How are you modeling virtual meeting etiquette?
Principal Information Security Officer in Education, 10,001+ employees
Virtual meetings are still primarily during the official 'workday' hours even though several people are now working in different time zones as well as working different hours when WFH. Meetings outside of business hours are the exception -- usually for a planned cutover or a crisis event. The normal protocol is for everyone to have their camera and microphone on (or muted if there is a lot of background noise). However a few attendees turn off their cameras (to eat? to work?). The etiquette protocol on when someone can speak usually works well but there are times when attendees talk simultaneously or someone talks over someone. Large meetings an individual in charge of the meeting generally use a modified version (more casual) version of Robert's Rules to ensure orderly meetings (and avoid such collisions) -- they also restrict and control who can present (in smaller meetings generally anyone can share). The question has come up as to whether an attendee should put their virtual hand up to signal that they wish to talk now or next.There are also smaller 'etiquette' issues in virtual meetings -- such as can you (and what is the preferred meeting protocol to) drop off a meeting or temporarily leave the meeting to return for a phone call, to go to another meeting, take a bio break, etc.
It gets more complicated when the meeting is a hybrid meeting -- with a physical meeting room with in-person attendees as well as a Zoom (or WebEx/whatever) camera/microphone/large video display. How do the Zoom users make themselves heard (sometimes literally), get equal time and attention with the in-person attendees, etc? When the 'host' is actually fulfilling their role as the host and adroit at running the meeting a hybrid meeting will run a lot more smoothly and equally.
VP of Engineering in Software, 11 - 50 employees
I try to enforce basic civil etiquette and good behavior. Disagreement is fine, aggressivity, passivity, passive-aggressivity, etc. are called upon whenever they happen. Other than that, our generic meeting etiquette include:- define and publish the goal of the meeting (one goal only per meeting),
- publish an agenda before the meeting,
- only invite necessary people,
- if it is during lunch time, or early, or late, include food received in advance (not during the meeting),
- 45 minutes maximum, starting 5 minutes after the hour so if people have another meeting before, they can have some breathing time,
- finish 10 minutes or more before the hour,
- end the meeting if people are not prepared, or major contributors are not present, or the goal has been reached early,
- after the meeting, publish the meeting notes, include the estimated cost of the meeting using standard mean hourly costs,
- use checklists whenever possible to show progress.
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There is a loss of etiquette and consideration. In one instance, an assistant was trying to schedule a meeting with me and even though they have full visibility into my schedule, they still clobbered a few meetings I already had booked. So it is a lost art. I do get carried away myself. I can get passionate on calls, so my meetings might run over a bit here and there, but there's also this mentality that there's so much to discuss that you want to use up every second of the scheduled time. I was on a call that was meant to be half an hour long but there was so much we needed to cover because of vendor integration and planning out the future. It ended up being an hour and a half long. But I didn't have anything after that because I timeboxed that period for planning. I always block time on my schedule because people will eat up your calendar if you don't.