Want to have virtual meetings? In the age of coronavirus, here are some whys and hows.
With the virus raging and shutting down activities, virtual meetings are one of the important go-to activities to keep things going at work and at home with family and friends. They’ll become even more pervasive over time as the COVID-19 crisis wanes, and lessons learned with virtual meetings now will lead to making the meetings even better.
Virtual meetings can be a drag. But fear not. Five, ten even fifteen people in one virtual meeting where participants can see and hear each other, share drawings and documents can be super productive. What makes the difference between drag and productive? Agenda design and facilitation. That’s what we do at Conbrio; reach out to us for help. Done right, research shows, virtual meetings can mean gaining up to an extra day’s work in a week. And put $11,000 a year per employee in the bank. There’s a bump in innovation with online meetings. You’re able to produce more ideas, be more inclusive and continue to stay focused.
COVID-19 Ramping Up Fear
Staying focused and continuing to be productive are important antidotes to dealing with COVID-19. The pandemic is pushing more and more uncertainty on us. It’s robbing us of our freedom. It’s putting barriers up between our co-workers and friends. And doing so in ways we’ve not seen in a lifetime. From a psychological perspective, it’s wreaking havoc on every one of us, ramping up fear.
If you’re lucky, you’re having a Level 1 fear reaction to the pandemic. The science tells us Level 1 makes us alert to the broader environment. Level 2 puts our alarm systems in operation. Not a good place to be if we’re attempting to be creative. But normal for what we’re seeing as the pandemic spreads across the country. If you’re not so lucky, you’re at Level 3 panic. You’re trying to survive. Level 3 challenges our health, grabs all our attention. Many people are in Level 3 mode now, worried sick about parents, grandparents and children. And themselves. And they don’t have the psychological resources to deal with Level 3.
Getting SCARFed
Dr. David Rock, who leads the New York-based Neuroleadership Institute recently used his SCARF model to explain how we react to fear and COVID-19. SCARF is the acronym for five elements – status, certainty, autonomy, relating to people and fairness. I’ve cited the SCARF model in previous Potato Sack Chronicles. What’s going on with the pandemic hits the C, A and R of SCARF. And hits them hard.
When we lose control, when we can’t can go where we want, do what we want, when we’re quarantined at home, our autonomy is under attack. When everything is uncertain, when different leaders tell us different things, when actions by some and inaction by others don’t add up, we experience uncertainty.
And when we are quarantined, cut off, made to have social distance from one another, from family and friends, we experience loneliness and are at risk for losing compassion, too. In crisis, we are wired to come together in community to support each other. But with the pandemics, we can’t. In fact, should too many sick people show up at the emergency room at the same time, doctors may be forced to choose who gets treated and who doesn’t. Where will the compassion be in that?
Losing Our Empathy
The history of empathy in times of pandemics is bleak, New York Times columnist David Brooks recently wrote. When the plague hit Florence, Italy in 1348, Brooks cited this observation from writer Giovanni Boccaccio: “Tedious were it to recount how citizen avoided citizen…” In 1665, during the London epidemic, Daniel Defoe wrote, “This was a time when every one’s private safety lay so near them, they had no room to pity the distress of others…”
Anton Chekhov, a victim of the TB epidemic in Russia wrote in is plays during his recovery about people who felt trapped, waiting for events outside their control, unable to act, unable to decide, wrote Brooks. In later epidemics, including the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic in the U.S., only the health workers stepped forward. In Philadelphia, the head of emergency aid pleaded for help in taking care of sick children. Nobody answered.
Virtual Meetings Are Solid Remedies
Now in 2020 with the COVID-19 pandemic sweeping across the country, all actions we can take to manage our fear, including staying connected to each other, will be important. Focusing on virtual meetings may sound like going too deep into the weeds, but virtual meetings, virtual conversations via computers offer us antidotes to the fear around C, A and R.
The virtual meeting itself mitigates the problem of relating to each other. The science shows meeting up virtually decreases the pain of distance and increases senses of certainty and autonomy. Regular calls via Zoom, BlueJeans or Skype can be serious work sessions or like informal gatherings at the water cooler. Sounds corny, but you might even connect with someone or a group for an hour, not to talk but to just feel connected, to feel the presence of others while you’re physically alone.
Then there’s what you can do using a virtual meeting. With national public health guidelines in place advising no more than 10 people be in a room at the same time, you can lower the fear around uncertainty by going virtual to prepare colleagues and teams for what might lie ahead. Being open and honest during a crisis is calming. Being explicit where a leader might normally be implicit is even more calming. Shooting straight puts leaders’ empathy on display, letting colleagues and employees know they understand. Structuring the virtual meeting so all can participate although they’re remote makes for better relatedness.
Virtual Meetings Can Be Better Than Face-to-Face
You can amp up working together with virtual meetings. They can be even better than face-to-face meetings for focusing teams on shared goals, setting specific tasks and deadlines and follow-ups. In time of crisis, such engagement can be especially beneficial, science tells us, because it lowers the fear level.
Also, virtual meetings can give back the autonomy that people may feel has been taken from them. Because they can be scheduled at any time and as many people as appropriate can be included, virtual meetings give back choices on how people work. They provide control over work hours and days. Even locations. Such flexibility is often unexpected, and people who experience it feel rewarded.
How Conbrio Makes Virtual Meetings Productive
How do you make virtual meetings a WOW experience? Some you can structure yourself; others – an important workshop, retreat or conference you had planned on doing face-to-face – will benefit from outside help in agenda design and execution. Here’s what we at Conbrio know; here’s a guide:
Most virtual meetings – some think of them as teleconferencing – aren’t successful because they’re not designed for interaction. They are nearly 100 percent one-way communication. First one thing and then another delivered by someone who talks at you. In the most effective meetings, participants actually participate 30 to 50 percent of the time. People have time to think and reflect and every voice is heard. Our approach is to do agenda design to achieve maximum participation and collaboration.
Effective meetings allow for using sticky notes and to do so in ways that level the power field. We design and facilitate meetings so introverts and extroverts, bosses and assistants all can write and post their notes anonymously just as they would in a face-to-face meeting. We provide for virtual break-out rooms for discussion where meetings need to include them. We provide templates to work on and graphic recording to record conversations and decisions. And we take care the proper etiquette remains in place throughout.
Two Facilitators, Not One
Two, not one of us, work together to facilitate meetings, both to make sure the technology works as it should and lead the interaction among participants. We prefer technology that allows for both good video and sound so everyone participating can see and hear all participants. We prefer morning meetings lasting no more than two to three hours because that’s when the brain works best.
All these elements taken together allow for the creation of a safe container for us all to work in, to have the conversations we want to have, need to have but have not had. It allows space to work with what we know and ask the critical question “How might we…” and to brainstorm solutions. It allows for high-level insights. And for the work to move faster, many times faster than if you were working face-to-face.
So that everyone can do their best work.
Have a question?
Submit it to bbancroft@conbrioconsulting.com
I’m answering a few fascinating questions from readers about insight and how it reveals strategic solutions leading to creating conditions for people to do their best work. If you’re comfortable, include your first name and city. Anonymous submissions are fine, too. I’ll pick a question or two to answer each month. All topics are fair game, but if you’re looking for plumbing fixture recommendations, I can’t promise I’ll be all that helpful.
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