Most virtual meetings are crap (including mine)

Chances are you didn’t join your non profit because you wanted to sit in meetings.

Way before Covid made virtual meetings ubiquitous, I was already concerned with the amount of time clients said they were in meetings that felt unproductive.

Now that we can meet virtually anytime from anywhere, my sense is that crappy in-person meetings have transformed into even crappier virtual ones (made only slightly tolerable because we can wear PJ bottoms).

• You’ve seen the passive stares from colleagues as they’ve tried to multi task stealthily.
• You’ve seen the empty black box that is representing a colleague who decided to walk their dog instead of sitting through this meeting.
• You’ve seen the colleague who probably shouldn’t be at this meeting, but got roped in via a rogue calendar invite.
• You’ve not seen the colleague who should definitely be at this meeting because they are the decision maker and it’s worthless to have the conversation without them. 
• You’ve seen the person holding the meeting soliloquize to an unappreciative mix of dead-eyed faces and black boxes.
• You’ve heard the ping of a Slack message and have witnessed a subsequent distracted gaze.

I’ll own up to the fact that I’ve led my fair share of crappy virtual meetings. Despite my dedication to always having a purpose, outcome and process (POP) for each meeting I run, I find overcoming virtual hurdles to be hard.

Some ideas I’m considering:

• Co-creating “how we show up” guidelines with regular meeting attendees to clarify engagement and “quality of presence” expectations.
• Taking more time to clarify the POP with attendees along with engagement expectations in advance (including making sure the right people are in the room).
• Asking participants to rate the quality of each meeting anonymously with opportunities to provide suggestions.
• Using this amazing AI notetaker Mark turned me onto because it creates spot on themes and action items to hold participants accountable.

It’s going to take all of us to transform crappy meetings into better ones. What have you found helpful?