Communication Strategies- Virtual Meeting
As the team leader in this virtual discussion, I’m very aware that either allowing the meetings to be the way they are or modifying the employees’ behaviours has advantages and disadvantages. Some of the advantages or cons associated with not interfering with the meetings conducted are that first, everyone will have the freedom to air their opinion. This will help the management understand the behaviours and reasoning of each employee (How, 2015). Secondly, leaving the meetings to continue the way they are conducted would help brainstorm certain pertinent issues since everyone contributes to the discussion. Another advantage of setting the team free without controlling it is that it improves team members or employee engagement (Frisch & Greene, 2020). When the employees feel that their opinions are considered, it helps them value their contribution, thus motivating them to contribute more to the team’s improvement.
Some of the disadvantages of leaving the meetings to continue without controlling the behaviours are: first, there are high chances of conflict eruptions amongst the employees. In such meetings, each employee wants his/her opinion to be heard and considered, and thus, there is a conflict of interest. When a conflict arises in a team, it creates bad relationships among them, and hence the entire team’s goals are affected (How, 2015). Secondly, uncontrolled meetings will waste a lot of time discussing one issue, given that this virtual meeting requires control over some behaviours to achieve effective and meaningful discussions (Frisch & Greene, 2020). Another disadvantage of uncontrolled behaviour meetings is that there are possibilities for the team members to veer away from the main agendas.
The option of controlling the team members’ behaviours during the meeting can be good since it has several pros. First, controlling the members’ behaviours would minimize conflicts since every member would be expected to respect other people’s opinions (Koshy, Liu, Whitehurst, Gundogan, & Al Omran, 2017). The second advantage is that controlling the behaviours would enable the team to stick to the agendas. Thirdly, controlling the behaviours of the members would help save time in that the team would make resolutions faster.
Some of the disadvantages of controlling members’ behaviors are; first, it discourages some members from airing out their opinions which could be helpful in some way. Secondly, controlling the behaviors hinders creativity and innovation since the members would are not allowed to go beyond the required levels (Karl, Peluchette, & Aghakhani, 2021). Another disadvantage of controlling the team members’ behaviors is that it discourages autonomy from the team members, making them over-dependent on the management’s decisions.
References
Frisch, B & Greene, C. (2020). What It Takes to Run a Great Virtual Meeting. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2020/03/what-it-takes-to-run-a-great-virtual-meeting
How, J. (2015). Meeting etiquette. IEEE Control Systems Magazine Vol. 35(6):6
Karl, K. A., Peluchette, J. V., & Aghakhani, N. (2021). Virtual Work Meetings During the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Good, Bad, and Ugly. Small-Group Research, 10464964211015286. https://doi.org/10.1177/10464964211015286
Koshy, K., Liu, A., Whitehurst, K., Gundogan, B., & Al Omran, Y. (2017). How to hold an effective meeting. International journal of surgery. Oncology, 2(5), e22. https://doi.org/10.1097/
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Question
As the Vice President of Operations at Post Corporation, you have a weekly virtual meeting with your staff of 20 employees using WebEx. Recently, you noticed that some employees lack the expected etiquette within group meetings and often interrupt, argue with one another, and shoot down each other’s ideas. You are debating whether you should go with the flow of the way meetings currently operate, or try to modify the team’s behaviours.
Discuss the pros and cons of both approaches and decide which you think would be the best way to run the meetings in the future. Conduct some research on meeting etiquette and cite at least one article related to the topic in your post. Make up any details you need in your scenario.