Cast your mind back to your last conference call or virtual meeting. When it was over, did you think that it had been the best use of your valuable time? Many leaders don’t think so. The good news is that there are simple ways to keep your virtual meetings effective and engaging.

The people I interviewed and surveyed for my recent book, Virtual Leadership, shared stories of virtual meetings and calls going awry. In this blog post, I will cover four of the most common problems, plus how to avoid them:

 

  1. Meetings start late and overrun

A typical conference call starts a few minutes past the hour. I found this out from Pete Bennett, founder of Buzz Conferencing, who shared some of his company’s call statistics. He told me how, rather than starting on the hour as planned, he sees a huge spike a few minutes past the hour, as people join conference calls late. While virtual meetings don’t need people to travel, participants do need links and pin numbers. Often people only start looking for these at the meeting time itself, when they should be joining in and introducing themselves.

Another aspect causing delay is that leaders tend to pause the meeting to update late joiners. This gives the unfortunate impression that it’s perfectly acceptable to be late!

What can a virtual leader do here?

 

  1. Only a few people are involved, while others stay silent

Engaging remote participants comes up as the biggest challenge of virtual working in all the surveys I have run! It’s very easy for remote participants in your meetings to be distracted by everything around them: their work e-mail, social media or even the latest game on their phone! Several people confessed to being present for the start of virtual meetings and then ‘checking out’ mentally until they heard their name. Then they’d respond: “Could you repeat the question please?” and only then be back in the meeting.

What can a virtual leader do to engage people better?

 

  1. Not covering the main points

I suspect that, like me, you’ve experienced a call where the leader jumped straight into the first topic, with very little introduction, and the meeting time was up before you had covered anything else. Too many virtual meetings lack a clear purpose, which means that they drift and run out of time before everything is covered.

What can a virtual leader do to make sure that the purpose is clear?

 

  1. Lack of focus on actions

Too many calls and virtual meetings end up achieving very little, because people are unsure as to what actions they need to do and not knowing how, or even if, their actions will be followed up. Often no one knows who volunteered to take particular actions on. This usually happens when a unidentified, disembodied voice volunteers and the leader is reluctant or forgets to ask who is speaking!

What can a virtual leader do to make sure that actions happen?

Here’s my visual summary for how to start any virtual meeting effectively. Try these steps out today, along with my tips above, and you’ll notice just how effective virtual meetings can be.

Card size

Virtual-Leadership-Cover-for-webIf you would like a copy of Penny’s book, Virtual Leadership, then you can use the coupon code VLF20 to get 20% off and free P&P in the UK.

See Penny talk about Virtual Leadership.