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Showing posts with the label teleconferences

"Old school" communication styles

I recently communicated with a newly hired colleague, who had just completed his Master's degree. After inviting me to contact him primarily by email or instant message, he remarked upon how he found teleconferences "old school". His comment gave me pause to think about my experience with globally distributed teamwork. While in my prior role at the software research lab, our team was distributed across CDT (UTC - 5 hours) through GMT and all the way to JST (UTC + 9 hours). Email was definitely the main form of having complex discussions, and as the centrally located team, we primarily conversed via instant messaging (where accents and bad audio quality couldn't interfere with comprehension) with the Japanese, UK and Egyptian colleagues in our mornings, and the American and Canadian ones in our mid afternoons. There were regular teleconferences (from which the Japanese were mostly exempt due to them being late in their nighttime typically), but those tended t

Tips on taking meeting minutes

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I've seen my share of enigmatic meeting minutes, which usually consist of enumerating topic headings that may or may not be attributed to the speaker(s) involved. I'd always believed that the purpose of minutes was to accurately and thoroughly capture the proceedings of meetings such that those absent could, at minimum, understand the salient points of what transpired. Thus it surprises me to see examples that read like cue cards where, clearly, one had to be there to even get an inkling (to have the slightest clue) of what the meeting was about. Here are my best practice suggestions, therefore, to create minutes that are indeed useful and worth sending to others: Take notes that will jog your own memory, while others are speaking. Specific techniques would vary by individual; I usually take full sentence quotes because I'm able to type quickly enough. While taking the rough notes, focus on action items, decisions, or points that pertain to any subsequent meeting

More thoughts on formal verbal interaction

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One of my blog followers was kind enough to mention to me that my inaugural post had helped someone to execute telephone based communication more effectively (in the context of charity fundraising). Which is why I've decided to make a few more observations about communicating with others in a formal setting (be they virtual or in person). While in school, which was now long enough ago that I'm hoping many of my then-teachers have retired and forgotten about me and thus wouldn't seek this blog out, I began to implement a "planted questions" technique. I chose peers who were typically quieter in the classroom, and requested that they ask me pre-defined questions whenever I had a presentation to make. Since I had control over these questions and thus my responses, this technique killed several proverbial birds with one stone: I would seem better prepared to handle the Q&A part of the work, my classmates would speak up and improve their participation rating, a

Tips for Teleconferences and Telephone based communication

I, like many others in the globalized business world, spend much of my time on the phone. In particular, chairing and minuting teleconferences, often with a mixture of native and non-native English speakers. Here are my top 5 tips for effective telephone-based communication: Summarize discussions succinctly and simply at the end of every topic and confirm that key participants understand the agreement(s). Be conscious of posture and speak from the diaphragm. Standing up also helps with voice projection: a thespian approach to enunciating assists with getting your message across. Smile as you speak! A friendly tone of voice puts everyone at ease, and we can discern when someone is smiling even without any visual cues. Further to point 2, speak more slowly and clearly than in a face to face situation. This allows for noise and lag from VOIP connections and transatlantic (or further!) distances. Don't be afraid to confirm what you understand by paraphrasing someone else