Facilitating Virtual Meetings

Especially now with all meetings being held virtually, ensuring that everyone has the opportunity to participate has been more difficult than at in person meetings. Even with cameras on it can be hard for individuals to jump in; additionally, more quiet team members tend to be left out entirely. I have not been leading as many large meetings since turning to virtual work, however when participating in a meeting where I find myself talking a lot I like to pause and allow others space to join. If I recognize myself as being a dominating presence in a meeting, I challenge myself to listen without commenting unless absolutely necessary. If I do speak, I try to pass the floor to someone who has not been sharing, asking them if they have any thoughts. Thankfully, I have not had to deal with any outright conflict in a meeting. If conflict did occur, I think similar techniques would be helpful in allowing both sides to respectfully voice their viewpoints uninterrupted.

Virtual meetings present an entirely different set of problems that in-person meetings, but I think there are some advantages for the facilitator. The situation where an individual who is prone to interrupting or talking over others can still happen, but some of the tools available in online meetings such as the hand-raising icon can be helpful. When I'm in a meeting where I'm anticipating unequal participation, taking a round robin approach to calling on individuals and announcing that up front can help everyone have a chance to speak. Asking people to use the raise hand icon or present the questions in the chat allows for more control over difficult conversations. Having multiple ways for participants to communicate can help "equalize the playing field" so to speak.

I agree with you both, Amy and Karen. For those that tend to be more dominating in conversation, it is helpful to recognize that and take a step back, listen, and maybe "pass the baton" to a team member who doesn't always speak up when they have an idea. I also have personally used the hand raising icon in Microsoft Teams (where we hold all our meetings now) and it works well for our team. Not having our cameras on makes talking over each other a common occurrence, and since mandating having cameras on didn't go over well at the start of remote working, we've been left to just "deal" with the issue. 
We have one team member who has very strong opinions about things and often has difficulty communicating those in team meetings, so we established Ground Rules that are listed on all our team meeting agendas now and are read out-loud at the start of our all-hands team meetings. These have gone over very well and more people feel inclined to speak in meetings knowing that one team member will not diminish what they are saying or even become condescending (which we have de-escalating language ready in case it occurs). 

Jamie  would you be able to share the list of established ground rules?  While we have a starter set in this month's materials, it would be helpful to see another example.  Thanks!

Here you go! Jessica

Team Meeting Ground Rules.pptx 43.2 KB • Download

I find virtual meetings very challenging to run, especially as the team size keeps growing. While using the cameras help, I do find it harder to ensure people aren't multi-tasking and are appropriately participating. I agree with the previous statement that the quiet ones in the group, fade even more into the background and don't speak up. There is a lot of silence at times, because people don't want to "unmute" and jump in. Its definitely different than the in-person meetings, where collaboration was more natural. I've tried be more intentional with having an agenda, with names next to specific topics, for these virtual meetings. I'm curious of the ideal size of virtual meetings. What's too big? Also, I feel like we were all thrown into the virtual world, without much training or ground rules established.

I agree with the challenges stated already about balancing meeting participants who have strong/vocal opinions with those who might be more reserved. In addition, I have noticed some other challenges with virtual meetings, most stemming from the barrier to attending compared with attending in person. If attending in person, that means someone had to take time to walk to a conference room and was harder to multitask when face-to-face with others. Virtual meetings allow for more people to participate easily, which can have downsides. Meeting sizes have grown, possibly so people do not feel excluded. As a result, a meeting could include people who are less invested in the meeting agenda and therefore multitasking or not contributing.  People also feel obligated to accept an invitation, which results in people being pulled into too many meetings. The glut of meetings can sometimes make it hard to find time to schedule around people's schedules. When I have tried to narrow the attendee list to those who I think are most essential to the work at hand, I have inevitably heard from others who wanted to attend "just to be in the loop."  Sometimes, having people representing disparate groups makes it hard for others to perceive the objective of the meeting. Wondering if anyone feels this way - or maybe I am just Zoom-ed out after a year.

Rebecca and Prabhu - the multitasking is so much more difficult in virtual meetings and I am guilty of it at times, especially at larger meeting where you can fly under the radar! However even at larger in person meetings in my department people were constantly on their work phones or work iPads. Did anyone else deal with that also in person? How did you get individuals to refocus on the meeting (especially if they are higher ranking in the organization than you)?

I agree with much of what has already been said. Facilitating large meetings can be difficult. It is difficult to tell how engaged all the participants are and multi-tasking is definitely an issue (and Amy, I agree, the issue of people on their phones/ipads during in person meetings was also quite common!).  In addition, we have a large weekly COVID all partners call and often find one or two people will monopolize the time, often for issues that are not relevant for the entire group and several times they have also had a pretty disrespecting attitude. You don't want them to feel like you are completely blowing off their concern but I have needed to redirect them to have those conversations off line so that the group can get back to more relevant discussions. They continue to do this on a weekly basis however. 

Another issue that has come up as some staff are still virtual and some staff are in the office, those that are virtual may miss out on pre/post meeting discussions and idea building/decision making that can occur at that point. As I have been virtual, this has happened to me several times. 

One thing I have found helpful for large virtual meetings is to have a designated person (or two) to monitor the chat, raised hand feature, or people's faces to see if they are trying to talk,  to ensure all questions are addressed.

I agree with everything that has been said so far. We have a lot of the same challenges as well: too many virtual meetings, too many attendees, and we have a few individuals who use the virtual meetings to essentially review their to do lists/their personal agendas (which as stated by Joli are not relevant to 95% of meeting participants). I do think the raise hand feature and chat features help, but as a facilitator, I find it difficult to perform all the functions at once: monitor the chat, see who has raised their hand, facilitate the discussion, admit attendees, take notes, etc.

The best solution I have found to dealing with difficult (dominating or complaining) personalities and conflict is to E.L.M.O. the current conversation and set up a separate meeting specific to the issue at hand that is monopolizing the current meeting. It is important to let the person (or people) engaged in the discussion know that you understand the importance of their concern, but that it is best addressed offline.  For smaller meetings, I usually go round robin to make sure everyone has a chance to voice an opinion.  For larger meetings where round robin is not practical, I usually call on the SME or individuals most involved with the work who should have an opinion (even if they do not voluntarily voice it).

I have seen all personalities in virtual meetings described in the training video. (I wasn't the facilitator of all the time.) Multi-tasking while attending virtual meetings is more and more prevalent. I can tell from my personal experience that this usually resulted in unproductive results in all tasks that I try to deal with at the same time. I think the solution lie in both meeting organizers and attendees. The meeting organizers need to be selective on who should be invited, and make sure the meeting is scheduled at the time when everyone is avaiable. The attendees need to selective on which meeting to attend. If they expect to have other commitment at the time when the meeting is scheduled, then acknowledge it, either politely decline and ask for updates afterwards, or propose a new time.  

Since January, we have been convening weekly (Tuesday afternoon) meetings between staff at the State level in our Division of Acute Disease Epidemiology and our Regional Epi Response teams. As some background, South Carolina has a Centralized Health Department structure where all Regional and County Public Health employees are part of the same State Health Department. So, from that perspective, we have been fortunate that we have had a long-standing history of our Program area interacting with our Regional staff long before COVID (i.e. we would have monthly meetings (via phone) and quarterly face-to-face meetings with our Regional Epi Program Managers and Regional Epidemiologists).

That being said, COVID infused a larger number of staff at both the State (the establishment of the Agency Area Command Center (i.e. ICS-activation) and the Regional (i.e. Regional Coordination Centers) levels.  

I say all that because what used to be about 25 people on a conference call became upwards of 90-110 people each Tuesday afternoon. 

On these calls we would put forth new COVID Epi-response guidelines and take questions from the Regions and find out if what was proposed would actually "work" at the local level, where the rubber meets the road.

What I've found effective is:
1. Sending out a "call for topics" email ahead of the meeting asking for topics or questions folks want to address.
2. Having an agenda created and followed during the meeting,
3. Only using the audio functions of any web-based meeting platform,
4. Requiring that people "raise their hands" if they have questions or comments.
5. Not being afraid to say "well, we can't decide that today, we'll take it back and bring it back up next week".
6. Follow-up of decisions and reviewed guidance being distributed to all involved parties via a single "Update xxx" email (chronologically from the beginning of the COVID response, where "xxx" is the number of Updates sent out with guidance and information for people to reference).

Point of fact: Our "Update" emails are now up to 108, we we had to archive Updates 1-100 and make the historical record (to include hyperlinks to supporting documents) available via our Division "COVID Response" SharePoint sub-folder that staff have read access.

This came out of "trial and error" early in the course of the Pandemic when tensions were high and decisions needed to be made. Sometimes, they can't be made immediately and one of the key functions of public health is to use both data and experiences to drive decision-making.

These meetings continue to occur, each Tuesday afternoon, same number of people still attending, so perhaps that's my "metric" of success that it's working :)

- Dan