I think we’ve all been there; stuck on a teleconference line waiting for people to show up – the constant pinging and announcement of others arriving (late!) whilst you’re trying to get the meeting started. That’s only the beginning – what about the teleconference that goes on forever, listening to the crackly line and train annoucements at deafing levels in the background. You could say it’s worth it when the host asks an attendee a question and you know the cough and splutter is them quickly trying to think on their feet and not make out that actually they’ve been checking email for the last hour.
Penny Pullen at PMI Global Congress
Sound familiar?
Penny Pullen from Making Projects Work took to the stage at the PMI Global Congress last week, the very last slot of the Congress – the graveyard slot – but pulled in a large crowd that were all eager to learn the Seven Secrets of Virtual Meetings. It was easy to see why it was such a draw with a vast amount of the audience spending 5-10 hours a week in virtual meetings and an incredible 5% spending over 20 hours! The types of organisations these project professionals worked in ranged from outsourcing, pharma, IT and software development. With an increase in outsourcing; global projects; restrictions on travel and the increase of people working from home, virtual meetings are pretty much a firm fixture in our working lives. Yet we still grumble and most of us think these meetings are ineffective and pretty much a waste of our time.
How many of us feel that nothing happens after the conference call? That there is a feeling of being disengaged from the call and the conversation? And how many people have been in calls where there has been misunderstanding, or where humour has backfired?
Before we look at the seven secrets, there are some considerations to bear in mind when scheduling or taking part in virtual meetings:
- Timezones (scheduling at suitable times for everyone, or at least switching weekly meeting times so the colleague in the States is not constantly up at midnight!)
- Seniority (of the attendees – are they comfortable with the technology)
- Urgency
- Cost of failing (if it’s high, consider face 2 face instead)
- Creative session or problem solving (set the tone and process accordingly)
- Cultural differences
- Enthusiasm and energy ( you need it, so why have calls when people have already done a full day’s work?)
- Success criteria
- Level of trust
- Split the meeting (if you need to host a long meetings, have breaks after 1-1.5 hours – the optimal time for teleconferences)
So considerations in mind, what are the seven secrets?
- Technology is not the silver bullet – the behaviours have got to be right and you should always be prepared for tech failure
- Make the most of Different Time – Different Place
- Preperation is crucial (take a look at the meeting template from Penny)
- Give up on control
- Create a level playing field – stop having a mix of people on the telephone line and others in a meeting room. If someone can’t make the face2face meeting – everyone should be on a teleconference line
- Keep people engage – keep meetings short, have breaks and let people know you’ll be polling them later and asking for their input.
- Check for intentionality – what is their intent about taking away an action
There was a brilliant answer to a question from the audience; “How can you make sure people turn up on calls in time?”. Penny’s answer? Tell the team that the first 5 minutes of the call will be a gossip share of everything that’s going on in the project! Oh and yes and send out reminders but that’s no way near as fun or interesting 
For more information on Penny’s work in Virtual Working take a look at the virtualworkingsummit.com
Image – Olando7
