Virtual Collaboration

More and more of our meetings are becoming fully or partially virtual, which demands different considerations and new skills compared to the traditional meetings and workshops. In this article, based on a chapter from our book on facilitation, we deep-dive into the increasingly important topic of facilitating virtual meetings and give specific advice on how to create more impact in this type of meeting.

The ability to lead and facilitate virtual meetings has become a fact of life for many employees and managers today. Many organisations are global or spread across multiple geographical locations, so they need to be able to establish rapid contact with each other and run efficient working processes with people who are spread around the world, without surrendering quality. Video conferences, net meetings, webinars, Skype, Lync etc. are more or less routine for employees in large organisations. 1

Most enterprises have invested heavily in cost-effective virtual meeting systems. Virtual meetings are a way of saving both time and money – and the reduced travel is a bonus to their environmental conscience.