© 2017 Antoni Lacinai & Mike Darmell
Virtual Meetings. Set them up. Lead them well. Reach your goals.
Edited by John Mattock
Design and cover illustration: Pia Lilenthal
Illustrations: Antoni Lacinai
Photograph: Petra Kyllerman
Published and printed by BoD – Books on Demand GmbH
ISBN: 978-91-7569-639-3
Ericsson asked…
Telia asked…
Volvo asked
”We know you can help us get better
at leading meetings. But what advice
can you give on virtual communication?
Virtual leadership? Virtual meetings?”
We squirmed a bit and gave a few quick tips, explaining that 80% are the same. But the other 20%… well, we didn’t really have much to say about that. Because the truth is that we are not too fond of virtual meetings!
Maybe we shouldn’t say that – especially to you, who just bought this book. Not to you, who might well think virtual meetings are the best invention since sliced bread.
We have a preference for physical (meatspace) meetings and believe in their power to drive people and organisations forward, but we realise they aren’t always practical, economical or good for the environment; road, rail or air, you spend time and money, and leave a carbon footprint. Of course, many of us would like to scrap meetings altogether, but it’s undeniable: interaction with colleagues (clients, suppliers, ‘partners’ in general) is important – wherever they are. Virtual meetings are an opportunity to communicate, discuss, strategise and build rapport – whatever the distances, however scattered the participants. Companies and organisations with ‘global reach’ spread across multiple locations and time zones use virtual meetings, remote teamwork, cloud-based collaboration spaces… all challenges to people – like you, probably – who place a high value on good communication between individuals, across silos and within groups.
With so many of our clients asking the same question, we accepted that it is time to delve deep into virtual meetings. We have interviewed wise, knowledgeable, experienced people; we’ve read their books and others’, and trawled the Internet; we’ve asked ourselves and drawn on our own experience –as employees of big companies and as independent consultants. As consultants, we’ve asked our clients what success factors and pitfalls they see.
And now, we have developed this guide for you who lead or participate in virtual meetings.
Note: This is not a technical manual for Adobe, Cisco, Microsoft, Citrix, telephone switches or any other product/technology. Not at all. Technology develops and changes constantly. The book would be old before it was printed (or downloaded).
Instead, it is a three-part manual:
You use this book as a starting point – a source of knowledge and a trigger for ideas. Pick and choose, don’t just try and follow these procedures blindly. As the Albanian saying goes:
Take advice from 200 men,
then do what you yourself think is best!
Maybe this will come as a disappointment. One CEO asked if we could provide a complete rulebook for his 30,000 employees. We said No. (Dear CEO, If you like you can buy this book for your employees and have a number of workshops where you derive your own optimal policy – a How-To, within which your people will take pride in ownership. Try it. Rejoice in your better-performing, dedicated staff. Measure the profit from the efficient, productive meetings and rejoice again!).
Out of all the tips that follow, choose those that suit you best. Meanwhile, if you come up with any approaches that you want to use that are not in this book, use them too. And feed them back to us, if you have a moment.
Email:
antoni@lacinai.se
micke.darmell@gr8meetings.se
Antoni Lacinai is the communications expert who is helping good people and organisations achieve their goals by improving their engagements with others. Typical topics for his lectures, seminars and coaching include presentation technique, successful customer calls, the art of performing better by setting the right goals and the craft of leading team meetings. He moderates conferences and workshops and writes books, blogs and chronicles about communication and motivation.
Mike Darmell is the meeting evangelist with over 20 years’ experience in the meetings industry. Starting off as a nurse, Mike changed career to marketing and event management. For seven years he has been running the company gr8 meetings, helping organisations to boost internal meetings – efficiency and effectiveness. He is also one of the most sought-after lecturers in how non-stop connection affects us.
Together we also authored the book ”Make Meetings Work” (2015), which you can find on Amazon.
Our purpose:
to help you have better meetings at work