People don’t really like virtual team meetings.  The runaway success of this video makes that clear and the criticism has been a long time coming.

There are things you can do though and they are all connected to how real people like to communicate.

1.   Set ground rules for how your meetings are going to run.

2.  Ban the mute button at times when you want to get a real discussion going. You cannot hear laughter if everyone is on mute!

3.  Start and finish important weekly meetings with a “Greet and Go” ritual where you check in with everyone.

4. Accept that different timezones mean that people may be working from home. It does not matter if you can hear the kids
playing in the background. That’s life as much as work is.

Check out this advice and more from a Harvard Business Review blog article on the subject..

http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/01/how-virtual-teams-can-create-human-connections-despite-distance/