If I asked you what is the #1 thing that is missing and you would like to see in your online meetings, how would you respond? We ask this question of tens of thousands of people, and they always come back to one primary answer: Interaction.

• Everyone is multi-tasking, rather than interacting with each other. Processing email is producing higher value than the team meeting, and that's the most important indicator that something very wrong is destroying your team performance.
• People dial into the same audio bridge, but only one or two people dominate the session. The rest are dead silent. Who even knows if they are there at their desk?
• The leader directs a question to a specific person, only to get "I'm sorry, but could you repeat that question again." Well, I'm sure fooled. Are you?
• Someone tells a really funny joke, but the mute button hides any laughter. A moment that could have bonded the team ends up being a sterile and uncomfortable moment.

Sound familiar? Virtual teams don't have time by the water cooler like same-site teams. The only time they have to interact together is when they link up for their weekly web or audio conference call. In fact, research shows that they interact 84% less frequently than same- site teams. That makes their live, interactive moments together in the weekly meeting really precious and rare.

If people aren't interacting in your online meeting, they're not a team. The impact of NOT interacting is catastrophic on building a motivated, committed teamwork. When people DON'T interact

• They fail to build essential levels of trust.
• They fail to establish rapport.
• They fail to create solutions together.
• They fail to collaborate on issues that matter to them and the company.
• They fail to participate in the result.
• They fail to feel energized by the team's work, and don't give their best.
• They fail to have fun.

When they fail to interact in an online meeting, they also hold back results as compared to teams that do interact well.

• They produce 1/3 less than those that interact effectively
• They produce lower total returns for shareholders
• They fail to produce a premium on the stock value.
• They experience higher turnover rates.

So there are lots of things that are missing in your virtual meetings, but they come from a lack of interaction.

So here are some things you can do today to help it.

• Put everyone on an level playing field. Don't have some people meet in a conference room and others call in. The absolutely the worst kind of meeting you can have is one where people are attending on mixed media. The people who phone in can't hear, can't see and tend to be ignored. This sends them the wrong message. Either have everyone in a conference room or have everyone meet from their desktop.
• Use web conference technology or video conference technology. If everyone is meeting from their desktop, you don't just want to have an audio conference. Audio only is not robust enough.
• Agree that multitasking is forbidden during the meeting. Although not easy to enforce, it will be easy to detect. Create some kind of penalty for people caught multitasking.
• Never put the audio portion of the video or web conference on mute except when one of the team members is in a very noisy environment. If you want to have a real team meeting you want to be able to hear each other!
• Plan your meeting to accomplish something! You want to create, decide, agree, approve, or do. Meetings that are information only are a waste of precious interactive time. Send out an email with the information or even send out your PowerPoint slides with audio on them and let the team listen individually to the information only presentation you were planning.
• Create a communication plan for your meetings. What should you be meeting about? Find out what the team would consider valuable and meet on those topics. Set up norms for the meetings. What happens when someone comes late? How does someone get the floor to contribute? How do you insure that everyone has agreed to a course of action and that they don't come back the next meeting saying they hadn't agreed?
• Learn how to facilitate an engaging, interactive team meeting. Learn how to get your team to interact in ways that are purposefully more interactive than face-to-face. Included is how to change your meeting culture to be one that is structured for high interaction quality that keeps everyone participating and engaged.

Virtual meetings are extremely important. They are the only time a team can act as a team.

.