by Karoline Shenosky

COVID-19 continues to create significant challenges for the professional workforce, not the least of which is conducting productive meetings in a virtual environment. Over the past year, Rockwood Company has designed and facilitated hundreds of virtual meetings with clients and their stakeholders. In these meetings, we might brainstorm new concepts, design visions and strategies, develop roadmaps, gain buy-in on a way forward, extract customer needs, communicate progress, or deliver on many other objectives. Through this work, we have discovered or created successful methods for making the most out of a virtual environment. We hope these practices will help you make your next virtual meeting rich with deep thinking and honest discussions.

Consider Attendees Carefully

Successful collaboration often means bringing a diverse and expansive group of stakeholders together. However, including too many participants in a virtual meeting can prevent the group from addressing critical taboo topics or complex challenges. Typically, the most efficient way to achieve the desired outcome is to first brainstorm and draft a solution with a smaller group, and then bring in other stakeholders to vet the solution and offer upgrades. To maximize team performance, Rockwood recommends inviting no more than 7 participants (not including the facilitation team) to working meetings. When a meeting includes more than 7 participants, the participants tend to operate as if in a large group, thereby reducing the chances for productive collaboration and ideation. Carefully consider which stakeholders will bring the most value to the discussion and make sure to invite participants who represent a diverse set of critical organizational perspectives and have influence or authority over the outcome.  

Use the Right Platform

Zoom, Microsoft Teams, WebEx, and Adobe Connect are all useful platforms for hosting virtual meetings. You will want to select your platform based on the intended outcomes and design of your meeting.  

• Zoom and Microsoft Teams are ideal for meetings with group participation and collaboration activities. Both platforms have interactive “reaction” features (e.g., thumbs up or heart symbol) and breakout rooms to segment large groups into smaller groups to brainstorm and solve problems more effectively. Depending on security constraints, you may consider acquiring a government license for the platform to ensure the highest level of privacy available.  

• WebEx and Adobe Connect are effective platforms for large, conference-like meetings or presentations with minimal interaction from participants.  

• Skype is an alternative solution for screen sharing with small groups. 

Provide Experiential Technology Tutorials

At the beginning of the group’s first meeting, provide a 5-minute tutorial on how to use the meeting platform. Then, introduce an icebreaker to let participants play around on the platform so they are comfortable with the features early in the meeting. For example, you can ask each participant to share their childhood nickname with the group and have participants use the voting feature or annotations to indicate the vote for the best name. This activity creates group intimacy while also increasing familiarity and proficiency with the tool.  

Establish Working Norms

At the onset of the initial meeting, establish ground rules or norms to ensure a working environment where the participants feel they can honest and collaborative discussions and make decisions in an effective manner. Some examples of working norms include: 

• Keep your camera on and microphone muted (unless you are speaking) 

• Stay focused, do not multitask during meetings 

• No side-bar discussions or tangential conversations in the chat  

• Keep an enterprise perspective, not an organizational perspective 

• Do not criticize an idea, provide an alternative solution 

• Make decisions based on majority vote  

Incorporate Activities into the Design

Participants’ active engagement is key to productive virtual meetings. Incorporate frequent activities into the agenda. Simple requests will focus participants’ attention and increase engagement throughout the facilitation. For example, you might ask participants to: 

• Annotate comments on the shared presentation 

• Use the virtual “hand raise” feature to ask a question 

• Submit a comment in the chat box in response to a question  

• Vote on the best answer to an icebreaker activity 

Other methods for keeping participants engaged include utilizing multiple facilitators and speakers, using break-out rooms for small group discussions, and performing live knowledge capture on a shared screen so participants can both see and hear the discussion. 

Build in Frequent Breaks

A full-time virtual environment may leave individuals sitting at their desk for 8-12 hours every day. Sitting in chairs for long periods of time staring at screens is not only physically unhealthy, it can also lead to cognitive challenges (e.g., brain glitches). Taking a 10- to 15-minute break every 70-90 minutes and encouraging participants to take a lap around their house/office or stretch in place during the break can positively impact the group’s productivity.  

In addition to the above best practices, Rockwood leverages many other tools to help organizations design and implement effective (and, yes, even fun!) virtual meetings. Reach out to info@rockwoodcompany.com to see how we can help you design and facilitate your organization’s next virtual meeting.