A Virtual Meeting Is The Same Thing As…

Oct 12, 2020

How to Make Virtual Engagement Easy

A Virtual Meeting Is The Same Thing As…

A Virtual Meeting Is the Same Thing As…

3 Useful Metaphors That Will Help You Design Better Virtual Experiences

Because my job involves helping others make virtual engagement and connection really easy, I am often asked an elemental question: What are virtual meetings like?

To find answers, I typed a simple query into Google: “a virtual meeting is the same thing as …” and let search suggestions fill in the blank. The dropdown list finished my sentence, alternatively, with “a humidifier,” “a ticket” and “a pressure cooker.” 

Reframing the Virtual Meeting: Think of It Like …

Inspired by what I found, I’d like to give you three new lenses to view virtual meetings through for a fresh perspective, so that you can make them more productive, impactful and effective. You can use these metaphors to reframe virtual meetings for yourself and others.

Here’s what these three metaphors could mean for your virtual gatherings.

A Humidifier

I wanted to learn more about the first term my search returned. So I asked Google, What does a humidifier do? Well, according to MayoClinic.org, humidifiers ease problems caused by dry air. Based on that alone, I would say a great virtual meeting is like a humidifier in the sense that it infuses something into the air to make problems go away. Really, any good meeting should do this.

In her book, The Art of Gathering, Priya Parker talks about the value of meeting for purpose rather than for time. Yet often, we don’t meet with a purpose or problem-solving intention, and instead come together merely because we have a meeting on our calendar.

To go back to the humidifier, what it does—putting it in unscientific terms—is essentially inject water into the air to make it a bit more breathable. I would say really great virtual meetings actually inject a number of things into a group dynamic that help ease problems in that group.

So I want you to think about virtual meetings through this lens, and ask yourself the question, “What can I infuse into my team in this meeting?” Then consider how you can invite your team to crowdsource that infusion. As the leader, you’re not solely responsible for bringing positive things to the group dynamic. You can ask for them, too.

On any virtual meeting platform, you can invite people to quickly share in the chat one thing they really want to accomplish by the end of the meeting. Once everyone types their responses, you’ll essentially have an instant written agenda. By comparison, at an in-person meeting, it might take 20 minutes to go around the room while everybody shares their piece.

A Ticket

To really simplify this, let’s start with the obvious. Tickets suck—at least that’s true for traffic tickets, like when you get pulled over for speeding—and sometimes virtual meetings suck, too.

Human beings are not made to be confined to a three-foot-wide box and glued to a screen. We have the world’s most amazing autofocus device—two of them in fact—our eyes. Yet what do we do with that capacity? We spend our days staring at a screen that’s 20 inches away from our faces.

All that to say, virtual meetings are not the same as meeting in person. You have limited context and some aspects of virtual meetings just kind of stink. When everybody is on mute, and something funny happens, you can see everybody laughing, but you don’t actually hear it. That vacuum of digital silence takes something away from the humanity of the experience.

But to take the ticket analogy a little further, I would say there’s a benefit to tickets (and the traffic laws they enforce). It might be hard to appreciate this if you’re the one getting fined. But the threat of getting a ticket prevents people from driving 120 miles per hour on the highway and recklessly endangering others on the road.

In the same way, there are also benefits to virtual meetings. Like a ticket, these meetings help create structure, and without that, we’d have chaos.

There are also some huge upsides. As leaders and educators, you get to choose which angle you emphasize. I wrote this book because there are things that we can do virtually that we can’t do in person. There are things we can actually do better virtually. Each chapter is filled with tools and examples meant for you to ruthlessly reinterpret and apply to your own context. 

Think about brainstorming. It takes a lot of effort to avoid groupthink when you’re meeting in person. That’s because we usually honor the extroverts—they talk first— and we don’t give people time to really think and process information.

When you’re meeting virtually, you can invite people to shut off their cameras. Then you can ask everyone to write down five ideas for solving a problem, putting each idea on a different sticky note. Over five rounds, you can have each person hold up one sticky note at a time to their camera. If you have three people in a meeting, you can share 15 ideas in a span of less than five minutes with this method.

Now compare that to trying to come up with 15 ideas during an in-person meeting, which could take an hour. That’s just one example of how we can creatively use the remote meeting format to our advantage.

A Pressure Cooker

If I think about a pressure cooker, I want to take out whatever I’m preparing at the right time. Maybe I put a pork loin with some sauce, onions and spices into the sealed pot, which uses steam pressure to cook. I want the meat to be totally tender, but I don’t want it to completely dissolve or fall apart.

Thinking about this from a hosting perspective, it’s always best to end a party while it’s still fun. I would say this applies to virtual meetings as well. If you’re noticing that people appear to be a little burnt out in a meeting, you should have wrapped up 10 minutes ago.

Now there are times when you might need to meet for a longer period of time. But if you do, make sure to incorporate regular breaks to turn off your camera and check in with yourself. Think about what your brain and body need, and encourage others to do the same. Take a stretch break and come back refreshed.

Don’t just take the kind of “break” that’s really code for catching up on email and returning to the meeting as quickly as possible. That doesn’t actually help us to be refreshed and offset Zoom fatigue. Remembering the pressure cooker, make sure to take breaks before people are exhausted.

As you approach your next virtual meeting, try to think of it as being like a humidifier, a ticket and a pressure cooker. These three questions summarize the mindset and momentum each of these metaphors can help create.

  1. A Humidifier: What can I infuse into my group?
  2. A Ticket: How can I focus on the bright spots of this pixelated world?
  3. A Pressure Cooker: How can I end the party while it is still fun?

Looking at virtual meetings through these three lenses can make connection and engagement easier online as you meet, work and collaborate remotely.

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