Great technology will never replace or be more important than the quality of the relationships we have. We need to really keep the relationships and the connection that we have with each other and with the mission, and then with the purpose of the work that we do together at our core. Otherwise, what we’re doing is we just have these virtual meetings more as a transactional kind of thing that we need to do, rather than as an opportunity for really creating something that can transform how our clients’ lives are impacted, the kind of work we do in the world, the kind of meaning that we get from the work that we do.

We need to build digestion times to our virtual meetings. Let me explain a little bit what I mean about that. We figured out so far that you can’t have the same length of time of meeting because people just don’t have the attention span for that as they would if they were in a real in person meeting. Fine. So, we made them shorter.

Here’s the big cost that we need to be worried about when we’re working virtually: the cost of people’s time, their attention, their goodwill, and their productivity. We need to think about those costs because they are so important. And once you squander them, you have to work super hard to regain the credibility to get them back from your people.

You might feel it yourself, but our attention spans are shorter than they’ve ever been. Distractions are higher than they’ve ever been. Here we are in a situation where we’re on our screens, everything’s pinging at us,  the temptation to go and just quickly check something else, rather than keeping our focus on that virtual meeting, is so high. Really think about how do you earn that next moment of attention from your participants. It is that stance of earning it. You don’t just deserve it, because someone works for you.

This has been a challenge, even when we were meeting in person — how do you really hear from everybody? How do you ensure that you’re getting a diversity of views and that it’s not just the people who are comfortable, maybe a little bit more extroverted with their leadership or their communication style, who are finding easy to make their points in a group discussion? What do you do about those voices that are a little bit held back or maybe need a little bit more reflection time? I acknowledge that this concept of being able to hear from everybody and tapping into the brilliance that is in the people that work with you has always been a challenge.

How you start a meeting is so important! It really sets an energetic tone and a space for the entire conversation, which is so critical. I think it’s an area where I’ve been noticing a lot of people are just blowing by how we start a meeting and often not doing it as well as we could.

When you think about taking the kinds of meetings that we used to have when we were meeting in person and making them virtual, it’s challenging. People are feeling a lot of pressure with that, there’s a lot to communicate, there’s a lot of information to share, there’s a lot of decision making that needs to happen. And, most importantly, you need to get some alignment from your team about what the heck you’re going to be doing these days, right? Things are changing so quickly!