This email could have been a meeting

In which my client discovers that entanglement improves credibility

One of my clients has a highly distributed team. Except for a couple of off-site get-togethers in a year, their meetings are all remote. They don't even have office facilities large enough to host the team.

But their meetings were a meandering mess, and participants were often disengaged from discussions, even important ones. Feedback was that people were primarily bored by online meetings. Many discussions became email threads rather than meetings.

You may be thinking that's an improvement! Who needs or wants more meetings? However, there are important things we can do through synchronous collaboration that cannot be done asynchronously. If only we could run better remote meetings.

Entangled conversations

In live discussions, ideas can transform and improve rapidly through immediate feedback. Someone might suggest an approach, another person builds on it, a third person identifies a potential issue, and the group collectively arrives at a better solution in minutes. This organic evolution of ideas is nearly impossible in email chains, where each response might take hours or days.

But in live, synchronous conversation, humans are entangled with each other; their minds become interconnected in ways that go beyond simple information exchange.

People unconsciously sync their thinking rhythms during a conversation. One person's thought process influences and shapes another's in real time, creating a shared cognitive space that's greater than the sum of individual minds.

Conversational partners also attune to each other's emotional states. This creates a shared emotional context. In doing so, we naturally fall into shared rhythms of speech, pauses, and turn-taking.

This temporal entanglement makes complex communication simpler; some topics require nuanced discussion, where tone, timing, and immediate clarification are crucial. A 5-minute conversation can often resolve misunderstandings that might spawn dozens of back-and-forth emails.

Zoning out on Zoom

So why was this not happening on my client's calls?

And no, the challenge isn't technology. They have mastered the basics of video conferencing, screen sharing, and digital whiteboards with few audio or visual problems.

The CEO asked me first about AI meeting assistants like Zoom Assistant or Microsoft Copilot in Teams. Could they help? But these tools are really just note-takers or clever meeting assistants who can transcribe conversations, generate summaries, and even track action items. It is useful for sure, but these tools can't compensate for fundamental flaws in the structure of meetings; that is primarily a task for the facilitator.

Moreover, the virtual meeting environment isn't just a substitute for physical meeting rooms; it's a distinct medium with its own rules, opportunities, and dynamics. We need to develop native patterns for virtual collaboration that go beyond imitating in-person meetings.

Rapport, Connection and Engagement

I had worked in the past with a simple model for facilitators that focussed on rapport, connection and engagement. We used this model to review some recordings of good and bad online experiences.

In the physical world, a rapport develops between team members through countless micro-interactions: a reassuring nod, a moment of eye contact, and a subtle shift in room energy when someone makes a powerful point. These nonverbal cues barely register in an online meeting.

The lack of rapport leads to a lack of connection between team members and often to a lack of motivational connection to the purpose of the meeting. What follows predictably is a lack of engagement.

This model indeed appeared to hold true for the worst meetings, but in the best meetings, these foundations didn't seem to be important. Participants in those more functional sessions still had little rapport between them, but they were much more aligned on outcomes and action items.

It turns out that rapport can enhance meetings, but credibility is the real non-negotiable factor.

What appeared to be happening was that these better meetings had credibility. They had a well-stated purpose, and that purpose alone was compelling. We had a bad quarter, and we need to take some new, perhaps painful, actions. That got everyone's attention.

On the other hand: This is a regular weekly meeting, and you're going to hear, at best, some minor updates from the last regular weekly meeting. Not so compelling because it's not so credible that the meeting is needed.

The pattern we found is straightforward. Some meetings are immediately credible, and the result is clearly aligned. Other meetings need a little more work to get there.

Getting it right

Rapport isn’t something that happens automatically. It needs to be actively developed, especially when nonverbal cues are limited or absent. Quick personal updates aren't wasting time: they help here. Also, using names makes a difference: simply addressing people by name when responding to their ideas or asking for input also makes a difference. Facilitators and team leaders can do this naturally and easily. Keeping meetings with the smallest functional group also makes rapport easier to develop.

Connection to the purpose of the meeting cannot happen unless there is a clear purpose. So, every meeting needs a well-defined goal - an outcome. What is the outcome of a weekly update? Make sure there is one. Connection between people - beyond rapport - happens when everyone understands why they and the others are in the meeting.

Engagement is the active participation of team members throughout the meeting. Without it, even the most well-designed meeting will fall flat. Keep meetings short and focused.

The longer a meeting drags on, the harder it is to stay engaged; you know this. You can stop a meeting early: people will be grateful. If there's an agenda item that doesn't add much, skip over it.

Timing is critical. If you have only dealt with one-quarter of the agenda, three-quarters into the meeting, people start to disengage. You might expect the opposite: that people might pay more attention in order to wrap up quickly. Instead, participants appear to feel their time isn’t valued, the agenda and facilitator lose credibility, and the meeting turns into another checkbox task instead of a productive session.

What works? Try this ...

Clearly, this topic has been super important. So, let's wrap up this one agenda item, get some time back, and we can follow up on the other issues. Do we want another meeting for that, or will we just do it offline?

Now, you have given the participants both respect and agency, regaining credibility for you as a facilitator and for the purpose of the meeting.

The client and I are still in the middle of fixing up our online meetings with this approach, but it is working very well so far. If your meetings aren’t working, ask yourself: Does this meeting have credibility? Are people aligned on its purpose? If not, can I build engagement through rapport and connection? Fix those, and your meetings won't be a waste of time. Unlike those email threads, but that's another topic ...