Better Online Meetings

From crackly conference lines to pixelated video, virtual meetings can be problematic. But you can host a productive conversation in which everyone participates. Running Virtual Meetings takes you through the basics of: Selecting the right virtual venue Giving participants the information and support they need to connect and contribute Establishing and enforcing a common meeting etiquette Following up from afar Don't have much time? Get up to speed fast on the most essential business skills with HBR's 20-Minute Manager series. Whether you need a crash course or a brief refresher, each book in the series is a concise, practical primer that will help you brush up on a key management topic. Advice you can quickly read and apply, for ambitious professionals and aspiring executives--from the most trusted source in business. Also available as an ebook.

Do your virtual meetings feel like a drag? Learn how to use rituals to build trust, increase engagement, and spark creativity. We rely on virtual meetings now more than ever. However, they can often feel awkward, monotonous, and frustrating. If you’re not thrilled with your virtual meetings, rituals can help your group break through to better results by providing structures that unlock freedom. With rituals, virtual meetings can be moments that are elevated and nurtured, opportunities for people to build connection and trust while accomplishing a common goal. In Rituals for Virtual Meetings: Creative Ways to Engage People and Strengthen Relationships authors Kursat Ozenc and Glenn Fajardo show leaders, managers, and meeting organizers how to build rapport and rhythm amongst team members when everyone is not in the same physical space. Rituals for Virtual Meetings provides readers with practical, concrete steps to improve group cohesion and performance, including: How to make virtual meetings more fluid and less awkward How to reduce Zoom fatigue and sustain people’s energy during meetings How to facilitate better interactions with project partners, customers, and clients How community leaders can engage members in a virtual setting How teachers can engage students in virtual classrooms Perfect for anyone who needs to engage people in virtual settings, the book also belongs on the shelves of anyone interested in how to increase team engagement in a variety of contexts.

Supercharge your virtual meetings with evidence-based practices from an award-winning team The shift to virtual meetings was sudden and often traumatic for businesses across all industries as they responded to the global pandemic. Rather than focusing on what worked best, they focused on what worked now . . . which meant closing up the office and being suddenly virtual in nearly every meeting, often without the tools, the training, or the expertise to optimize the new “kitchen table” office. Thankfully, businesses are beginning to be more purposeful in both the tools they use and the approach they take. This book seeks to be a definitive guide for businesses looking to make their meetings as effective as possible in the ever-evolving “new normal”—leveraging insights from some of the foremost thought leaders in meeting science and on-camera communication. This book will: · Highlight new research insights springing from the rapid and exponential adoption of virtual meeting technology · Discuss the problems, challenges, and pitfalls of meeting in this new modality · Provide practical, actionable best practices, backed by meeting research that lead to more productive and effective virtual meetings Perfect for executives, managers, and employees at companies in all industries and of all sizes, Suddenly Virtual provides practical and actionable best practices that lead to more productive and effective remote meetings.

Steer your organization away from burnout while boosting all-around performance The Happy, Healthy Nonprofit presents realistic strategies for leaders looking to optimize organizational achievement while avoiding the common nonprofit burnout. With a uniquely holistic approach to nonprofit leadership strategy, this book functions as a handbook to help leaders examine their existing organization, identify trouble spots, and resolve issues with attention to all aspects of operations and culture. The expert author team walks you through the process of building a happier, healthier organization from the ground up, with a balanced approach that considers more than just quantitative results. Employee wellbeing takes a front seat next to organizational performance, with clear guidance on establishing optimal systems and processes that bring about better results while allowing a healthier work-life balance. By improving attitudes and personal habits at all levels, you'll implement a positive cultural change with sustainable impact. Nonprofits are driven to do more, more, more, often with fewer and fewer resources; there comes a breaking point where passion dwindles under the weight of pressure, and the mission suffers as a result. This book shows you how to revamp your organization to do more and do it better, by putting cultural considerations at the heart of strategy. Find and relieve cultural and behavioral pain points Achieve better results with attention to well-being Redefine your organizational culture to avoid burnout Establish systems and processes that enable sustainable change At its core, a nonprofit is driven by passion. What begins as a personal investment in the organization's mission can quickly become the driver of stress and overwork that leads to overall lackluster performance. Executing a cultural about-face can be the lifeline your organization needs to thrive. The Happy, Healthy Nonprofit provides a blueprint for sustainable change, with a holistic approach to improving organizational outlook.

What makes for a great meeting? As a leader, how can you keep discussions on point and productive? In How to Run a Meeting, Antony Jay argues that too many leaders fail to plan adequately for meetings. In this bestselling article, he defines the characteristics that contribute to success, from keeping formal minutes to acknowledging junior staff first. These guidelines will help you get demonstrably better results from every meeting you run. Since 1922, Harvard Business Review has been a leading source of breakthrough ideas in management practice. The Harvard Business Review Classics series now offers you the opportunity to make these seminal pieces a part of your permanent management library. Each highly readable volume contains a groundbreaking idea that continues to shape best practices and inspire countless managers around the world.

Learn how to facilitate your Zoom meetings more effectively. This is a super-short book (will take you less than 30 minutes to read) that covers a step-by-step approach to running your meetings. It also includes downloadable templates and scripts that will help save you time. Note: This book is technology-agnostic. This means that it doesn't matter if you use Zoom, Webex, GoToMeeting, Skype, or any other meeting tool. The concepts focus more on process and communication best practices as opposed to technical guidelines. Here's what you'll learn: The one question to ask yourself before scheduling a meeting How to draft an effective agenda (and include a simple phrase to save you time) When to schedule meetings to minimize the number of interruptions (batching techniques) How to take helpful meeting minutes (note-taking strategies that save you time) How to schedule online meetings for team members in different time zones Resolve the Two Main Issues with Meetings There are two main problems with meetings. First, there's a quantity problem (too many meetings), and second, there's a quality problem (too many bad meetings). After reading this short book, you'll learn how to address both those problems. You will learn how to have fewer meetings, how to have better meetings, and how to get the most out of your meetings to get things done. You'll benefit by saving your team and yourself some time, and you'll end up with more successful meetings. The book is divided into three sections: Section I: Before Your Online Meeting Decide on a Need and an Objective Determine the Attendees and Draft an Agenda Define the Remote Logistics Send the Invite, Agenda, and Reminders Section II: During Your Online Meeting Join Early and Cover the Ground Rules Run Through the Agenda Capture the Meeting Minutes Close with a Review Section III: After Your Online Meeting Distribute the Meeting Minutes Follow Up on Action Items Note: The subject of meetings can be really boring, and you've probably heard most of the common-sense advice about meetings before, so there's nothing earth-shattering about the material in this book. However, if you follow all the steps to the letter, then this will be the only book you're ever going to need about managing your virtual teams effectively, guaranteed. Free Bonus As a free bonus for purchasing this book, you'll get a free Meeting Minutes Template and a free Meeting Agenda Template (MS Word format) that you can copy and paste and use with your own team. Would you like to learn more? Purchase Better Online Meetings now to get started. Scroll to the top and click on the "buy button."

Build a cohesive and high-performing virtual team with this fantastic resource full of actionable advice and practical tips Engaging Virtual Meetings: Openers, Games, and Activities for Communication, Morale, and Trust offers concrete strategies and practical tips for bringing teams together across the digital divide. While many struggle to build teams in a virtual environment, accomplished author John Chen has found ways to create team cohesion, promote engagement, and increase virtual participation. In Engaging Virtual Meetings, he shares these methods with you, and also: Describes virtual tools for promoting effective teamwork, like the Participant Map Teaches you to optimize your teleconference setup for ideal audio and video Illustrates ways to apply these methods in any virtual environment, including Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and more Explores how to debrief your participants to improve your methods over time Perfect for anyone working in or with the increasingly prevalent virtual environment, Engaging Virtual Meetings is a great addition to the bookshelves of anyone interested in how to create and build engagement in team settings of all kinds.

This book presents unique insights and advice on defining and managing the innovation transformation journey. Using novel ideas, examples and best practices, it empowers management executives at all levels to drive cultural, technological and organizational changes toward innovation. Covering modern innovation techniques, tools, programs and strategies, it focuses on the role of the latest technologies (e.g., artificial intelligence to discover, handle and manage ideas), methodologies (including Agile Engineering and Rapid Prototyping) and combinations of these (like hackathons or gamification). At the same time, it highlights the importance of culture and provides suggestions on how to build it. In the era of AI and the unprecedented pace of technology evolution, companies need to become truly innovative in order to survive. The transformation toward an innovation-led company is difficult – it requires a strong leadership and culture, advanced technologies and well-designed programs. The book is based on the author’s long-term experience and novel ideas, and reflects two decades of startup, consulting and corporate leadership experience. It is intended for business, technology, and innovation leaders.

A proliferation of new technologies has lulled many into thinking that we actually have to think less about how we communicate. In fact, communicating and collaborating across time, distance, and cultures has never been more complex or difficult. Written as a series of bulleted tips drawn from client experiences and best practices, Leading Effective Virtual Teams: Overcoming Time and Distance to Achieve Exceptional Results presents practical tips to help leaders engage and motivate their geographically dispersed project team members. If you’re a leader of any type of virtual team and want to help your team members collaborate more effectively, then buy this book. You will learn how to: Build trust and cultivate relationships, virtually, across your team Design and facilitate virtual meetings that are focused and engaging Influence without authority Motivate and galvanize a virtual team for top performance Blend asynchronous and synchronous communications for better virtual collaboration Navigate cross-cultural and generational differences in the absence of vital visual cues Assess skills, strengths, aptitudes, and preferences from afar Handle other tough issues that can trip up virtual teams The ideas in this book are based on Nancy Settle-Murphy’s decades of experience working as a change management consultant, facilitator, and trainer for project teams around the world. Designed to be read section by section in any order, this book shares approaches and techniques to help you address some of the toughest challenges virtual team leaders face, including keeping team members engaged from afar.

"An excellent guide on how teams can effectively work together, regardless of location." —STEPHANE KASRIEL, former CEO of Upwork IN TODAY'S MODERN GLOBAL ECONOMY, companies and organizations in all sectors are embracing the game-changing benefits of the remote workplace. Managers benefit by saving money and resources and by having access to talent outside their zip codes, while employees enjoy greater job opportunities, productivity, independence, and work-life satisfaction. But in this new digital arena, companies need a plan for supporting efficiency and fostering streamlined, engaging teamwork. In Work Together Anywhere, Lisette Sutherland, an international champion of virtual-team strategies, offers a complete blueprint for optimizing team success by supporting every member of every team, including: EMPLOYEES/small advocating for work-from-home options MANAGERS/small seeking to maximize productivity and profitability TEAMS/small collaborating over complex projects and long-term goals ORGANIZATIONS/small reliant on sharing confidential documents and data COMPANY OWNERS/small striving to save money and attract the best brainpower Packed with hands-on materials and actionable advice for cultivating agility, camaraderie, and collaboration, Work Together Anywhere is a thorough and inspiring must-have guide for getting ahead in today's remote-working world.