This article was contributed by author and professor Dr. Steven Rogelberg – see full bio below.
Dominate the competition
In addition to all the regular meeting problems we know about – from irrelevant agenda items to bloated meeting sizes – remote meetings are also plagued with unique challenges.
First, there are increased communication challenges. Without visual cues, the meeting is potentially fraught with people interrupting one another, difficulty finding a communication flow, and potential misinterpretations (e.g., sarcasm and motives are harder to detect). On top of all this, background noise coupled with poor connection quality, if present, serve to further undermine the richness of communication and the ability of attendees to coordinate their contributions.
Next, remote meetings are particularly subject to something called social loafing. This is a human tendency to reduce effort and motivation when working in a group, akin to hiding in a crowd. Social loafing increases the more anonymous one feels, and anonymity increases during the remote meeting due to the virtual barrier between team members.
The good news is that there is an evidence-based path forward. I have, and many others have, been doing research on meetings and teams for over 20 years. Meeting science has yielded key insights that can be incredibly helpful to meeting leaders, especially during this time that is marked by an increase in remote meetings.
The path forward
Dominate the competition
After interviewing hundreds of meeting attendees about meeting leadership, the best meeting leaders appear to have something in common: They share a similar mindset where they recognize their role as a steward of others’ time. Interestingly, leaders often adopt a stewardship mindset when the meeting is with important customers or stakeholders because they would never want these key individuals to leave the meeting saying that was a waste of time. But, stewardship is often disregarded when meeting with one’s team and/or peers. When you adopt a stewardship mindset, you become intentional with your meeting decisions from start to finish. Being intentional and making smart meeting choices do not take much time at all – it can take a minute of time with practice. I will break these choices into pre-meeting, during a meeting, and end of meeting practices all designed to promote a stewardship mindset and help improve the quality of your remote team or customer meetings.
