The shift to virtual meetings was sudden and often traumatic. Rather than a focus on what works best, the focus was on what works NOW. Six months into the pandemic, businesses are beginning to be more purposeful in both the tools they use and the approach they take. Concurrently, insights garnered from meeting research are now coming to light which can help them make data driven decisions. For example, meeting science confirms that “zoom fatigue” and “webex weariness” are real and are affecting our meetings and our home life. 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.

KARIN M. REED is CEO of Speaker Dynamics. Karin has been teaching business professionals how to be effective on-camera communicators for nearly a decade, translating her experience as an Emmy award-winning broadcast journalist into a methodology based upon the MVPs of On-Camera Success™.

JOSEPH A. ALLEN, PHD, is a meeting scientist and Professor of Industrial and Organizational Psychology at the University of Utah. His research focuses on the study of workplace meetings, organizational community engagement, and occupational safety and health.

Preface: The Collision and Convergence of Two Areas of Expertise ix

Acknowledgments xv

SECTION ONE Our New Virtual Reality – A Suddenly Remote Workforce

1 What Happened to Meetings? 3

2 What Happened to Video Communication? 13

SECTION TWO The Science of Meetings

3 Best Practices for Meetings Before Covid-19 33

4 New Best Practices for Meetings as a Result of Covid-19 53

SECTION THREE The Benefits and Challenges of Video Communication

5 The Value of Video in the Corporate World 69

6 Best Practices for On-Camera Communication through a Webcam 85

SECTION FOUR The Biggest Opportunities and Challenges of Virtual Meetings

7 Making Every Virtual Meeting a Video Meeting 107

8 Driving Engagement in a Virtual Meeting 123

9 Remembering Virtual Meeting Etiquette 145

10 Ignoring the Importance of Production Value 161

11 Building Organizational Culture Through Virtual Meetings 183

12 Empowering Employees on the Tech Front 203

13 Managing Virtual Meetings Across Global Cultures 219

SECTION FIVE What’s Next in the Suddenly Virtual Meeting World?

14 Embracing the Hybrid Meeting 237

15 Preparing for the Next Normal in Our Suddenly Virtual Meetings 253

Conclusion: Our Own Remote Work Experiment 269

About the Authors 271

Index