Those pesky conference calls

I've drawn from CIO.com's Esther Schindler's work before ("If you died, would your online friends know?") and I'm certain I will again as she's paying attention to the right stuff (at least so far as my concerns go).

She's done it once more, this time with "Running an Effective Teleconference or Virtual Meeting." Now, I've been railing against the endless lists of pointers about virtual teams, some of which are true contributions to the fields, others that are just passing thoughts, but this one from Schindler's article strikes me as quite insightful:

• Log on 15 minutes before the start of the meeting, since some online products require downloads and installation.

• Be aware of background noise.

• State your name when you speak.

• If you catch yourself multitasking, be responsible for your full participation.

• Turn off cell phones and PDAs.

• Stay out of your e-mail.

These pointers come from page one of the article. All four pages are reading-worthy. There is but one point that I take issue with, based on the research I keep hauling out from the best-practice study we reported with Ann Majchrzak and Arvind Malhotra, "Can Absence Make a Team Grow Stronger?", Harvard Business Review, May, 2004. That research states unequivocally that two of the very best uses for virtual team meetings are brainstorming and decision-making. Schindler's article quotes DePaul University associate professor Daniel Mittleman:

"When you are brainstorming everyone gets to contribute ideas," Mittleman explains. "When you are consolidating ideas, some ideas get swept off the table. People don't like to give up their favorite ideas. They like it even less virtually." That's because people have no sense that everyone else understands their pet idea, and no perception that their own interests were accommodated. Mittleman advises. "This is why many virtual decision making meetings fail. It is not enough to lead a group through a vote; it is vital to lead them through buy-in to the results of that vote. Buy-in requires a sense of being heard and a sense that one's interests have been accommodated—or at least understood."

Sorry, Prof. Schindler. I agree that intuition might suggest otherwise but then there's the data...Our best-practice teams used such meetings precisely for these purposes and excelled.

Comments

[Armine]

With some products www.livelook.com conference calls are considerably shortened. No problem with log on mentioned above neither downloads and installations required.

Armine