This problem is one that you’ve probably been chewing on for some time. How can you find out what your team members are REALLY thinking?

Should you be more accessible so people will tell you what’s on your mind? Or should you set stricter boundaries so team members become self-reliant?

During virtual meetings you get some information – but is it enough?

Yes, during your team conferences it’s easy to get individual input. With instant messaging participants communicate directly to you. And polling options most online services provide are another great tool for a ’show of hands.’

But nothing comes even close to the gut feelings staff members share at the water cooler, in the hallway or in the parking lot.

So, what can you do to get the low-down from your team? How can you keep in touch with how your team is really feeling? If you don’t, you know your team results will lag in obvious and dangerous ways. Your urgent deadlines could be overshot, projects can expand in scope and budgets never get met. It’s a nightmare waiting to happen.

How to take a team pulse check

One of the fastest ways to get a pulse on the hot buttons, tough issues, and true perspectives of your team is to make yourself available.

The most successful managers and leaders invite input – both privately and publicly. While some employees will speak up in a group setting, others will prefer the confidentiality of private meetings.

Create the opportunity to meet. Post your one-on-one times just as professors do at universities. Think of it as your team ‘office hours.’

Everyone on the team will appreciate knowing that your ‘door is always open.’ And that takes patience, practice and a persistent commitment on your part.

If you say you want feedback, you better mean it. You can expect impromptu meetings to come at the oddest and sometimes most challenging times. When your husband or wife is waiting for you to pick up take-out on the way home. When your kids need to be picked up from soccer practice. And when you are heading out the door for that run you desperately need – to clear your brain.

When you commit to being an accessible leader of your virtual team, it helps to follow these strategies:

Tip 1 – Define office hours. Be available for ‘drop ins’ as well as scheduled appointments.

Tip 2 – Vary your office hours to be equally accessible to team members in different time zones. It’s not fair to everyone if these times are only convenient for people in one time zone.

Tip 3 – Keep strict agreements for confidentiality. If you break your promise with one team member, no one else will trust you. Critical issues will escalate because people are unwilling to come forward.

Balance availability with structure. Organize your time to listen to problems and help steer your team towards high performance.

Can you recreate the energy and dynamic of a live meeting with your team located across the country? This technique works best if you to cut air travel, cut hotel costs, and cut event production costs – but still want to have a highly productive and fun meeting.

It turns out that some things in life are still a whole lot of fun. Popcorn is one of these things.

When you’ve got a long, potentially deadly boring meeting – such as a review of your entire training curriculum, or an evaluation of your yearly budget, or a strategic planning review down to the action steps meeting – use this technique.

Send popcorn to all the members on your distance team. Make sure it comes in advance. Also confirm that everyone has an air-popper. You can still get great tasting popcorn with fewer calories and less salt.

Make sure that everyone has received his or her popcorn.

Now, roll your sleeves up. Get a big handful and get down to the tough work ahead.

Sure, you can hear everyone munching away. But since everyone is doing it, it makes the hard parts of this mind-numbing meeting seem a little easier.

Many distance teams and work groups enjoy doing things they would do if they were meeting in person. This may include everyone sharing the same snack, coffee, or tea.

Some teams send local food specialties to their teammates. This is a fun way to share local culture. It provides variety and at the same time brings a human touch to a distance team.

While it sometimes seems that ‘time is of the essence’ and this kind of socializing is too fluffy, everyone seems to love the popcorn and the mood it creates. Remember, it is not ‘just chit-chat.’  Something much more valuable is going on.

Distance team members are breaking down the boundaries. They are doing something, which every culture does with friends, family and people they care about. They are eating together.

Even if you and your distance teammates have never met in person, this is a way to build an informal and highly effective work group. You’ll breeze through the same content so fast that you won’t even realize what happened. And you’ll find that this way of working gets everyone participating, enjoying and truly working as a team.

For many presenters, executives and entrepreneurs meeting virtually is a far cry from the personal interaction, which is possible in a face-to-face meeting.

It’s far too easy to get distracted with the technology details, and forget that you’re communicating with people on the other end.

If you’ve previously built a relationship with the participants online, you can continue and build on it. But if this is your first time to sit down and meet together, remember this: you are meeting with other humans.

It sounds simple. Even obvious. But if you’ve attended any virtual meetings recently, you know it’s not common practice. Far too many are routine data dumps with packed agendas. And little time for building relationships.

To add human touch to your virtual meetings do this single thing:
First, focus on building a human connection. Use your voice to replace what you would usually see if you were in the room.

You don’t have eye contact – unless you are using videoconferencing. But you do have your voice.

Use your voice to replace the things you normally would see.

This includes:

Since you can’t see who is speaking, state the name of the person who is speaking.

Since you don’t know who is in the room, say who has left the room.

Since you don’t know if a new person has come in, say who has entered the room.

Disclose things that may impact the sound quality. This may be something as simple as, “There is construction on the building next door and I can’t hear you over the jack hammer.”

Disclose if something external such as weather is affecting peoples’ ability to focus. Such as, “It looks like the sky is turning green. I think we may be getting some of those tropical hurricane winds coming our way.”

When working with teams or clients over a period of time, develop your own agreements for adding human touch to your virtual meetings.

Take the extra step. Add human touch to your meetings.Human Touch For Virtual Meetings

Online meetings are already a storm of technology – logging in, getting the microphone ready, checking your slides, and reviewing the speaker/mute instructions. To be more than a nerdy ‘talking head’ and stand out in a sea of dry virtual meetings, build trust and human connection when you moderate meetings.

For many presenters, executives and entrepreneurs meeting virtually is a far cry from the personal interaction, which is possible in a face-to-face meeting.

It’s far too easy to get distracted with the technology details, and forget that you’re communicating with people on the other end.

If you’ve previously built a relationship with the participants online, you can continue and build on it. But if this is your first time to sit down and meet together, remember this: you are meeting with other humans.

It sounds simple. Even obvious. But if you’ve attended any virtual meetings recently, you know it’s not common practice. Far too many are routine data dumps with packed agendas. And little time for building relationships.

To add human touch to your virtual meetings do this single thing:
First, focus on building a human connection. Use your voice to replace what you would usually see if you were in the room.

You don’t have eye contact – unless you are using videoconferencing. But you do have your voice.

Use your voice to replace the things you normally would see.

This includes:

Since you can’t see who is speaking, state the name of the person who is speaking.

Since you don’t know who is in the room, say who has left the room.

Since you don’t know if a new person has come in, say who has entered the room.

Disclose things that may impact the sound quality. This may be something as simple as, “There is construction on the building next door and I can’t hear you over the jack hammer.”

Disclose if something external such as weather is affecting peoples’ ability to focus. Such as, “It looks like the sky is turning green. I think we may be getting some of those tropical hurricane winds coming our way.”

When working with teams or clients over a period of time, develop your own agreements for adding human touch to your virtual meetings.

Take the extra step. Add human touch to your meetings.

Before you read on, look around.

How would you describe your work area? Or the view from your desk? Would it be faster to write a detailed description, listing all the items in view – or would it be easier to take a picture?

A photograph humanizes virtual communications. Especially photographs of people who are doing the things your online audience is doing. People working, talking and interacting with peers.

In online meetings, you often can’t see your audience. And they can’t see you. But that means you can still use the visual images in photographs to convey a warm, friendly and human touch.

A photograph is the fastest way to slice through the deluge of data and information.

Take on the visual challenge. Look for photographs to depict your audience. Not with an eye to match each individual participant. Instead, aim to be inclusive so each and every participant can see himself or herself in the picture.

How to choose the best photo?

Pick the one to appeal to a broad and diverse audience. And think about the people who will be attending your online meeting.

If you are working in a corporation, or presenting to an organization, go exploring on their website. Most often, they will have photographs showing employees, customers and client interaction.

When you are presenting to a specific corporation, use some of the photos from their website or annual report. This sends several messages to your virtual audience.

Message 1: You care.
You took the time to go on their website and review the pictures they use. This extra effort shows care and commitment.

Message 2: You respect their work.
Instead of giving a canned presentation, you went the extra mile to show respect and provide individualization of your presentation. This is not the same old- same old meeting. it’s unique.

Message 3: You value diverse learning styles.
Show data and show pictures. Match the different learning styles, which will certainly be present in the diverse participants in your virtual meeting.

This photo-searching step is fast and easy to do. Make it part of your personal best practices for every virtual meeting – whether internal and external client briefing, presentations or strategic review.

You’ll enjoy not only the visual impact of your presentation but the rewards in more business, faster decision making and significant growth to your bottom line.

There are a number of places where physical visit was just too costly.

Either that client is gifted away to a competitor or the cost of the product sold to the client is increased to that extent!

Now with the virtual meetings making much head way into every one of our sales meetings, the cost of closing a sale has to come down drastically. The number of visits and the number of people who might have to meet the client could come down by nearly fifty percent. It is a major saving in terms of time and cost. A demonstration of a product could be given from the remote and the user is able to query you and the rest of your staff easily. He gets his replies immediately and that makes him get satisfied faster.

Virtual meetings are the way things are going today simply because of the economics involved. It makes sense to use this technology. In addition to the economics of usage, there are also a number of other technological features that make the presentations a notch above even personal presentation.

You can rope in the best staff for the presentation. You can get the top technical person if needed, to answer a question that the customer has to ask. In addition, when the customer meets a number of people in the company who are technically savvy, he is more impressed. He knows that the company has more than just sales people to support the product later on. The confidence level is higher across the customer base.

In addition to this, it would also open up a large social connection platform. More often, the customers’ vibe with the staff of the company and a social connection that would ensure adequate support to the customer and his product, as well as, provide a happy place to demand service, will be provided. It is wise to get a virtual meeting in place to save time and money for the company. You will find a number of them on the net. You need to evaluate them and find out the one that fits your needs.

Bridging the gap between team members with everyone in different locations can be a logistical, emotional and project management challenge. But of all the problems that can arise, one seems to rise to the top – way above all the others.

This problem is one that you’ve probably been chewing on for some time. How can you find out what your team members are REALLY thinking?

Should you be more accessible so people will tell you what’s on your mind? Or should you set stricter boundaries so team members become self-reliant?

During virtual meetings you get some information – but is it enough?Yes, during your team conferences it’s easy to get individual input. With instant messaging participants communicate directly to you. And polling options most online services provide are another great tool for a ’show of hands.’

But nothing comes even close to the gut feelings staff members share at the water cooler, in the restroom or after work, over a glass of wine.

So, what can you do to get the low-down and keep in touch with how your team is really feeling? If you don’t, you know your team results will lag in obvious and dangerous ways. Your urgent deadlines could be overshot, projects can expand in scope and budgets never get met. It’s a nightmare waiting to happen.

How to take a team pulse check

One of the fastest ways to get a pulse on the hot buttons, tough issues, and true perspectives of your team is to make yourself available.

The most successful managers and leaders invite input – both privately and publicly. Some employees will speak up in a group setting. Others will prefer the confidentiality and privacy of meeting with you in your ‘office hours.’

Whichever route individuals take, everyone on the team will appreciate knowing that your ‘door is always open.’ And that takes patience, practice and a persistent commitment on your part.

If you say you want feedback, you better mean it. You can expect impromptu meetings to come at the oddest and sometimes most challenging times. When your husband or wife is waiting for you to pick up take-out on the way home. When your kids need to be picked up from soccer practice. And when you are heading out the door for that desperately needed run you want to take – to clear your brain.

When you commit to being an accessible leader of your virtual team, it helps to follow these strategies:

Tip 1 – Define office hours. Be available for ‘drop ins’ as well as scheduled appointments.

Tip 2 – Vary your office hours to be equally accessible to team members in different time zones. It’s no fair if you’re only in your office at times that are suited only for one time zone.

Tip 3 – Keep your agreements to confidentiality. If you break your promise with one team member, no one else will trust you. Critical issues will escalate because people are unwilling to come forward.

Balance availability with structure. Keep your focus on helping your team become self-directed and self-managing. Organize your time with team members to listen to problems and guide them to solve their own problems.

A good team is never better than or as good and as strong as its weakest link – the leader. The leader must be a person who is committed to certain core values and to the job at hand, a person who has clear ideas about what needs to be achieved and about the aims of the organization and the will power to get them executed. He must also have the necessary communicative and persuasive powers to make his colleagues and subordinates co operate with him.

In this respect the many differing theories on leadership communication have been put forward. One such theory says that leaders are basically change agents. This means that leaders are people who can exert influence on others, especially opinion leaders, to adopt an innovation.

According to this theory, any activity must lead to a change in the immediate environment. If the change is to be efficient and effective, the leadership must also be clear and conscious about the change to be effected. So the leader himself should be a well informed person who can also communicate well.

Another way of effecting changes is to route them through the opinion leaders. Typical opinion leaders in a society are teachers, local politicians etc. They are the tier of leadership that obtains at the base of the society.

They may already be entrenched in the leadership at a certain level of society, as far as a certain sector of jobs and responsibilities are concerned. By influencing the opinion leaders, whose number may be less, it is possible to create and spread a new opinion or make the society accept an innovation, in a more effective manner. So it is more practical and commonsensical to utilize the services and cooperation of opinion leaders in leadership exercises.

In fact, the view concerning the role of the leader itself has changed with the arrival of the 21st century. Whereas, the leader of the 19th and 20th century practically lead the movements, in the new society of intensive communicative powers, the leader only catalyses the change. He shows by example and leaves the actual implementation to the society itself.

But how are you going to arrange the work? You need to discuss it with your colleagues, isn’t it? They are at various places and it is not practically possible to have them all converge at a single point within a day. But if you don’t, the lucrative contract will definitely be lost. Virtually a catch 22 situation! You do not know how best to deal with it.

Enter the powerful world of the Net and all its specialized instruments. You can arrange a virtual meeting, a meeting on the Web. All you need to do is to call up on mobiles or through emails all your colleagues and tell them to be online at a certain time the same day.

The meeting can then be conducted online. You can freely discuss with your colleagues the benefits of the contract and make them aware of the importance of finishing the assignment within the targeted time.

There are many professional agents now who take care of the formalities of arranging such a meeting. It is also possible for you to arrange the meeting at a basic level all by yourself. It is only when you need the help of graphics, visuals etc that you need approach for professional help.

In the simplest sense, a web meeting can just be an interchange of ideas and information. Any additional data that carries weight on the Net ( like pictures, photos, pi diagrams etc, which take time to be transmitted on line, which occupy space on the computer) cam be send to the concerned people by email as a follow up to the meeting on the web.

However, for gaining full effectiveness of the meeting on the web, it is better that some preparations are made earlier. For one thing, time is very important when transacting business over the net. So it is all ways necessary that you have prepared what you want to say and rehearsed how you are going to say that. If the matter is written up, the entire better because the written text can be mailed to your colleagues later as a follow up to your meeting.

Another important thing is that you have to be very clear on what you say overt the net. Since there cannot be very many effective visual clues while you are speaking on the net, it is necessary to avoid all kinds of ambiguous statements.

Here are some pointers. On of the basic facts about the Net is that people are apt to spend only a relatively short span of time on the Net. So things have to be told in an attractive manner so as to gain the attention of the person within that span of time.

Writers for the web say that it is better to split things into small units. Each unit can be connected longitudinally and latitudinal to other units for better and easier comprehension.

Another important matter is that the matter should be presented in attractive manner. Power point presentations are often a good way to present complex material on the Net.

When talking over the net, it always pays to prepare the matter in the written form earlier. This will help you to avoid needless repetition of matter and present your material in a form that can be easily understood by the listeners.

Another important factor is that transmitting of figures over the net in the spoken mode is always fraught with danger. You can easily be misunderstood. So it is always safer to quote approximate, round figures when speaking over the Net. Thus instead of saying 10,049, it is better to say, a little over 10,000. The exact data can be given later when you send the written follow up matter after the spoken presentation.

Formality is some thing that never gels well with the net. It is better to be short and conversational on the net. This does not mean that colloquial, non formal language can be used over the Net. It only means that stiff formality should be avoided.

The best thing about talking over the Net, on virtual meetings is that anything you say can be backed up with a written, visual copy without much delay. So you can be as brief as possible on the spoken aspect and follow up your speech with written material as soon as possible. This will be the most effective way of presenting material for a web or virtual meeting.

It is always better to use familiar words when talking over the net. In the absence of adequate visual clues it is better to ensure familiarity. It is better to tape record what you are speaking and then hear it. This will help make clear the negative aspects of your presentation and ensure that your presentation is effective and clear.

Another way of making the language of net presentations clear is to avoid long sentences that have rising intonations like exclamations and questions. It is always better to fill up your presentations with declarative statements that are shorn of like sounding words, sibilants and contractions. Ensuring proper spacing of the microphone and spacing your sentences can also clear up your presentation from un necessary clutter.

It is also necessary to understand the relation between a web, virtual meeting and the techniques of interpersonal communication to be able to conduct good virtual meetings. This is because inter personal communication refers to exchange of thoughts, feelings and ideas between individuals. One of the advantages of inter personal communication is that, in a majority of instances, the individuals who communicate with each other are able to see each other. This makes for visual clues that will speed up the communication process.

Conferences can be seen as a group of inter personal communication events that take place in the same back ground. Here, each instance of inter personal communication can also be seen to be engaged in communication with other similar instances. Using the set language, so beloved of mathematicians, it can be said that the each instance of an inter-personal communication here is a sub set of the conference. The conference itself is a super set made up of similar instances of inter personal communication instances.

Inter personal communication has been defined as a cyclical event. The speaker encodes a message on a channel, which reaches the hearer, who decodes it and understands the message. In turn, the hearer then becomes the speaker and encodes his response on the channel. In the second instance, the former speaker becomes the new hearer who will then decode the message.

In short, inter personal communication, and thus conferences in general, are a set of cyclical exercises where information passes from one unit to the other through a channel. One unit encodes a message while the other unit will have to decode it. When the channel involved is the internet, the conferences can be called as web conferences. This is because the internet is also called as the World Wide Web.

In web conferences, each speaker will have to encode his message and responses in the inter net in the form of text messages or graphics. These messages use the channel of the internet for transmission. In the next part we will discuss how the concept of web conference integrates all the strengths of inter personal communication exercises.