Here are a few things that I find helpful on phone meetings – I don’t always use all of them all the time, but when I do, they help! Some of them are from Nancy Kline's inspiring ideas around “Transforming Meetings“. I hope you find them useful.
- I prepare agenda items in the form of questions, because questions open up thinking (whereas lists close them down) and I ask people to read the agenda and come with a couple of thoughts to begin to answer the questions – that helps to get things flowing early – eg rather then “Budgets” it would say, “What do we need to consider in relation to the budget?" or similar.
- Once I know who is coming, I send round a list of “order” as if people were in a circle around a room. They then know who they are “sitting” next to. It seems to help with flow.
- Others need to know who is on the call and who is not so as people arrive in, if I am Chair I say very clearly –“Everyone – can I just let you know that Fred Blogs has arrived" - and I say, "Welcome Fred” – I do this for each person joining for about the first 3-5 mins. In my pre-meeting email I ask that if people arrive more than 5 minutes into the meeting they stay silent and then I will introduce them at the end of the first “round”.
- As Nancy Kline would say, “people haven’t arrived till they have spoken”, and sometimes people don’t say much more than hello so they haven't really engaged. So once we feel that the meeting should start (after waiting, as above, for 3-5 minutes) I do a quick “round” with an open question like, “ Can you say your name and then tell us something that’s currently going well for you in your life or work?” or “something that’s going well on this project?” or “something that has made you smile recently?” This gets the pleasant hormones, brain waves and thoughts flowing nicely. I ask them to go round as per the order I have sent them (e.g. please go to the right) or go next down the list if I’ve sent a numbered list.
- Everyone is reminded to say their name before they speak. And that if they don’t contribute to the conversation they will rob us of their gifts! I ask them to “be abundant” or "generous with their thoughts" and it often works beautifully.
- One of the hardest things is to get people to pay the same attention as they would in a face to face meeting. If it’s a new group and I think the meetings might need some good boundaries to kick us off the first time, I will ask at the start – “can we think for a minute about the things that drive us mad in other telemeetings we’ve been to? “ Typically they will say things about people not listening, multi-tasking, typing or reading emails, leaving the meeting and not coming back, interruptions, background noises, etc . I then ask – "So how can we make this meeting different?" The ideas will flow and flow. And from that we can agree some ground rules / "a contract" that will make the meeting quicker and more effective. (I personally have to turn off my computer screen otherwise I am tempted to read mails!) These "ground rules" can become the norm for subsequent meetings.
- When we come to an agenda item, we do a round and each person says something about it. If they want to miss their turn they can, so it goes to the next one but they have to say “I’ll skip for now”. If everyone has said what they want to say I will ask anyone who skipped if they’d now like to say anything. If not we move onto next agenda item.
- Interruptions are seriously avoided and we make that clear in our contract, but in exchange for not being interrupted, people are asked to be succinct. When they have finished talking on a subject they are asked to say “I’m done” so we know they have finished and someone else can speak.
- If thinking stalls completely I suggest a break of 10 minutes and ask people to come back on the EXACT agreed time (otherwise we have to start the whole thing again with latecomers!)
- I personally don’t explicitly tell people they can use the mute button on their phone because if they do, they might then think it’s OK to multi-task because they cannot be heard typing or doing something else. If they do multi-task, the meeting will definitely take longer. And people will not feel as if they have been listened to, which is key to creating an environment where everyone contributes their finest thinking.
Just a few ideas, and I hope one or two might be useful for you!
