You can download the report and sign up for the free July 17 webinar here.

In the meantime, we asked Andy Goodman, Director of The Goodman Center, to walk us through the highlights:

Us: How mediocre are these meetings, generally?

Andy: Survey participants gave teleconferences and videoconferences a cumulative average of about B-. Webinars got about a B overall.

Us: What’s the most common cause of bad virtual meetings?

Andy: In the survey, participants chose from six possible causes. The single most common cause was lack of participation—people on the call just don’t participate. But the cause that had the greatest negative impact on the quality of telemeetings was poor leadership and facilitation.
Just to make sure we didn’t miss any causes, we also asked participants to volunteer their own diagnoses of poor calls.  Participants cited poor time management, noise and technical problems most often. They also offered some pointed observations—one talked about “typing questions and wondering if they are going to Never Never Land.”

Us: What do think is behind all these problems?

Andy: Running a good meeting can be challenging under the best of circumstances. Now take away eye contact and introduce cameras, mute buttons, and a variety of technical hurdles. A whole new set of challenges can emerge.  And yet, an overwhelming majority of respondents said that they had never received any training on how to effectively run a teleconference, video conference or web-based meeting.

Us: Do you think telemeetings are a lost cause then?

Andy: Not at all.  Telemeetings are a great tool. But like any tool, they’ve got to be used skillfully. We’ve been teaching—and practicing—meeting skills at The Goodman Center for a while now, and we’re planning to offer a new class in the Fall on telemeetings.  Also, our report cites some online tips and tools from a range of sources across the Internet.

With those objectives in mind, we conducted a storytelling workshop on the McNichols Campus of the University of Detroit Mercy last week. Our goal was to identify the stories that bring to life the brand promise, “We want great things for you.” About one hundred faculty and administration members crowded into the Student Center ballroom for a half-day’s work. To give them a creative jump-start, we divided the “great things” promise into five more specific promises that we hoped would spark ideas for stories.  Our goal:s to transform the “org speak” into a true narrative that brought to life the benefits and message the promise was trying to convey.

The promises at the heart of UDM turned out to be fertile starting points; after a one-hour writing session, we read our stories to each other and it was clear that we had unearthed literally dozens of stories that had been circulating around the campus but that had never been formally captured before.

We also pointed out that starting points for stories are everywhere, if you know what to look for. On the school’s website, for example, there is a section entitled “Meet Our Students and Alumni.” Drill down into these pages a bit, and you’ll read testimonials such as this one from current student Ronald Reeves: “The biggest surprise is how great the faculty is and how much they are willing to help and work with you.” As I told workshop participants that morning, there is a story behind that testimonial. You just need to interview Ronald to get it and bring it to life.

UDM is now sorting through all the pieces written at the workshop. They’ll use these stories in a number of ways—community- and culture-building emails to  faculty and staff and website profiles and content features for prospective students and alumni.

The end of this particular story is still being written, but UDM has taken a major step forward in making its promise come alive for the people it wants to reach.

- Andy Goodman, Co-founder of The Goodman Center

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