I know, it’s been a long time working apart. Folks miss the energy and connections that came so readily from working together in person. While we’ve come such a long way in terms of creating engaging virtual meetings since March 2020, I think there’s still more we can do. Virtual or hybrid meetings do not have to be considered the “booby prize” that we have to simply put up with until we can go back to how we used to work. First, we’re likely not going to be “going back” any time soon and some of our meeting and group discussion habits could use a reset. Truly, there has been a lot of great learning and innovation in how teams collaborate that’s come from the shift to virtual and hybrid working.
If you want to take your virtual and hybrid conversations up a notch I bring you this week is my newest video tip called “Build with the End in Mind.”
It’s a meaty one, and I share what I see as the 4 key differences conversation and meeting leaders need to think about and design meetings for differently. (Here’s a sneak peek – think experience, rapport, distraction, and energy! The video is just about 6 minutes long and I explain these in the first 4 minutes.) I also 3 specific and simple tips you can use to make your next meeting more connected, more engaging and more productive, regardless of how that meeting is taking place.
TRANSCRIPT OF VIDEO
Hello everyone, it’s Carolyn Ellis from Brilliancemastery.com, and thank you for joining me for this short video today. This video is part of my Lead Conversations That Count series where I’m sharing tips, ideas and insights from my book Lead Conversations That Count: How Busy Managers Run Great Meetings.
In today’s video I want to focus on some of the key differences that we need to get a better handle on, take it up a notch. With the difference between running meetings in person and running meetings virtually or in a hybrid situation, the principle I want to share with you today is to Build with the End in Mind. You, as a person who’s leading this meeting, with the mix of working environments now, still a lot of work is happening virtually with people. There’s a lot where we’re going to be having hybrid situations. Some people meeting in person, and other people participating in that through some sort of video conference or other systems. There’s a lot more to think about if you want to design a conversation that counts that is inclusive of everybody, but is smooth for you to run. You can really be present to the people and not be overwhelmed and overloaded with the process and the technology of bringing all of this together.
What I’m going to do in this short video is I want to share with you four key characteristics that are different in the virtual environment that we need to think about than in person. At the end I’m going to share with you a couple of tips to help you to implement some of those ideas right away.
I see that there are really four key differences between a person’s experience of an in-person meeting and a virtual meeting. One is it’s no longer that collective Experience, it became more of an individual experience. What I mean by that is when we were in a room together, you know that you’re all in it. In the same room you were in the same boat. It felt like that. There was a sense of being part of the team. What’s challenging and what we need to design for better is to ensure that, even though we may be working as individuals behind our computer monitors and our cameras, that we are still building that sense of team cohesion, and that sense “one for all and all for one”. How our experience is different is something that we need to be aware of as we manage and Lead our conversations.
The second thing I think is really important is to think about Rapport. Rapport is something that was very easy and natural and organic, it just happened when you were in the room. Getting in the room, grabbing your coffee, sitting down having a little chit-chat before the meeting officially got started. Rapport is harder, it doesn’t happen naturally. We need to really design and make space for it now in our conversations. The problem is, a lot of times, I’m still seeing people really jam-pack their agendas full of the content and not leaving much time for the connection.
Third, Distractions. I probably don’t even need to say too much about this. Back in the old days when we were in offices, we could close the door. There might have even been a sign that says, “Meeting in Progress”, ”Do Not Disturb”, or something. The ability to keep people’s attention and their focus, and to relieve them of worrying about what was happening at their office or their home was quite simple when we worked in physical spaces together. Now we’re not doing that. Frequent constant distractions: home-front, schooling, dogs, somebody’s at the door making that next Amazon delivery to you, whatever it might be. Even if you aren’t actually experiencing a distraction, there’s a part of your mind is scanning saying, “Uh-oh, I hope that I don’t miss that call,” or “I hope that my kids get home, and they don’t make too much of the mess and set the dog off.” There’s that worry about the potential for distraction that, again, is adding to our cognitive load. It’s impacting our ability to stay present in a virtual meeting.
The fourth element that’s got to be part of how you think about building with the end in mind is about Energy. Being in a group of people is naturally enlivening. You sort of feed off of each other’s energy, reactions, the spontaneous laughter. When we’re sitting alone in our spaces on screen with each other it’s hard to recreate that. We need to build for that, otherwise, the default is probably going to be more of a draining experience again.
Experience, Rapport, Distraction and Energy. Those are things you really need to think about what’s different in this virtual working environment that we live in.
Here are a couple quick tips for you.
Open up the space. Don’t start your meeting with the first 75% of one person talking, going through the PowerPoint slides, then say, “Oh, we’ll have time for sharing at the end.” Flip it on its head. Open it up and say, “Let’s have five minutes. I wanted to ask a specific question and hear from people”. Open up the space for people to know that they can lean in, that they’re going to be expected to participate in some way, whether it’s verbally or whether it’s through the chat. Create that space to hear people’s voices up front. It’ll make a massive difference in your ability to keep people’s attention right from the beginning to the end.
Second thing is to consider, “What agreements do we need to make about how we meet?”. Normalizing the fact that distractions are going to come up. Here’s what we recommend for how you handle it, “It’s okay. If you need to turn your camera off to go deal with something that’s fine. Turn your camera’s off, put them back on when we know that you’re ready and able to participate fully in the meeting again.” We need to revisit and redesign some of those participation and group agreements about how we do our work together in a way that really works for everybody.
The third thing I want to really emphasize for you as a tip is energy management. That’s your job as the leader of that conversation to constantly be paying attention to what’s the energy of the group right now. Has it gone a little bit flat? A little bit bubbly? It’s not like you need to be throwing a lot of rah-rah statements and having everybody be really hyped all the time. You just want to notice other people’s energy. Is it maybe time for a breakout space because people need some time to re-energize and reconnect with each other? Do you need a stretch break? Do not underestimate the power of creating those little pockets of time for connection, for people to physically change their state so that they can get their energy back and get their focus up.
I hope those tips have been helpful for you today. I’d love to hear from you about issues that you’re facing as you work in this virtual and hybrid world. If I can be of assistance in any way, please reach out. I’d love to hear from you. You can just email me and we could set up a conversation. Thanks so much. I will see you again soon.
