments in meetings are frequently viewed as disingenuous, and therefore should be avoided (NOTE: Be kind, NOT nice).
  • Not surprisingly, participants want a conclusion. The worst deliverable from any meeting is another meeting. Participants would rather do a lousy job than need to meet again. We’re not condoning lousy, but we are suggesting that structure (and our proprietary approach to testing and ensuring meeting output) will both prevent “lousy” and ensure a sense of completion.
  • Yeah indicates agreement and sets the tone for building consensus.
  • Start grabs attention and creates focus by diverting the chitchat or silence to the topic of the moment. You can also leverage the term start effectively during your transitions from one agenda step to another.
  • Give triggers subconscious excitement over something potentially valuable.
  • Meeting amplifies the formality to get more done faster but can be substituted with appropriate synonyms such as ceremony, event, session, or workshop.
  • Discussion implies an unstructured headache and should be avoided.

Since the ending for a caterpillar is the start for a butterfly, treat your closings carefully. Continue to treat each end as an opportunity for a fresh start and your participants will give your meeting lots of yeahs.

[1] Source: http://www.ipromo.com/blog/swag-meaning-acronym-the-modern-definition-of-swag/

______

Don’t ruin your career by hosting bad meetings. Sign up for a workshop or send this to someone who should. MGRUSH workshops focus on meeting design and practice. Each person practices tools, methods, and activities daily during the week. Therefore, while some call this immersion, we call it the road to building high-value facilitation skills.

Our workshops also provide a superb way to earn up to 40 SEUs from the Scrum Alliance, 40 CDUs from IIBA, 40 Continuous Learning Points (CLPs) based on Federal Acquisition Certification Continuous Professional Learning Requirements using Training and Education activities, 40 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from SAVE International, as well as 4.0 CEUs for other professions. (See workshop and Reference Manual descriptions for details.)

Want a free 10-minute break timer? Sign up for our once-monthly newsletter HERE and receive a free timer along with four other of our favorite facilitation tools.

Go to the Facilitation Training Store to access proven, in-house resources, including fully annotated agendas, break timers, and templates. Finally, take a few seconds to buy us a cup of coffee and please SHARE with others.

In conclusion, we dare you to embrace the will, wisdom, and activities that amplify a facilitative leader. #facilitationtraining #MEETING DESIGN

How to Lead Online Meetings: No Hiding and Practical Tips

How to Lead Online Meetings: No Hiding and Practical Tips

by | Jun 5, 2020 | Facilitation Skills, Leadership Skills, Meeting Agendas, Meeting Structure, Meeting Tools

Research consistently reports that the three biggest, challenges of leading online meetings are:

  1. Technology challenges
  2. Distractions (keeping participants engaged)
  3. Participant buy-in and hiding (video)

In fact, running online meetings requires more skills than leading meetings in person. Groups are less impacted by your good looks and charm while getting lulled into some of the multi-tasking that occurs when they are checking in remotely.

Scheduling Online Meetings

While online meetings (including ceremonies, events, meetings, trainings, and workshops), work particularly well for reviewing progress and sharing information, online meetings are not optimal for all results and deliverables. Leading online meetings becomes especially challenging for kickoffs, largely attended phase gate reviews, when building consensus is critical, when the issues are argumentative or contentious, or when the situation involves highly political decision-making.

Facilitating Virtual Meetings

Online Meeting Considerations

Online Meetings are Particularly Helpful When . . .

  • Information and perspectives from a dispersed and diverse group of contributors remain critical
  • Ongoing work teams must manage complex issues and topics
  • Product development and process improvement demands daily updates
  • Team members are not unable to meet in person
  • There is no alternative

Online Meetings are NOT Especially Helpful When . . .

  • Challenging issues, arguments, or disagreements must be resolved
  • People are experiencing job assignment, information, organizational, or technology overload
  • Relationship building may be as important as the information
  • Talking face-to-face simply makes more sense
  • The technology gets in the way

When Leading Online Meetings — All or None and NOT Hybrid

When some participants gather in person and others remain remote, challenges surmount. Remote participants frequently feel like “second-class” citizens. The secret to creating equanimity is simple. If some people must “dial in” or “Zoom in”, then make everyone zoom in. It is much easier and effective to conduct online meetings with a full complement of remote participants, than trying to facilitate a combination of in-person and remote participants. And don’t forget, keep it small—five to nine.

1. “Spit Happens” — Technology Challenges

As the baby’s bib says “Spit happens”. Smart leaders ask participants to reboot their systems prior to logging in, including routers. Clean start-ups improve the chances for clean delivery. Even with stable systems, latency can cause up to a three-second delay between the time the first and final participants hear something. That’s huge. Even a millisecond can feel like an eternity to a facilitator.

Additional and collaborative meeting techniques and tools can speed idea generation and data analysis. They can also change group dynamics by allowing people to connect better and more frequently (i.e., breakout sessions) and even contribute anonymously (i.e., polling). While technology features may give participants additional time to think, when used in a distributed setting, they may also enable people to contribute at separate times from separate places. Some additional value-add includes:

  • Anonymous contributions may remove political overtones.
  • Everyone can see other’s contributions and build upon them.
  • Participants may work on the same topic at once.
  • Technology can increase flexibility to adapt to schedules, time zones, and travel budgets.

Setup

Optimally, the facilitator uses three screens: one for the gallery view or faces of the participants, one for static or transitory material such as legends or definitions for key terms, and one for the speaker view that includes dynamically changing materials, whether it’s an electronic whiteboard, the camera focused on an easel or some other shared screen platform.

Special Considerations

  • No hiding. Participants stay more fully engaged when they can observe and “feel” non-verbal clues and intonations.
  • Social factors. Trust and team-building needs increase and feeling connected with other people has become paramount with Covid-19.
  • Thirty to sixty percent of ‘meaning’ is communicated or expressed outside of the words that are used.
  • With English as a second or third language—do not assume that everyone is hearing or understanding the same meaning or intent.

Expect online meetings to take much longer to accomplish the same amount of work conducted in person

Invest heavily in scheduling and preparation:
  • Allow for extra time. Fifty minutes in online meetings may not accomplish as much as in person.
  • Communicate in local time, or explain how to calculate local time, when sending online meeting announcements.
  • Consider the impact of the volume of comments on time available when building the agenda. If everyone on a ten-person call provides input on a specific issue, and comments on average two minutes each, you can complete only two issues per hour (in addition to your introduction and wrap).
  • Get your tech together. Something will always go wrong, so have a back-up plan and use it. Consider building some “hand notices” to provide visual updates when you have audio challenges. We’ve grown accustomed to sending out four cards in advance to each participant, such as “I can’t hear you.”
  • Inform participants about files or sites that should have open and available.
  • Provide a written meeting purpose, scope, objectives, and simple agenda with clear expectations about what participants (ie, subject-matter experts) need to do in order to properly prepare, even 50-minute calls. Written documents increase focus by keeping everyone “on the same page.”
  • For more extensive workshops, send participants’ pre-read out two weeks in advance.

2. Human Connections — Distractions and Keeping Everyone Engaged

Keeping people involved takes a concerted effort from start to finish. Get off to a good start by setting a wonderful example:

  • Log in first and early. For working groups that know each other well, launch one of our countdown timers and always start on time.
  • Look directly at the camera when speaking. For all intents and purposes, the camera provides the eyes of each of your participants. If you’re not looking at the camera, then you’re not looking at them.
  • Consider assigning people separate roles such as timekeepers or specialized note-takers for each of the:
    • Action Items: to be assigned later if not volunteered immediately
    • Decisions: agreements, inflection points, and issues that are closed
    • Guardian of Change: specific communications about WHO needs to be informed WHAT about some issue.
    • Parking Lot: open issues to be assigned or confirmed later
  • Greet each person as they come online and assign a ROLL CALL sequence or virtual seating arrangement. Please smile when using video presence. Today especially we need more frequent human connections and confidence in our leaders.

Virtual Seating Charts

Seating charts (also known as roll calls) are indispensable and will be used frequently during online meetings. When running online meetings, assign a virtual seat in the sequence to everyone as they join the meeting.

Tell them where they are sitting at an imaginary U-shaped table so that they create a mental picture of the room and their orientation to the other participants. Use their seating to determine the roll call sequence for using at inflection points.

Based on who is attending, setup your breakout rooms in advance. Vary them by issue as appropriate. Some topics need homogenous groups that think alike and others need to be stirred up with heterogenous groups

  • If or when you have a hybrid meeting or participants who may be visually impaired, please establish and enforce protocol demanding that speakers announce their name (could be a nickname) when taking a turn speaking. The ideal protocol is “one name only” as verbs and prepositions add no value.
  • Install ground rules and then enforce them. Add the ground rule “NO HIDING” so that your video participants are expected to stay live and not hide behind a still photograph. Be flexible of course and allow people moments of turning off the video, but as an ongoing rule, we should all agree that no hiding should be expected.
  • Regularly remind participants where you are in the agenda to visually impart progress.
  • Transition smoothly for each step in the agenda as you advance.

NOTE: Icebreakers or “Where are you?” sharings remain particularly valuable in virtual meetings, even simple questions like “favorite ice cream” strengthen connections between participants located remotely from each other..

Etiquette and Quality

While the following reflects common sense, your role leading online meetings mandates enforcing discipline and standards:

  • Be aware of the impact of accents. Have participants slow down their pace and tempo, perhaps project louder, and explode their consonants.
  • Carefully manage cadence and control pace. Slow down during transitions and speed up during the middle of your agenda steps.
  • Consider body-stretching exercises during longer sessions and take a ten-minute bio-break every 60 – 75 minutes for longer sessions.
  • Decide how to reach each other if technical problems arise.
  • Do not permit multitasking. Remind people to “Be Here Now” to avoid keyboard sounds, barking dogs, and flushing toilets. Speak with violators after the session so that you do not embarrass them.
  • For video-presence sessions especially, beware of audio lag. Compression algorithms cause latency that varies up to three seconds. Be patient. Everyone does not hear everyone else at the same time.
  • Have participants put their cell phones in silent mode. Also have participants turn off notifications and secondary noise sources (e.g., landlines).
  • Silence is OK. Letting people catch up or catch their breath is natural.

Video-presence Tips

  • Set the camera at face height, or very slightly above.
  • Look directly into the camera (e.g., green light), not above or below, or to the side.
  • Lean forward at critical moments, cutting off your hairline.
  • Bring your hands forward slowly and in full view to stress key points.
  • Rely on hand-drawn artifacts more than PowerPoint slides
  • Place an analog clock in your background to indicate progress.
  • Always use an agenda pointer to visually confirm progress.
  • Use one social learning event per hour. Strive for a balance of 20-minute lectures, 20-minute interactions, 10-minute breakout sessions, and 10-minute breaks.

Other Differences Contrasted to Face-to-Face Sessions

Use your intuition. Be firm but flexible.

  • Add a second or third camera to your arsenal to point at an easel pad or whiteboard.
  • Break up long stretches of any one speaker sooner to prevent scope creep.
  • For decision-making points, with cautious precision, restate or repeat key issues as articulated.
  • Large floral prints, stripes, and bold patterns are not friendly during videoconferences. Plain-colored shirts and pants/ skirts are optimal. Also, avoid wearing white and red (don’t ask me why).
  • Restrict quick movements that disrupt participants, especially with poor video transmission.
  • Use breakout sessions frequently (where two or more go to a separate line or “room” with each other and then return to the large group to share their findings). Remember to appoint a CEO for each team for reporting back, and be more creative with Team Names than simply Team One, etc.
  • Use people’s names when appropriate.
  • When appropriate, go “a round circle” (round robin using your virtual seating arrangement) for inclusive participation. If participants understand where they are sitting, there should be no time lag. Everyone has permission to say “Pass” at any time.
Facilitating Virtual Meetings

Are your participants checking in or checking out?

3. Checking In, Checking Out — Participant Buy-in and Engagement

The likelihood of engaging multiple cultures in online meetings increases. Therefore, to maintain clarity, closely monitor elements that contribute to rhetorical precision:

  • Grammar—Remember to listen and stop processing content. Someone needs to be listening, and that role belongs to you. Use active listening to correct for imprecise word or grammar choices.
  • Jargon—Monitor carefully, such expressions as “shotgun approach” and “on the same wavelength.” Avoid idioms that are not universal such as “Don’t make waves” and thousands of other examples.
  • Local color—from idioms to accents, people need to slow down their rate of speech, enunciate, and project louder.
  • Officialese—your particular concern here ought to be acronyms or what many people call acronyms (technically, an acronym needs to spell an actual word). Even basic English abbreviations may not be understood by everyone, such as “P & L” or “AC” (air-conditioning or alternating current?) Groups can never be too clear, so be certain to use active listening to provide a clear reflection of what is being stated.
  • Slang—In Islamic and Buddhist cultures, a simple “thank God” may be considered blasphemous unless meant piously. Avoid even simple comments that lack precision such as “go for it”.
  • Vocabulary—After providing reflection, confirm that everyone understands what has been stated. If you sense that someone is holding back, consider a roll call approach (round robin) to have each person interpret how the most recent content affects them.

Facilitating Online Meetings: Special Emphasis

  • Before bio-breaks, consider a quick Plus/ Delta (aka Retrospective) and ask for immediate feedback on improvements or necessary quick fixes.
  • Enforce “Silence or Absence is Agreement” but solicit one-by-one audible responses for critical decisions and inflection points.
  • If you don’t want to ask each person to respond to a general query 
(“Do you understand the new procedure?”), ask questions so that silence implies consent, and tell them to speak up if “they can’t sleep at night” with the outcome. If necessary, remind them that they have a fiduciary responsibility to speak up and you will protect them, not reach down their throat and pull it out of them.
  • The larger the group, the more your meeting leadership skills need to keep select people from dominating online meetings. Remember, scope creep begins in meetings.

Preparing to Wrap

Throughout, emphasize reflection and confirmation of content. Too frequently, virtual participants are distracted and do not capture or retain as much as they do when meeting in person. Summarize, summarize, summarize . . . a “clear group” may be an oxymoron.

  • Offer each participant an opportunity for final/ closing comments. Consider “PASS” or “Just Three Words” for example. “What three words describe your experience with today’s meeting?”
  • Review and confirm next steps, assignments, and deadlines.
  • Summarize the meeting and end by confirming the next scheduled session.
  • Use the MGRUSH review, wrap, and Guardian of Change.
  • Use an evaluation form to improve subsequent sessions. A Plus/ Delta can also be completed at the conclusion or use electronic polling devices. For longer projects or sessions, send out anecdotal forms.
  • Distribute notes within hours after the meeting and emphasize the follow-up steps and responsibilities in your email cover note.

Finally: Additional Training Always Helps

First, don’t expect to facilitate successfully online if you don’t have the training and skills to facilitate a meeting in person. If you’re not a trained meeting facilitator, now is the time to step up your game. Check out our calendar of professional ONLINE and on-site classes HERE.

That said… There are tips and techniques specific to connecting with your participants online. Fortunately, we attended Daniel Mezick’s class, Connect and Communicate: How to Teach ONLINE which will help you better connect with all your virtual participants, and yourself. Daniel is a special person and a superb instructor.

______

Don’t ruin your career by hosting bad meetings. Sign up for a workshop or send this to someone who should. MGRUSH workshops focus on meeting design and practice. Each person practices tools, methods, and activities daily during the week. Therefore, while some call this immersion, we call it the road to building high-value facilitation skills.

Our workshops also provide a superb way to earn up to 40 SEUs from the Scrum Alliance, 40 CDUs from IIBA, 40 Continuous Learning Points (CLPs) based on Federal Acquisition Certification Continuous Professional Learning Requirements using Training and Education activities, 40 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from SAVE International, as well as 4.0 CEUs for other professions. (See workshop and Reference Manual descriptions for.)

Want a free 10-minute break timer? Sign up for our once-monthly newsletter HERE and receive a free timer along with four other of our favorite facilitation tools.

Go to the Facilitation Training Store to access proven, in-house resources, including fully annotated agendas, break timers, and templates. Finally, take a few seconds to buy us a cup of coffee and please SHARE with others.

In conclusion, we dare you to embrace the will, wisdom, and activities that amplify a facilitative leader. #facilitationtraining #MEETING DESIGN

______

With Bookmarks no longer a feature in WordPress, we need to append the following for your benefit and reference

Don’t Blame Meeting Failure on Your Online Meeting Technology

Don’t Blame Meeting Failure on Your Online Meeting Technology

by | May 5, 2020 | Communication Skills, Facilitation Skills, Leadership Skills, Managing Conflict, Meeting Structure, Meeting Tools

Whether you use Zoom, Teams, WebEx, GoToMeeting, or another online meeting technology, don’t blame the failure of your online meetings on technology. Why? Because you need to know what to do before you change how you do it.

Virtual meetings, Virtual meeting

Don’t Blame Failure on Your Online Meeting Technology

Just as an engineer wouldn’t attempt a complicated mathematical challenge on a calculator (or computer program) unless they first understood the process behind it, you, as the meeting leader or facilitator, shouldn’t attempt to lead an online meeting unless you understand meeting design and know how to lead meetings in person. In fact, once you know how to facilitate meetings, most of today’s online meeting technology becomes user-friendly. The point is, you need to understand what you’re doing, before you attempt to change how you’re doing it. (Consciousness before Competence!)

Even before Covid-19, people failed at leading meetings because they didn’t have an awareness of how to structure them, or know what techniques to use, to get more done faster. Those challenges have only intensified with the shift away from in-person encounters. To make matters worse, online meeting leaders are fumbling with electronic whiteboards, dominant personalities, and basic connectivity issues.

Where To Start?

Whether you’re teaching a class, organizing a league, or facilitating due diligence, your success depends on you knowing what to do, not how you do it. For example . . .

Teachers know what to include in a course syllabus. Once they do, it’s simple to vary how they get this information to their students, whether it’s online, oral, or print:

  • Course Description. …
  • Course Goals
  • Learner Outcomes
  • Course Method, Technique, and Activities
  • Grading Procedure
  • Policies. and Scheduling

If you are leading events, meetings, or workshops, knowing WHAT to do to comes first. Only then can you modify and master HOW you do it. Regardless if you are meeting in person or live online, do the following and become a competent leader of online meeting technology. Become both conscious and competent with what to do and you can invest less time worrying about how you do it.

Top Seven: What To Do for Better Virtual Meetings Regardless of Online Meeting Technology

  1. DONE

    Know what DONE looks like, carefully and clearly articulate your deliverable. Need we say more? (“Start with the end in mind.”—ok, we did)

  2. Prepared

    Inform participants in advance with written statements about the meeting’s purpose, scope, deliverables, and simple agenda. Hard to imagine accepting a meeting without knowing these four items, but it happens all the time. At the very least, use our 50-minute meeting template for these items. If you cannot fill out the template within five minutes, you are probably not ready to lead the meeting.

  3. Neutrality

    Exhibit servant leadership skills and remain neutral. There is usually more than one right answer. The fastest way to get a group of people to go quiet on you is to opine what you think. If you have the answer, then don’t have the meeting. Additionally, if you want one single tip on how to become a better facilitator overnight, stop using the first-person singular terms “I” and “me” as in “I think . . .” or “Please give me . . .”

  4. Diversify

    Experiment. Innovate. Challenge the obvious for proof. Stir things up. Try something new. Few techniques work better than shifting Perspectives. What would a monastery do differently from the mafia to manage this situation (or, vice versa)? What would Apple (Steve Jobs) do different with this design than Microsoft (Bill Gates)? How about Mother Nature (homeostasis)?

  5. Assignments

    When asking for someone to be responsible for an assignment, never allow two people to share responsibility. One and only one, so that there is no finger pointing “But I thought Jake was working on it.” Additionally, do not ask “Who will do it?”. Rather, ask “Who will take responsibility for reporting back to the team on the status of this item?” Frequently, the volunteer does not do it but assigns it to some of their staff when the meeting is finished. You are promoting effectiveness, as having one person contact many, is more effective than having many people contact one.

  6. Open Issues

    Do not assign any single person big hairy issues that could result in one or more products or projects. Rather, treat your meeting output or “Parking Lot” item as input to subsequent sessions when enough time has been allowed for breaking down the big issues into manageable, and compartmentalized assignments. Content Management provides an excellent technique by structuring the next session to take the issue and explore the implications or why we should care. Next take each implication, one at a time, as ask ”What should we do about it?” Answers to the “recommendations” question provide substance for the follow-up assignments.

  7. Continuous Improvement

    Seek feedback and assessment about your preparedness, skills, and leadership for the meeting. We know from experience that conducting an open “Plus-Delta” yields mostly creature-comfort crap that doesn’t do you any good. You don’t control the temperature, lighting, or food quality. Culturally we are taught to be nice rather than kind. Therefore, no one tells you publicly that you said “Hum” 37 times in five minutes, because we are being nice. The kind thing to do is tell you, albeit privately, so use a Post-Its activity in person or a whiteboard template online so that people can leave notes for you, protecting you while maintaining anonymity.

Don't Blame The Failure of Your Virtual Meeting on Technology

What To Do for Faster Online Meetings (Efficiency)

Top Seven: What To Do for Faster Online Meetings (Efficiency)

  1. Distribute in advance

    Distribute your list of detailed questions that need responses to participants in advance. Optimally, by meeting time, this is not the first time a participant has heard a question to which you are seeking responses. You need to take time to properly prepare for meetings and so should participants. Meetings are too expensive to treat lackadaisically (a term you won’t find in many blogs because it is a nightmare to spell).

  2. Build a lexicon or glossary

    Control the operational definitions of terms being used. We don’t have time to argue about the difference between a goal and an objective or a Mission and a Vision. These definitions should have been determined before your meeting. When such terms do get used, we should all strive to have a shared understanding of their meanings. For us by the way, objectives are SMART measurements and goals are directional and fuzzy (subjective), but that is not true for all cultures and there is no universal standard or answer.

  3. Explain the white space between the agenda items

    We call this contextual control. Be prepared to explain what agenda steps contribute. Why are they sequenced as such? What is the relationship between the agenda steps and the deliverable? What do we need from each agenda step (i.e., deliverable) that will get us out of here faster? Few events bog a meeting down faster than when someone sucks the oxygen out of the room and questions, “Now why are we doing this?”

  4. Use ground rules and carefully define consensus

    Not as the ideal state, but rather as an agreed-upon decision or position that every participant commits to support, even if it happens to be no one person’s favorite solution.

  5. Maintain disciplined punctuality and timing

    Enforce the ground rule “Be Here Now” to discourage electronic leashes. Keep virtual meeting participants in an audible mode (NOT muted) to prevent multi-tasking, since keyboard sounds are easily heard.

  6. Prevent scope creep

    Know your holarchy and the scope of the question you are asking. The meeting scope decomposes into the scope for each agenda step and decomposes further into the scope of each question or activity. Know precisely where you are, or anyone can take control. When participants ask questions, they shift their role from meeting participant to meeting designer. Ever heard the expression, “That person has their own agenda.”? You’ve all heard about scope creep and scope creep begins in poorly conducted meetings.

  7. Be kind but, NOT too nice

    Challenge participants to provide evidence and objective support for their arguments and claims. Consensus gets built around underlying causes, not overt symptoms.

Top Seven: What To Do for Transferring Ownership from Online Meetings (Mindfulness)

Don't Blame The Failure of Your Virtual Meeting on Technology

What To Do for Transferring Ownership (Mindfulness)

  1. Importance

    Develop a quantitative understanding of the importance of the meeting. What is at risk if we fail? How much money is being invested or how much FTP (full-time person) is committed? Look at the potential value of the product or project you are supporting. If it fails, what have we lost?

  2. Responsibility

    Stress their fiduciary responsibility. You’re responsible for protecting the participants but they are responsible for volunteering content. It’s not your job to reach down their throat and pull it out of them. Your meeting not only provides an opportunity for them to speak, their role as professional adults implies, they have an obligation to speak. If they have pertinent information about the topic and do not mention it, shame on them. They are violating integrity and you cannot control their integrity.

  3. Warm-up

    Conduct some type of icebreaker, warm-up, or get-to-know-you-better activity even if it is a quick, one-question answer (e.g., favorite vacation place?). Especially with your online communities, strive to permit and encourage more connections and relationship-building than you might in person. To this end, generously conduct breakout sessions, even if they are brief so that everyone gets heard while also becoming more appreciated for who they are and what they can provide.

  4. Exploration

    Explore outliers and seek to understand reasons for going beyond groupthink. We have all learned, perhaps too well, that voting is not a higher-quality method of decision-making. Voting yields bigger numbers, but not necessarily better results. Carefully craft a statement of purpose (WHY) and then separate your OPTIONS from your CRITERIA. Clarify your options (e.g., Definitions Technique). Prioritize your criteria (e.g., PowerBalls). Apply your prioritized criteria to your options (e.g., Perceptual Map, Decision-Matrix, etc.). Test your decision quality by asking “to what extent” the decision harmonizes and supports the purpose you started with.

  5. Alignment

    Have or distribute copies of the strategic stuff. Mission, Values, and Vision can help determine trade-offs during arguments. For example, we serve an industry where safety is paramount and safety provides a common appeal for resolving arguments. For them, the approach that appears riskier or more dangerous will be lost every time. Additionally, you should have the business unit and product objectives readily available. After all, nobody wants more projects, and nobody wants more meetings. We meet and conduct lots of product development and process improvement projects because we want the results.

  6. Communications

    Conduct a Guardian of Change (i.e., communications plan for the meeting results) activity when concluding your sessions. At the end of the meeting get everyone to agree on what they are going to tell their superiors and other stakeholders about what was accomplished (or not) during the session. It’s always a good idea to have participants sound like they were in the same meeting together. Especially with remote teams, where language skills are diverse and English may not be the primary language, determine the precise rhetoric participants should use so that superiors and stakeholders everywhere are receiving the same intended message.

  7. Hope

    Aim for outputs, hope for outcomes. You can only control what goes into the meeting and not what happens as a result of it.

Don't Blame The Failure of Your Virtual Meeting on TechnologyGood luck. Seriously, a little grace and karma never hurt a servant leader striving to conduct consensus-building group sessions.

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Don’t ruin your career by hosting bad meetings. Sign up for a workshop or send this to someone who should. MGRUSH workshops focus on meeting design and practice. Each person practices tools, methods, and activities daily during the week. Therefore, while some call this immersion, we call it the road to building high-value facilitation skills.

Our workshops also provide a superb way to earn up to 40 SEUs from the Scrum Alliance, 40 CDUs from IIBA, 40 Continuous Learning Points (CLPs) based on Federal Acquisition Certification Continuous Professional Learning Requirements using Training and Education activities, 40 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from SAVE International, as well as 4.0 CEUs for other professions. (See workshop and Reference Manual descriptions for details.)

Want a free 10-minute break timer? Sign up for our once-monthly newsletter HERE and receive a free timer along with four other of our favorite facilitation tools.

Go to the Facilitation Training Store to access proven, in-house resources, including fully annotated agendas, break timers, and templates. Finally, take a few seconds to buy us a cup of coffee and please SHARE with others.

In conclusion, we dare you to embrace the will, wisdom, and activities that amplify a facilitative leader. #facilitationtraining #MEETING DESIGN

______

With Bookmarks no longer a feature in WordPress, we need to append the following for your benefit and reference

 

Quick Tips For More Effective Meetings

Quick Tips For More Effective Meetings

by | Apr 4, 2020 | Communication Skills, Facilitation Skills, Leadership Skills, Managing Conflict, Meeting Support

Tips for more effective meetings

Today we bring you quick tips for more effective meetings. “Distribution Talk With Jason Bader“, a podcast that exposes…

“… the stories, struggles, and solutions from interesting characters who have chosen to make a career in the distribution industry.”
~ Jason Bader

In Jason’s interview with Terrence Metz, Managing Director and Lead Facilitation Trainer for MGRUSH Facilitation and Coaching, Terrence shares some quick tips for more effective meetings . . .

“You don’t build consensus around what people think. You build consensus around why they think it.”
~ Terrence Metz

Jason is a class act and a renowned distribution expert. On behalf of his clients and listenership, he asked for some quick tips to help his clients better prepare and deliver meetings to increase their effectiveness.

Neutrality Tips for More Effective Meetings

The 30-minute conversation begins by exploring the challenges of neutrality.  With experience dictating that there is more than one right answer, the scar tissue that builds up from “biting your tongue” teaches the ego to hide. We all prefer to avoid pain, and speaking causes more pain than listening. In fact, according to Terrence:

“Meetings are always more effective when the client speaks more than the consultant.”
~ Terrence Metz

Therefore, take your content knowledge and put it in the form of a question(s). Prepare the questions in advance and sequence them properly. Then you can afford to stand back and seek to understand. The neutral facilitator is most effective when, with heartfelt sincerity, they help the group seek the best answer for them. Not the universal answer or the best answer for everyone. Rather, it helps them find the best answer for them, given their situation, assumptions, and constraints. That’s what servant leaders are all about.

Define Consensus for More Effective Meetings

Consensus means everyone agrees. However, it also means that it may not be anybody’s favorite. Consensus means I might prefer something else, but the resolution is robust enough that I can support it professionally and, personally, I will not lose any sleep over it.

It also means that if you cannot support it, or if you will lose any sleep over it, we do NOT have a consensus. Therefore (if you are an employee in a for-profit organization), if you have a problem, you have a fiduciary responsibility to speak up. As well-paid professional adults, your point of view will be recognized and you will be protected from fall-out or damage, but speaking is incumbent on you. The facilitator must protect the people, but not be expected to reach down their throats to pull it out of them.

“For professionals, a meeting is not an opportunity to speak, rather it is an obligation speak.””
~ Terrence Metz

Meeting Method Based on Meeting Type

Facilitation bases its effectiveness on servant leadership skills. Core skills include speaking clearly, asking precise questions (properly sequenced), actively listening to responses, and observing reactions, all the while maintaining perfect neutrality (referees never grab the ball from the player to score). The combination of these elements implies some structure.

Structured meetings run contrary to the opposite, an unstructured discussion. People frequently have a headache when they depart from a discussion, which is not surprising. The term discussion is closely related to the terms concussion and percussion.

At the very least, a quick tip for effective meetings requires you to determine (in advance) to know what DONE looks like.  Are you . . .

  • Planning? (WHO does WHAT by WHEN)
  • Prioritizing (purpose, options, criteria)
  • Problem-solving (gap analysis or present-future comparisons)
  • etc.

Eight Meeting Killers of More Effective Meetings

Jason further explores a previous article on Facilitation Best Practices, linked above, and summarized briefly here:

  1. Participants ought to be prepared in advance, even if a culture shift is required (starts with leadership).
  2. Punctuality is critical so STOP one-hour meetings and run 50-minute meetings that give participants time to transition and attend to personal requirements.
  3. Always start with the end in mind, the single most important contributor to an effective meeting. This describes leadership, also called, line of site. Where are we going?
  4. Avoid structureless meetings called discussions (see above).
  5. STOP using the first-person singular term “I”. This is not about you and never was. This is all about them. Are you willing to serve or do you need to be served?
  6. As a servant leader, shut up and listen. (see chart below)
  7. Use ground rules to avoid unstructured discussions. (see above)
  8. Avoid hybrid meetings with some virtual and some face-to-face participants. Make them all or none and treat everyone equally. If not, virtual participants frequently get treated like second-class citizens.
Talk Time

Talk Time

We’re not trying to argue that the slope above is perfectly linear. Rather, the angle makes it clear. If you want to increase the likelihood of meeting success, shift as much airtime as possible to participants. When you talk the entire meeting (that sucked). When they talk the entire meeting (that was dope).

Three Things To Do for More Effective Meetings?

When asked for a few simple things for listenership to do differently to increase their likelihood of more effective meetings, Terrence says . . .

  1. Get off to a smooth start. Use our seven-step Introduction sequence to ensure a solid, five-minute start to any meeting or workshop.
  2. No hybrids — Avoid calling on virtual participants last. At the very least, call on them first. (During Covid-19, set up a virtual seating arrangement and use a roll call method).
  3. For staff meetings or regularly held “information-sharing” (or updates), embrace the three-question approach:
    1. Tell us, WHAT have you accomplished since we last met?
    2. What are you working on now?
    3. What kind of impediments or challenges might you have that any of us can help you out with?

Use the link below to listen to Jason’s interview with Terrence, and listen directly to Jason Bader’s website.

______

Don’t ruin your career by hosting bad meetings. Sign up for a workshop or send this to someone who should. MGRUSH workshops focus on meeting design and practice. Each person practices tools, methods, and activities daily during the week. Therefore, while some call this immersion, we call it the road to building high-value facilitation skills.

Our workshops also provide a superb way to earn up to 40 SEUs from the Scrum Alliance, 40 CDUs from IIBA, 40 Continuous Learning Points (CLPs) based on Federal Acquisition Certification Continuous Professional Learning Requirements using Training and Education activities, 40 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from SAVE International, as well as 4.0 CEUs for other professions. (See workshop and Reference Manual descriptions for details.)

Want a free 10-minute break timer? Sign up for our once-monthly newsletter HERE and receive a free timer along with four other of our favorite facilitation tools.

Go to the Facilitation Training Store to access proven, in-house resources, including fully annotated agendas, break timers, and templates. Finally, take a few seconds to buy us a cup of coffee and please SHARE with others.

In conclusion, we dare you to embrace the will, wisdom, and activities that amplify a facilitative leader. #facilitationtraining #MEETING DESIGN

______

With Bookmarks no longer a feature in WordPress, we need to append the following for your benefit and reference