1 August 2024|communication skills
More and more people as part of their jobs are having regular meetings on Teams, Zoom, Google Meet, or other video conferencing platforms, with colleagues, customers, suppliers, business partners, and sales prospects from all over the world.
Global video calls
What do you think about before the global video call?
To start with you probably think about the purpose of the call. Are you leading the call or a participant? Are you responsible for some of the content in the call or an observer? How much of the content is your responsibility?
Who are the participants going to be?
Is it an inter-company meeting, clients, suppliers, business partners, sales prospects? Where are they from? What language is the meeting going to be in? Do you already know some of the participants? What do you know about the people you have not met before?
What information about them could you find out before you have the global video call that could help build rapport on the call? Have you looked them up on LinkedIn/Xing/etc?
For me, this week the top four topics to think about before a global video call have been as follows.
1. Practicalities
· Firstly, is the global video call technology going to work for everyone who is logging in?
· If people are logging in from home will their internet connection be good enough.
· Does everyone have a suitable place at home to take the call?
· Will some people have to join from their mobile phone rather than from a laptop?
· Are there people on the global video call who don’t want to show their home background?
· Would anyone appreciate advice on setting up a background screen to hide their surroundings?
· Should I share my screen on a global video call?
· Is there a company rule on this with the companies I am talking to?
· Will everyone on the global video call be happy to share their screens too?
· Is it clear to everyone who will be on the global video call and why they are on the call?
· Should I send out a list of the attendees’ names and job titles to the attendees. Even if I am going to start the call with introductions, a lot of people will appreciate the list as it is often difficult to hear names from a different language.
2. Hierarchy – why might it be a factor
Secondly, I consider hierarchy and its impact on who will speak and when.
For example, if there are three people from a company on the call with me will the most senior always lead and speak first? Indeed, will they manage the other members of their team and specifically ask them to speak on a topic or to answer a question?
Before the call starts, consider if someone is wondering:
“My manager/colleagues will be on the call, how will I know when I should speak and what I am responsible for?”
Perhaps these people would appreciate a pre-call meeting to discuss the plan?
3. Clarity and understanding
Thirdly, how will the other people in the call indicate when they can’t hear, don’t understand, or don’t agree.
Will I know immediately when there is an issue, or will they remain silent?
What about if I make a mistake with a name or an industry term, will they correct me?
Of course, the opposite holds true, how will I be perceived if I indicate lack of understanding or correct someone?
4. Timing
Fourthly, how quickly will the call start? I don’t just mean, will it start exactly on the time agreed, but also how quickly after introductions will business start. Will there be some ‘small talk’ and if so, how much, and who will suggest starting to discuss the reason for the call.
If I am hosting the call, should I use a waiting room and let everyone in at the same time, or let people in as soon as they are in the waiting room?
If people are late how long should I leave it before calling the meeting off? For example, some nationalities and cultures always seem to be 10 minutes late.
In my invitations should I put something to say if participants have not joined the meeting within 10 minutes of scheduled start time it will be rearranged? Would this offend anyone?
Will my agenda for the meeting fit into the time I have allowed? How much should I try and fit in to one meeting? Would I be better scheduling multiple calls with specific agendas?
Concluding thoughts
The more online meetings you lead and take part in the more experience you will gain of what works and what does not work.
Learn from the mistakes you witness. Keep notes of things that went well and things that didn’t work.
The more experience you gain working across international cultural differences will also help you with cultural differences within your own organisation and country.
What would you add to this?
Message us with your thoughts on how to run a successful video conference.
Post Keywords Microsoft Teams tips , Zoom meeting tips , Google meet tips
Further Reading
How to team lead across continents and time zones
The 8 best Zoom alternatives in 2025
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