Conference Calls
Easy to Be Virtual – Difficult to Be Productive

By Rosemary DiDio Brehm

It is now 1:55 pm on any Tuesday of any week….
Your desk is piled with project files; you have six phone calls to return in the next 20 minutes; and the CFO has extended your report until tomorrow, but it must be done this afternoon.

Suddenly, that familiar “ding” from your Outlook reminder rouses you from your anxious concentration:

Subject
Conference Call – Mandatory Team Meeting
Update due in 5 minutes

“Oh great, not today! The last thing I need now is to be on a call for an hour! They are never productive. Well maybe I can do some of this work while everyone else talks.”

With the rising costs and hassles of business travel and the trend toward employees working from distant locations, we are all spending more time in virtual meetings. While technology has made it efficient to bring people around the globe together inexpensively, these virtual meetings are not always getting the results for which we had hoped.

Put yourself in the shoes of our imaginary employee who wants to work through that conference call because experience indicates that the time spent is not productive. How engaged and responsive will his or her comments be?

Think about that employee’s boss who is paying for that team to put aside their billable hours or customer contact to have a team meeting that is supposed to improve team productivity, not reduce it.

Since ever-changing technologies provide newer, faster, better, cheaper ways to meet via the web or the phone, here is how you can make sure these efficient technologies are effective as well.

The Keys to Virtual Productivity are Planning, Pre-work, Participation, and Post Meeting Follow-up.

Planning

Whether this is a stand-alone event or a series of regularly scheduled virtual events, the planning is crucial.

• Identify roles for the Virtual events. If you need to meet for more than 6 months on a regular basis, you may want to swap roles.

  • Who is the event Facilitator/Moderator? You need a leader who is heading up the event. I recommend that you use the same person if you are having multiple sessions. If you need to meet for more than 6 months on a regular basis, you may want to swap roles.

  • Who is the note-taker? Find someone who is good at documenting information clearly and concisely. Establish clear deadlines for meeting note distribution.

• Determine meeting/event purpose. Do not “meet” just to meet. If nothing is needed for that month, consider skipping an event.

• Determine if content fits a virtual meeting format. If the answer to this is “no” or “not sure”, you may want to see if there are other meeting alternatives.

• Determine the fatigue factor to plan meeting length. It is better to have two 1-hour meetings than one 2-hour meeting.

• Determine specific goals/ tasks to accomplish - realistically.

• Identify participants. Limit the meeting to those who have the ability to help the group meet the goals/ tasks that you have determined.

• Determine how many meetings are needed to get the task done.

• Create a communication plan for meeting notifications and follow-up information.

• Establish meeting rules. Agree to meeting-management rules and ENFORCE them during the meeting.

Pre-Work

To keep the actual meeting time to a minimum and to make sure everyone is prepared to participate productively, determine what everyone needs to know or do prior to the virtual event and give deadlines for the pre-work.

• Create an agenda. Involve participants and distribute a week in advance.

• Distribute pre-reading. Send content out at least 2 days in advance and enforce “pre-work rules”.

• Do YOUR pre-work. Be a committed participant and come to the virtual event prepared.

Participation

• Engage everyone. Unless this is a video conference, we can’t see people’s reactions and need to have verbal input. The moderator should ask each person to share thoughts. People are allowed to “pass,” but be sure to ask.

• Manage “talking heads.” It is important for the moderator to step in when people take over the conversation.

• Refer to agenda to stay focused on meeting issues. Avoid doing other work during the event. Stick to the agenda and meeting goals. Finish as quickly as possible.

• Record action items and participant responsibilities. Distribute so people know what to work on between meetings.

• Assess participants’ emotions during event. Without non-verbal contact, the moderator needs to create a “safe setting” and find ways to gauge how the participants “feel” about the topic to see if further discussion is needed.

Post-Meeting Follow-up

• Stay connected to participants. Make use of “sharepoint” type portals, emails, phone calls, etc. to stay connected between meetings.

• Send meeting notes out with defined time /action plans.

• Moderator should survey participants after meetings to manage needed changes.

Bottom Line: To accelerate your conference call potential into productive results…. be sure to ask your participants what they need to make your phone conferences “virtually” perfect!

About the Author
Rosemary DiDio Brehm, President, turningpoint4results is a Certified Professional Facilitator and Organizational Development Consultant. She helps organizations turn strategic plans into completed actions. She facilitates the Tampa Bay Chapter of the Women Presidents’ Organization. Contact Rosemary at 813-960-7774 or rosemary@turningpoint4results.com