Bad face to face meetings are bad enough, bad teleconference meetings are much worse
View this You Tube video to remind yourself what usually goes wrong
The following advice should help improve face to face and teleconferencing.
Please post your suggestions and I will update this advice
General Guidance for all meetings
Chairing a meeting
The basic rules
Dealing with difficult people
Video and Audio Meetings and Conferences
Etiquette with remote participants
Sustainable meetings
Software suppliers
General Guidance for all meeting
Send participants all the papers for the meeting, your version of this document, instructions how to use the conference software and a contact phone number or email that can be used in the meeting to the alert organiser about connection difficulties. Guarantee that everyone can open the same version of on line documents by creating an open folder on Google Drive or DropBox or put them on your website. Make sure all documents are in a format everyone can access. Discuss the agenda and agree timings with another member of the team beforehand. If a meeting is disorganised and overruns it may put people off returning to future meetings. Well timed agenda and meetings of 2 hours or less are more likely to achieve the meetings goals. Ensure strategic papers are at the beginning of the agenda and any outstanding actions from previous meetings have been reviewed at least 3 days before the meeting. Ensure there is someone to record minutes and action points and in tele-conferences to look for questions on chat.
Chairing a meeting
The key tasks of the chair during the meeting are:
- Getting through the business on time
- Involving everyone
- Reaching decisions
- Dealing with difficult people
The basic rules
1/7 The basic rules: courtesy and justice to all, consider one item at a time, minority must be heard but majority must prevail. As chair you should not impose your views or dominate the conversation but act a facilitator.
2/7 At the start all participants should be welcomed and told how the chair will invite everyone to contribute (e.g. in turn starting with remote participants) and how to indicate that they want to speak (e.g. raising a hand). In a teleconference questions can be collected via the chat option. If there are many people with questions or points, it may be useful to collect them on chat and then raise or reply to them in batches of three. This helps prevent people talking over each other and also gets around the problem of lag on conference calls where people can’t quite tell when to start and stop talking because of the delay on the line. Check if there is any other business not on the agenda.
Getting the sound quality/level correct at all meetings is crucial. Softly spoken and inaudible participants at face to face meetings must be made audible to all. Poor audio in video and audio must be corrected as soon as possible. Participants can have their voice/sound checked checks at the start of a meeting with the round of introductions.
3/7 Items on the agenda should be either for information or for action. Action items dictate an outcome either approved, denied or tabled until the next meeting
4/7 Chair must stimulate discussion and participation but keep the meeting focused on the agenda. The role involves restraining those who talk too much whilst encouraging those who are quiet, nervous, or new to meetings. If you can see everyone’s faces, it’ll be important to read expressions and body language. In remote meeting people don’t feel ‘seen’ as they are in an actual meeting, so they sometimes feel free to pull faces and react in ways they only do when they’re on their own. This makes it easy to see when someone is getting bored, offended, frustrated. Its good to call it when you see it, so everyone can be kept aware that they are being ‘seen’!
5/7 Chair firmly deals with any emerging items. Emerging items can be ‘parked’ as the meeting is conducted until the end of the meeting, then dealt with if there is time, or be new business on the agenda of the next meeting.
6/7 At the end of the session, make sure to provide attendees any relevant follow-up information and conclude with a strong call to action if relevant. Get the minutes and action points up in a shared folder ASAP. If you have a good minute taker they can be writing this doc as the meeting is happening so everyone can see the doc being built as they speak. This makes tidying up and final revision much quicker.
7/7 Chair asks meeting members once a year 1. Did everyone have a chance to speak 2. Did you have a chance to speak 3.Were decisions on the action items achieved 4.Were information items useful 5. Was business accomplished in minimal amount of time 6. were emerging issues dealt with effectively
Dealing with difficult people
· Remind people of the meeting rules, and that everyone has agreed to these.
· Be firm and consistent – don’t allow difficult people to get away with things and then come down hard on people you find easier.
· When two people get into a heated discussion, summarise the points made by each, then move the focus away from the individuals by asking what other people think about the issues.
· When someone keeps repeating the same point, assure them that their point has been heard, and then turn the discussion back to the group.
· If someone is continually criticising try to turn the question round to them, for instance “what suggestions do you have for how this could be improved?” or “what would you do in this situation?”
· On rare occasions you may have to deal with someone who is really disruptive in a meeting, and won’t listen to any of your helpful suggestions. If this happens, try asking all the group for support – e.g. ‘do people want to spend more time on this discussion or move on to the next topic?’ This may require a circle check of asking every person present. This will make it clear to the person involved that everyone, not just the chair person, wants to move on.
Video and Audio Conferences
1. The organiser and participants must know how to use the software and kit and be able to get it ready to use at least 10 minutes before the scheduled start time, or set aside the first 10 minutes of the meeting to establish the connections. Don’t start the meeting till all the tech problems have been sorted. Each attendee must have sufficient connection broadband speed – usually a minimum 8Mbps. If participants have slower connection speed or there are more than 15 participants then consider using audio only. Avoid public WIFI, cafés or public place. Everyone should be on laptops and not phones (no 3G or 4G connections!).
2. If the problem is Low bandwidth – close other apps, turn off video, use non VOIP audio like landline or mobile phone (not via WiFi)
3. Each participant knows how to use the device and conference software and the required meeting etiquette
4. Different conferencing software have different limits. For example, there may be a 40min timeout for the meeting so that it stops working when the booked time for the meeting expires (see Software suppliers).
Etiquette with remote participants
All remote participants should
Use a headset or earphones with a microphone and use the mute facility when not talking. This is to avoid sound feedback and background noises
Connect before the meeting is due to start – it is disruptive when someone joins late
Check sound quality for each participant
Avoid having a window or bright light behind you as this makes a poor video picture. Have the light source in front of you
Avoid conversations with other participants who are in the room, or making noises on keyboards, rustling papers etc
Follow the chair’s instruction about how to give views (see the basic rules for suggestions)
Sustainable meetings
Plan meetings and conferences that follow the Sustainability Development Unit’s (SDU) ‘Guidelines and good practice for sustainable events. Inform participants & delegates at every opportunity on the progress it is making towards sustainability, and to seek feedback regularly related to this strand of meetings
Web search using ‘Guidelines and good practice for sustainable events’ will give you the SDU’s pdf
Carbon-neutral medical conferences should be the norm
Sustainable events Guide - Give your large event a small footprint
Software suppliers
Zoom The company makes its money from sales of subscriptions to its platform, of which there are four tiers it currently offers. The first is its free tier, which it calls Basic; that one comes with the ability to host up to 100 participants, an unlimited number of meetings and 40-minute limit on group meetings. You can register for free and host meetings.
Skype (part of Microsoft) provides free video and voice one-to-one and group calls,
Google Hangouts is free video or voice calls, and group chats for up to 150 people.
GoTo Meeting is a subscription conference system that can accommodate up to 3000 participants
Ring Central is a subscription cloud based phone system that includes video conferencing
Webex its free plan gives you meetings with 100 participants, HD video, screen sharing, and a personal room. Use it as long as you like.
Tip: Zoom, GoTo, Webex are probably the most popular choices and have free accounts to get you started
