Did you know there are different types of virtual team meetings? Here are the seven most common ones to get familiar with.

7 TYPES OF MEETINGS

Check-in – Every week (30-60 minutes)

These meetings are especially important in a remote work context. They are similar to those informal meetings you would normally have around the coffee machine. The intention is to follow up to see how a teammate or employee is feeling and to check if their perception of their tasks to be performed is well aligned. For example, I often schedule a time on Monday morning to call my colleagues to hear their stories from the weekend and to explore how we can help each other with our respective tasks for the week.

Informational meeting – When there is information to share (+/- 60 minutes)

The idea here is to communicate information clearly and precisely. It is important to allow time for clarification questions. A good example here would be Premier François Legault's press briefings during the Covid-19 crisis that aimed to disseminate information to as many people as possible. In large organizations, information sent by email can easily be misinterpreted, which is why information sharing meetings are key. It is always best to allow almost as much time for clarification questions as for disseminating information.

Ideation Meeting – When you need to generate ideas (45-60 minutes)

In an ideation meeting, you need to quickly present the context, the issue, the problem or the big question, and then try to generate as many ideas as possible by welcoming everyone's perspectives. It's counterintuitive, but in ideation we often say that it's "quantity that counts and not quality". There are tools to facilitate such meetings, such as interactive whiteboards, which I will tell you about in a future column.

Decision-making meeting – When it is necessary to converge towards a clear choice (+/- 60 minutes)

Often planned after the ideation meetings, the decision-making meetings allow time to discuss the different options in order to make an informed choice.

Feedback Meeting – After completing an action/project (30-60 minutes)

Often overlooked due to lack of time, feedback meetings are essential for the continuous improvement of your business. They allow you to explore what worked well, what worked less well and learn how to better move forward.

Strategic meeting – Every two to four weeks (+/- 2 hours)

Strategic meetings, also often neglected, allow you to take a step back as a group from your daily actions to question yourself on a larger scale. Are you accomplishing your mission? Should you adjust to new market trends? Do you see other opportunities to seize?, etc.

Team building meeting – every two to three weeks (+/- 60 minutes)

Taking the time to connect with your team informally is essential, even in a remote work context. Team building meetings help generate group chemistry and human connection. It can be as simple as scheduling a time to chat in a casual way like at a happy hour, but know that there are several facilitators who now offer remote team building activities. You can do online quizzes with platforms like Kahoot.it and www.mentimeter.com , or you can simply invite everyone to share a story, for example, of a turning point in their life. You can also find other activity templates online on sites like www.mural.com .

See also, How Leaders Can Use Virtual Teambuilding Activities to Boost Company Morale an interview with Jessica Malz, founder of Inbo , who I have had the good fortune to collaborate with on many occasions and who offers a whole range of online activities.

Of course, this is not a perfect science and it is possible to combine different types of meetings intentionally. However, if you have already experienced a disappointing meeting, it may be because you expected to be listened to (ideation meeting), while the organizer just wanted to share information (informational meeting), without opening any space for your opinions (feedback meeting)…

In the second part of this column, I will share with you 5 tips to improve your virtual meetings.