Zitter and Huggett offers very thoughtful and practical suggestions for running virtual board meetings for non-profit Boards. Many of these suggestions will be very helpful even after life has returned to normal following a quieting of the Covid-19 pandemic
This is an excellent, thoughtful and helpful piece. As a nonprofit board chair this gives me several ideas I can bring back to make our board more effective. Especially important to me are the human connection elements. How do we engage? How do we bring out the insights and ideas of
ALL board members, especially the "quiet" ones? One tool related to a couple of the points is to also use the private chat function to let someone know you’re hoping they’ll bring in their perspective without putting them on the spot.
Cogent points that all board members should read. I serve on several nonprofit & foundation boards, chair committees and my day job is a nonprofit CEO, so I have seen the spectrum of what works and what doesn’t in the virtual realm. Some Zoom meetings have run in a "set it and forget" framework of still being run the same as when the pandemic forced them to become virtual, without tweaks or adjustments. There is never a wrong time to take stock and improve.
I’ll add one thought, as we begin to contemplate some level of future in-person meetings, it is important to figure out what meetings can remain as fully virtual, what will be a combination of the two and how to integrate them and the implications for meeting structures/content/engagement to keep them effective. This will require forethought by chairs, CEO’s, and input from fellow directors.
Great ideas! I also like adding in google docs as a way for everyone to comment on questions. For example, create a chart, and pre-populate with board member names. For a discussion, have everyone type in their top concern/question/ or reason why re: the issue at hand. Everyone can then read all the other comments, and pick the ones that reasonate with the largest group. A great way to "hear" from everyone, including the quite ones.
thanks for your article.
Every board chair needs to read this incredibly helpful article. I serve on several boards that have put different combinations of these practices in place and I can attest to the powerful board transformation that can happen with these types of tactics. The pandemic has created the opportunity to remake and redesign board meetings and the authors have nailed it in terms of how to start the process.
Thanks so much for your advice Jon and Mark. I am the ED at All Out. Jon set a culture as Chair of the All Out Board even before the pandemic for virtual meetings to be interactive and engaging. We have built on that through the last year and have at least half of the ideas above fully implemented. I am going to share this article with the current co-Chairs and we ill use the other half as inspiration for further change and adaptation to our new normal.
Thought all the points were really helpful and well-presented. I was particularly struck by #10 (on building connections). I know the most important thing I ever got from board work was personal connections—often formed during meeting breaks or over meals. Those connections were both personally enriching and made the board work more effective. As an introvert, I naturally will show up exactly on time and leave as soon as I can manage it. And virtual "gang calls" make it even easier for me to disappear. I’d love to see another article with more depth on what board chairs and executives can do to connect those who disconnect naturally in a virtual world.
What a wonderful set of recommendations! Granted, I’m biased given I’m a close relationships researcher and collaboration consultant, but I think #10 is the most critical one on the list, an essential foundation piece. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom, Jon and Mark!
This is very helpful. My board has done well electronically, but we are only sox people who have worked together for a while so there is a lot of social capital to draw down. The inherent tedium of the medium has actually been helpful in keeping meetings concise and focused. Much less desire to pontificate into a screen. On the other hand, the time efficiency has made for good attendance. I imagine we’ll go from 8 in person meetings to maybe 2 or 3 but the article reminded me to build some social stuff around the few in person meetings to bolster cohesion. Thanks for this!
Jon and Mark produce another article replete with insights and actions that can make a difference. Many of these suggestions apply even if/when in-person board meetings resume. Until then, applying any of these suggestions can contribute to more effective virtual ones.
Thanks for the practical ideas. We have found similar things with our board meetings and strategy sessions. Keeping it shorter helps as does using tools like menti.
Ultimately I think we will move to a mix of f2f and zoom as the preferred option.
Thanks for a terrific piece: thought provoking and full of excellent, practical ideas. I agree, #10 is the area where most of us have struggled in the virtual environment. How do we foster that human connection in the virtual world? Colleagues and I have used trial and error to come up with a formula for virtual drinks that seems to work well for us: schedule virtual drinks at the end of the working week; no chair, just an informal gathering of those who can make it; crucially, limit the time so that it doesn’t become raucous!
Excellent list of ideas, many of which my board is already using but others we can effectively add. I like Alan’s idea about encouraging quiet members in a private chat to contribute.
Our board is national and has always been virtual from its inception, but we have one or two in-person weekend retreats per year that really cement and deepen our bonds and help to carry us through disagreements and challenges over Zoom. We always check in briefly on a personal level at the start of the meeting, and have a personal Slack channel to support each other’s life challenges and celebrate our joys, as well as various business channels of communication for committee and board work.
It’s important to remember that many who have been able to join boards or committees in a virtual environment—due to the reasons Mark and Jon mentioned, as well as age, trouble driving at night, disability or chronic illness, or other challenges—will be cut out of in-person meetings unless you provide a Zoom link for them to join. We have had two members of our board who couldn’t travel to a retreat and spent most of the weekend on a stool in our circle on a laptop, and it felt to them and to us as if they were right in our circle. We even brought them with us to meals!
Thanks for deepening this crucial discussion. May it continue at many levels!
This is a really valuable article that fills in an important gap. It’s not that hard to run a Zoom meeting of up to five people; that happens pretty organically. Similarly, a Zoom meeting of 40+ people is basically a webinar, and there are lots of resources for how to do those well. But how do you run a Zoom meeting for 5-40 people in a way that is well-moderated, effective, and participatory? These authors provide some excellent suggestions for doing so. Some of those are particular to boards, but many are relevant for any Zoom-based meeting of a certain size.
With appreciation, I encourage the authors to write an additional piece on quality, mid-size Zoom meetings in general. I look forward to reading it!
Excellent article - clear exposition of the problems and good suggestions to overcome them. Particularly good to read about the positive aspects to virtual boarding, like the possibility of including members who wouldn’t otherwise have been involved and interesting to see that, even after the pandemic, many are planning to continue to hold a lot of their meetings virtually. Thanks, Jon and Mark!
Very well said by Huggett and Zitter. The recommendations resonate with my experience on nonprofit as well as on for profit boards. In fact, several points are applicable in numerous team building scenarios where communications often have to be virtual. Thakns for the insights!!!
This is a very information piece. I enjoyed all of the specifics about how to make board meetings more zoom friendly and I think the tips apply for any meeting that one is conducting on zoom. I am happy to read this excellent article from Jon and Mark and to see that Stanford published it for a wide distribution.
Good and relevant advice. As you said at the end I do think that the changes triggered by the pandemic are here to stay as they not only create problems, but also offer opportunities.
Many non-profit boards have been quite elitist or hard to join unless you had significant wealth or time to spare, so I do think lowering the barrier to entry for boards can lead to a new mix of people joining boards and adding value with their unique perspectives.
What a great list with inspiration for how to jazz up pretty much any recurring meeting, whether virtual or not!
Above all, for me this article underscores the extremely high return on effort of good meeting design - a craft that is frequently and wildly under-appreciated!
I use the word "craft" deliberately. Meeting craftsmanship is an important part of the role of chair person. It is the heat of deliberate practice and experimentation, with ideas such as those in this article, that elevates meeting craftsmanship to an art-form. It’s inspiring to hear of so much ongoing experimentation in these comments - thank you to all who share.
Great article. Thanks to Jon and Mark for sharing your expertise and experience. I really like using the chat box and having each member "check in" as the meeting is starting. We like to use ice-breakers to get everyone in on the action. Another favorite is using music at the beginning and end as people are arriving - and having a few minutes after the meeting for "water cooler" time. I think it will be challenging to engage both in person and online folks in the future. I’ll look forward to your next article for that!
Such a good article. Great range of examples from different not-for-profits.
I especially appreciate the "baker’s-dozen" comment in the introduction. Now it’s up to us to pick-and-choose which ones to try out.
Thanks Jon, an all-punch piece as usual! I’m fascinated by tw of the twelve strategy points in particular: 1. One doesn’t really think of the advantage virtual meetings actually have over in-person ones in terms of efficiently expelling persistently offensive/disruptive participants to keep the current meeting constructive and efficacious - while, I presume, making a point of tying through some kind of facilitated resolution process at a later time not on everyone’s clock. 2. I for one would be a notably engaged and curious reader of a study report about water cooler meeting outcomes besides increased social cohesion and such, that qualified the applicable board processes and/or agendas in constructive ways that would otherwise not have seen light.
COMMENTS
BY Liz Miles
ON March 17, 2021 01:02 PM
Great read. Need a version for team meeting and projects managers. Ideas and advice that can be filtered down through organisations
BY Brian R Kaye
ON March 17, 2021 05:29 PM
Zitter and Huggett offers very thoughtful and practical suggestions for running virtual board meetings for non-profit Boards. Many of these suggestions will be very helpful even after life has returned to normal following a quieting of the Covid-19 pandemic
BY Alan Gellman
ON March 17, 2021 07:07 PM
This is an excellent, thoughtful and helpful piece. As a nonprofit board chair this gives me several ideas I can bring back to make our board more effective. Especially important to me are the human connection elements. How do we engage? How do we bring out the insights and ideas of
ALL board members, especially the "quiet" ones? One tool related to a couple of the points is to also use the private chat function to let someone know you’re hoping they’ll bring in their perspective without putting them on the spot.
Thanks for the insights, Mark and Jon!
BY SETH SCHALET
ON March 18, 2021 09:30 AM
Cogent points that all board members should read. I serve on several nonprofit & foundation boards, chair committees and my day job is a nonprofit CEO, so I have seen the spectrum of what works and what doesn’t in the virtual realm. Some Zoom meetings have run in a "set it and forget" framework of still being run the same as when the pandemic forced them to become virtual, without tweaks or adjustments. There is never a wrong time to take stock and improve.
I’ll add one thought, as we begin to contemplate some level of future in-person meetings, it is important to figure out what meetings can remain as fully virtual, what will be a combination of the two and how to integrate them and the implications for meeting structures/content/engagement to keep them effective. This will require forethought by chairs, CEO’s, and input from fellow directors.
BY D Low
ON March 18, 2021 01:13 PM
Fantastic tips for effective meetings in this brave new virtual world we are living in.
BY Jeanne L Allen
ON March 18, 2021 01:28 PM
Great ideas! I also like adding in google docs as a way for everyone to comment on questions. For example, create a chart, and pre-populate with board member names. For a discussion, have everyone type in their top concern/question/ or reason why re: the issue at hand. Everyone can then read all the other comments, and pick the ones that reasonate with the largest group. A great way to "hear" from everyone, including the quite ones.
thanks for your article.
BY Lawrence Patrick
ON March 18, 2021 10:38 PM
Every board chair needs to read this incredibly helpful article. I serve on several boards that have put different combinations of these practices in place and I can attest to the powerful board transformation that can happen with these types of tactics. The pandemic has created the opportunity to remake and redesign board meetings and the authors have nailed it in terms of how to start the process.
BY Tom Neumark
ON March 19, 2021 02:28 AM
An excellent piece full of great tips and examples from a range of boards
BY Matt Beard
ON March 19, 2021 03:55 AM
Thanks so much for your advice Jon and Mark. I am the ED at All Out. Jon set a culture as Chair of the All Out Board even before the pandemic for virtual meetings to be interactive and engaging. We have built on that through the last year and have at least half of the ideas above fully implemented. I am going to share this article with the current co-Chairs and we ill use the other half as inspiration for further change and adaptation to our new normal.
BY John Beck
ON March 19, 2021 05:15 AM
Thought all the points were really helpful and well-presented. I was particularly struck by #10 (on building connections). I know the most important thing I ever got from board work was personal connections—often formed during meeting breaks or over meals. Those connections were both personally enriching and made the board work more effective. As an introvert, I naturally will show up exactly on time and leave as soon as I can manage it. And virtual "gang calls" make it even easier for me to disappear. I’d love to see another article with more depth on what board chairs and executives can do to connect those who disconnect naturally in a virtual world.
BY ashley Dartnell
ON March 19, 2021 05:26 AM
Excellent article with tangible suggestions. As relevant for all boards as non profit and of course, also, for teams and meetings generally.
BY Deb Mashek
ON March 19, 2021 06:14 AM
What a wonderful set of recommendations! Granted, I’m biased given I’m a close relationships researcher and collaboration consultant, but I think #10 is the most critical one on the list, an essential foundation piece. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom, Jon and Mark!
BY Richard Winger
ON March 19, 2021 09:41 AM
This is very helpful. My board has done well electronically, but we are only sox people who have worked together for a while so there is a lot of social capital to draw down. The inherent tedium of the medium has actually been helpful in keeping meetings concise and focused. Much less desire to pontificate into a screen. On the other hand, the time efficiency has made for good attendance. I imagine we’ll go from 8 in person meetings to maybe 2 or 3 but the article reminded me to build some social stuff around the few in person meetings to bolster cohesion. Thanks for this!
BY MICHAEL LEVITAN
ON March 19, 2021 09:44 AM
Jon and Mark produce another article replete with insights and actions that can make a difference. Many of these suggestions apply even if/when in-person board meetings resume. Until then, applying any of these suggestions can contribute to more effective virtual ones.
BY Jono
ON March 19, 2021 07:00 PM
Thanks for the practical ideas. We have found similar things with our board meetings and strategy sessions. Keeping it shorter helps as does using tools like menti.
Ultimately I think we will move to a mix of f2f and zoom as the preferred option.
BY C Faro
ON March 19, 2021 08:48 PM
Thanks for a terrific piece: thought provoking and full of excellent, practical ideas. I agree, #10 is the area where most of us have struggled in the virtual environment. How do we foster that human connection in the virtual world? Colleagues and I have used trial and error to come up with a formula for virtual drinks that seems to work well for us: schedule virtual drinks at the end of the working week; no chair, just an informal gathering of those who can make it; crucially, limit the time so that it doesn’t become raucous!
BY Sherry Zitter (full disclosure: Mark's sister)
ON March 19, 2021 11:00 PM
Excellent list of ideas, many of which my board is already using but others we can effectively add. I like Alan’s idea about encouraging quiet members in a private chat to contribute.
Our board is national and has always been virtual from its inception, but we have one or two in-person weekend retreats per year that really cement and deepen our bonds and help to carry us through disagreements and challenges over Zoom. We always check in briefly on a personal level at the start of the meeting, and have a personal Slack channel to support each other’s life challenges and celebrate our joys, as well as various business channels of communication for committee and board work.
It’s important to remember that many who have been able to join boards or committees in a virtual environment—due to the reasons Mark and Jon mentioned, as well as age, trouble driving at night, disability or chronic illness, or other challenges—will be cut out of in-person meetings unless you provide a Zoom link for them to join. We have had two members of our board who couldn’t travel to a retreat and spent most of the weekend on a stool in our circle on a laptop, and it felt to them and to us as if they were right in our circle. We even brought them with us to meals!
Thanks for deepening this crucial discussion. May it continue at many levels!
BY Ryan
ON March 22, 2021 04:39 PM
Great read. It will be interesting to see what lasting changes come from this past year of virtual board meetings.
BY Will H.
ON March 23, 2021 05:23 PM
This is a really valuable article that fills in an important gap. It’s not that hard to run a Zoom meeting of up to five people; that happens pretty organically. Similarly, a Zoom meeting of 40+ people is basically a webinar, and there are lots of resources for how to do those well. But how do you run a Zoom meeting for 5-40 people in a way that is well-moderated, effective, and participatory? These authors provide some excellent suggestions for doing so. Some of those are particular to boards, but many are relevant for any Zoom-based meeting of a certain size.
With appreciation, I encourage the authors to write an additional piece on quality, mid-size Zoom meetings in general. I look forward to reading it!
BY Andrew Milner
ON March 25, 2021 04:42 AM
Excellent article - clear exposition of the problems and good suggestions to overcome them. Particularly good to read about the positive aspects to virtual boarding, like the possibility of including members who wouldn’t otherwise have been involved and interesting to see that, even after the pandemic, many are planning to continue to hold a lot of their meetings virtually. Thanks, Jon and Mark!
BY Adam Saffer
ON March 25, 2021 05:55 AM
Very well said by Huggett and Zitter. The recommendations resonate with my experience on nonprofit as well as on for profit boards. In fact, several points are applicable in numerous team building scenarios where communications often have to be virtual. Thakns for the insights!!!
BY JoAnne Tillemans
ON March 26, 2021 04:10 PM
This is a very information piece. I enjoyed all of the specifics about how to make board meetings more zoom friendly and I think the tips apply for any meeting that one is conducting on zoom. I am happy to read this excellent article from Jon and Mark and to see that Stanford published it for a wide distribution.
BY Iris Lapinski
ON March 28, 2021 11:29 PM
Good and relevant advice. As you said at the end I do think that the changes triggered by the pandemic are here to stay as they not only create problems, but also offer opportunities.
Many non-profit boards have been quite elitist or hard to join unless you had significant wealth or time to spare, so I do think lowering the barrier to entry for boards can lead to a new mix of people joining boards and adding value with their unique perspectives.
BY Tom Rippin
ON March 29, 2021 05:46 AM
Thank you both. I will certainly be sharing these with my chair. Great area of practical ideas!
BY Richard Smith
ON March 29, 2021 08:31 AM
What a great list with inspiration for how to jazz up pretty much any recurring meeting, whether virtual or not!
Above all, for me this article underscores the extremely high return on effort of good meeting design - a craft that is frequently and wildly under-appreciated!
I use the word "craft" deliberately. Meeting craftsmanship is an important part of the role of chair person. It is the heat of deliberate practice and experimentation, with ideas such as those in this article, that elevates meeting craftsmanship to an art-form. It’s inspiring to hear of so much ongoing experimentation in these comments - thank you to all who share.
BY Ann Mathieson
ON March 29, 2021 06:47 PM
Great article. Thanks to Jon and Mark for sharing your expertise and experience. I really like using the chat box and having each member "check in" as the meeting is starting. We like to use ice-breakers to get everyone in on the action. Another favorite is using music at the beginning and end as people are arriving - and having a few minutes after the meeting for "water cooler" time. I think it will be challenging to engage both in person and online folks in the future. I’ll look forward to your next article for that!
BY Christine Foster
ON May 5, 2021 05:45 AM
Such a good article. Great range of examples from different not-for-profits.
I especially appreciate the "baker’s-dozen" comment in the introduction. Now it’s up to us to pick-and-choose which ones to try out.
BY Adriaan Brand
ON July 4, 2021 11:57 AM
Thanks Jon, an all-punch piece as usual! I’m fascinated by tw of the twelve strategy points in particular: 1. One doesn’t really think of the advantage virtual meetings actually have over in-person ones in terms of efficiently expelling persistently offensive/disruptive participants to keep the current meeting constructive and efficacious - while, I presume, making a point of tying through some kind of facilitated resolution process at a later time not on everyone’s clock. 2. I for one would be a notably engaged and curious reader of a study report about water cooler meeting outcomes besides increased social cohesion and such, that qualified the applicable board processes and/or agendas in constructive ways that would otherwise not have seen light.