The 25% Rule for Online Meetings That Work

If your online team meetings lack engagement, a good agenda, and a great facilitator may not solve the problem.

You may be trying to put duct tape on something that is inherently broken.

Online meetings offer significant convenience, but they also have many shortcomings. These include screen fatigue from seeing so many people at once, a lack of physical cues when interpreting communication, and, most damaging, an epidemic of multitasking.

According to Calendly’s state of the meeting report, 52% of employees multitask ‘often or always” during virtual meetings. With Gen Z, it is 75%.

If your people are physically present but mentally elsewhere, they are not engaged and not participating. And if this is the case, you are just going through the motions.

Here’s what to do. Change the meeting's structure and switch to more in-person meetings. By doing so, you take a proactive step. You can prevent the negative event from happening in the first place. Research from Stanford showed that teams that met in person generated 15-20% more ideas than their virtual counterparts.

Recognize that going fully in-person may not be feasible. Instead, make it a rule to meet in person at regular intervals - such as every fourth meeting. This makes the change practical yet impactful.

By doing this, you reduce the original problem of low engagement in online meetings. You also help build social connections among your team members. These connections form when people are physically together and can carry over to your online meetings. When people have a stronger personal connection, they are more likely to open up, speak, and contribute.

As a leader, you must not only lead effective meetings, but also create the conditions for them. Having an agenda, being inclusive, and engaging are important. Yet often, the most impactful step is to change the meeting's format.