Let’s take Raul, a mid-level manager, who is about to lead a 15-minute virtual presentation to 16 of his peers scattered from North to South America. And we’ve now applied these rules with over 15,000 meeting participants. In one study we did, comparing 200 attendees of a face-to-face experience with 200 of a virtual experience, we found that when these rules are applied, 86% of participants report as high or higher levels of engagement as in face-to-face meetings. As we’ve done so, we’ve discovered and tested five rules that lead to predictably better meeting outcomes. We’ve spent the last few years studying virtual training sessions to understand why most virtual gatherings bore groups into a coma. The precondition for effective meetings - virtual or otherwise - is voluntary engagement. Since all of these are active processes, passive passengers in a meeting rarely do quality work. There are four broad reasons to hold a meeting: to influence others, to make decisions, to solve problems, or to strengthen relationships. In other words, you have to create structured opportunities for attendees to engage fully. In situations where you can’t demand attention with ocular oppression, you have to learn to do what we should’ve mastered long ago: create voluntary engagement. Participants feel some obligation to feign interest (even if they’re staring at their phones). When we are together in a room, we often compensate with coercive eye contact. Let’s face it, most meetings have always sucked because there’s often little to zero accountability for engagement. And it’s particularly annoying when you make a nine-minute argument, pause for an expected reaction, and get: “I’m not sure I followed you” which might as well mean: “I was shampooing my cat and didn’t realize I would be called on.” These days it’s hard to get people to pay attention in any meeting, but when people aren’t in the same room, it can be especially difficult. To get all of HBR’s content delivered to your inbox, sign up for the Daily Alert newsletter. In these difficult times, we’ve made a number of our coronavirus articles free for all readers.
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