Facilitate Proceedings » Group decision support

Select virtual meeting technology to support the group process, not the other way around

Julia Young — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 20:22:11 +0000

Remember that old piece of advice: Don’t put the cart before the horse? The Number One Challenge that facilitators and trainers have with virtual meetings and webinars is: How to keep participants engaged? I suggest that this is directly related to the Number One Trap that we fall into when moving from face-to-face to virtual events: starting with a piece of technology and then trying to make engagement happen. While technology can accelerate great communication, meeting effectiveness and virtual teamwork, it cannot create it. Rather we need to 1) start with our meeting or learning objectives, 2) understand the different types of interaction we are seeking to create during different parts of our agenda or process and then 3) select technology to support the desired interaction.

In our workshops and webinars about leading virtual teams and getting great results from virtual meetings, we use the following schematic to discuss how to select virtual meeting technology to match the type of interaction we need.

So, you want to solve problems and generate quality ideas in your meeting?

Donna McAlister Kizzier — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 17:29:37 +0000

If solving problems or generating high quality ideas are among your primary meeting goals, which of the many meeting venues available to facilitators should you select? Face to face? Teleconferencing? Audio and video conferencing? Text messaging? Asynchronous or synchronous? With or without collaborative systems? Does it make a difference which meeting tools you select or the time frame you select? This month’s Research Brief addresses these questions, with a clear winner emerging.

As a reminder, each Research Brief refers readers to the full published article. Click on the link to read today’s full Research Brief. These Briefs are intended to communicate the results of my already published research to practitioners in the field. I appreciate and encourage your feedback; you are the best qualified to judge the relevant application of my research in the workplace.

Develop Your Team’s Cultural Literacy

Nancy Settle-Murphy — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 03:37:35 +0000

A client of mine, a manager of organizational effectiveness for a global services firm, recently posed this question: “Although our corporate HQ is here in the U.S., our company is run by teams of people located all over the world. Perhaps because many have limited experience working regularly with people of other cultures, most of the Americans—who are top performers here in the U.S.—seem to be struggling. I’ve been asked to coach a group of American managers to become more effective global collaborators. Any advice?”

In this post, I’ll share some advice for helping your team develop cultural literacy. Later, I’ll talk about how this translates into good behavior in team communications.