Michael Sampson on Making Collaboration Work

Keys to Effective Virtual Team Meetings

 

Meetings between virtual team members are different to in-person meetings, and different dynamics come into play. Here are five keys to maximizing the effectiveness of virtual team meetings.

 

What Type of Meeting is This?

Offers a classification of four types of "meetings", and recommends ways of handling each type of meeting in a virtual team situation.

 

 

"We hold meetings for different purposes, and some of the meetings that we hold for in-person groups don't make a lot of sense for virtual teams (and often they don't make sense for in-person groups either!). Some of the reasons for holding a meeting when people can meet easily in-person are better handled in other ways for virtual teams."

 

Read the article online, at Michael's blog.

 

High Quality Video Conferencing with the Tandberg 1700 MXP

A review of the Tandberg 1700 MXP video conferencing end point, for meetings between New Zealand and the United States.

 

"We had our first meeting a couple of days ago. Being able to see their reactions to my questions was very helpful ... even more than I thought it would be ... I haven't met any of these people in person before, so having a face to put a name to, and seeing how they evidence thinking was very powerful. It was almost as good - almost - as being there. I got to see what the office looked like, what books they had on their desks, and so on. All of the cues that you get when visiting in person but miss with an audio conference or phone call were back. I felt ... like ... part of the team ... even though I was thousands and thousands of miles away."

Read the article online, at Michael's blog.