Five Secrets to Great Conference Calls
Never Having to Repeat the Question for Those Multi-Tasking
An informal survey conducted among a few hundred people in diverse organizations found that nearly everyone admitted to doing something else while on a conference call.
Why? Because generally speaking—and unless those running the calls observe best practices—calls are boring. And too long. And often off-topic for where the group really needs to be.
With the rise of telecommuting and work-from-home arrangements, the number of conference calls is skyrocketing. Thus, learning the five basic practices for good conference calls can improve your work experience immediately.
No More Status Reports
At the top of the list of reasons that literally drive people to distraction is the regular status report call. Listening to one person after another go through an update of where their part of the project stands is not unlike reading baseball statistics. There are a few items that stand out—someone’s really great batting average, i.e., a true breakthrough in project work—but mainly what’s reported is predictable.
Given how pervasive other methods for distributing updates are now—online project rooms, blogs, wikis, even old-fashioned emails—there is no longer any excuse for using conference calls for status updates. Further, most people on the call don’t really need to know the fine detail of where others’ work stands.
Liven Up Conference Calls
There is a better way. Instead of status reports, consider mixing it up a bit. Leaders of conference calls need to spend a little time thinking up ways to make them more interesting.
- Start the call by “getting everyone’s voice ‘in the room.” Begin by throwing out a fun question: What did you have for breakfast? What’s your favorite meal? Or, if the team really is concerned about baseball, ask them who’s going to win the next World Series. There’s nothing like tapping into what people are really interested in to get them to pay attention.
- Assign each person on the call to a spot on a clock. “This is Julie speaking at 12 o’clock.” Make sure each person says his or her name and their hour on the clock every time they speak. Soon people will be able to recognize one another’s voices, key to people working well together.
- Announce a bit of news. In our 24/7-everyone-knows-everything world, it’s hard to really surprise people but an unknown piece of information tends to keep people’s ears to the phones and fingers off the mouse.
- After that, start a fight. What? Encourage dissension? Yes. Research reported in Harvard Business Review and elsewhere indicates that the most successful calls are those where people talk frankly about their differences. This is not to suggest that the conversation should become a personal gripe session. The best conference calls, that study found, were those where people resolved differences in real time. Decision-making also lends itself to conference calls. Have you ever seen a team make a decision via email? It happens but usually the stakes are not very high when it does. For anything complex, the real-time interaction afforded by a conference call is an ideal setting for gaining consensus.
- Finally, end the call sooner than expected, going out with a bang. The best calls conclude with everyone checking out, rendering an opinion about whether the meeting met their needs and how to improve the next one. In the closing remarks, try mentioning that the call will end fifteen minutes early. No one ever complained about a conference call being too short.
Follow these five guidelines and never again will someone on the call say, “Could you please repeat the question?” Anyone who says that on a call that follows these guidelines is certainly multi-tasking.
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