The definitive guide for asynchronous meetings & remote comms

Even before the recent shift to working remotely, I used to work in a remote team at an online bank. We were constantly experimenting with various types of remote meetings that mixed and generally went smoothly.

However, it's not always simple to increase the efficiency of your meetings or to ensure that you have a good communications in remote meetings or even decide what type of meeting you want to hold initially.

This document (based upon some of the research conducted and personal experience) will assist you in understanding the different types of remote meetings and the best ways you can effectively run them, along with some helpful tips and tricks using the appropriate devices for the job plus common virtual meeting etiquette.

Different types of remote meeting

Perhaps you haven't given it much thought before it, but there's numerous types of remote meetings (and chances are you're already somewhat familiar with them). With greater tech advancement within this field, we've been able to connect with remote employees and other team members with the help of one or more of these main methods or even a combination of them!

Teleconferencing

In all of the kinds of remote meetings we'll talk about here, teleconferencing is probably the most tried-and-tested old-school technique. Being audio-only phone calls The technology used for it is more advanced and simple than the others in this list.

In essence, the hosting host will be on the line' during an exact time for the meeting after which others in the group will be able to 'dial into' the meeting using a specific phone number. Of course, this type of meeting is best suited for a small group of people -- not being able to see the other members could be confusing if multiple people talk simultaneously.

Video conferencing

From the time of the outbreak of a specific pandemic around 2020 video conferencing has been an essential part of our work lives thanks to the likes of Zoom meetings and Microsoft Teams.

Video-based meetings (conferences) follow a similar pattern to teleconferencing, in that the host hosts a real-time meeting where participants  connect by dialing a link or phone number. The key difference, of course, is the ability to be able to see one another and utilize software to make video conference more efficient and enjoyable.

Web conferencing

Lastly, the third most common virtual meeting type is web conference. It is easy to mix this one up with videoconferencing, but there's a distinct differenceweb conferences are usually utilized for virtual meetings (like all-hands meetings), online training, or for project collaboration, where there is an element of practicality in it.

Naturally, this option is great for larger-scale projects or corporate-wide gatherings. It may be setup in a similar manner to a videoconference, or it can be arranged with ticketed attendance and pre-registration.

For a further layer of different meeting types, there is also the option to'sync meetings' and 'async.

What is an Asynchronous Meeting?

Meetings in Asynch are a form of communications that don't occur in real-time and also doesn't normally require an immediate response.

Synchronous communication vs asynchronous communication

In the digital banking job I mentioned earlier the team worked extremely at making sure that employees who were remote felt at ease and part of decision-making and status updates, check-ins, and team-building events. For this purpose, we needed to use simultaneous and asynchronous meetings. However, each of them has advantages and disadvantages.

 Advantages of synchronous meeting:

• The most closely matches in-person gatherings.
• Immediate feedback on action issues or discussions.
• Real-time communication can help you exchange ideas more spontaneously.

 What's not great about HTML0:

• Most of the time you will meet individuals who tend to be quiet or introverted who struggle to participate.
• But when everybody has something to share, the discussion could quickly turn into a raunchy mess of people speaking about each other.
• There's a risk of technological problems or delays in network connectivity when you need it the most.

 Asynchronous Meetings: Benefits:

• If there's no pressure to speak immediately, almost everyone gets a chance for the voice of their choice to be heard.
• Being able to schedule the right times to meet for night shift team members or those distributed across the globe. group members on shifts (something my previous workplace benefited greatly from).

 What's not so great:

• According to Buffer's 2020 state of Remote Work report, 20% of respondents stated that loneliness was their most significant problem (which I am also able to attest), sync meetings are the chance for you to "see" others, and so switching to asynchronous comm can add to the feeling of loneliness.
• If a quick response isn't needed, sometimes team members might forget to reply or even follow-up in the first place.
• A common issue with remote work according to Statista, which also applies for async-based meetings (since they may be going moving back and forth during the workday) is not being able unplug.

From a broader perspective, when taking a look at the pros and cons it's a matter of selecting the best method for your event rather than going with one of the extremes. In this case, I'll be focusing more specifically on the meetings that are async starting from now (since they're less recognized).

How do you run a successful online meeting

Now that you've figured out what types of remote meetings there are and the different ways to go about the process, but how can conduct an actual online meeting? This can be an issue when you're familiar with real-time meetings.

Because I don't have personal experience running meetings (only participating in meetings), I asked a handful of experts, including a the former Project Manager, who later became freelance writer Laura Bosco, about what they believed made efficient and productive Asynchronous meetings. Here's her response:

 "--the context and structure of the async communications was a major factor in my experience and are still a major factor in my interactions with my clients.

Context: Some types of feedback, announcements, or questions are more sensitive or easy to misinterpret. For those, video can be more effective than text as the other person can hear the tone of your voice as well as be able to see your face. This minimizes misconceptions and relational harm.

Format: Big fan of BLUF (bottom-line-up-front) in most written comms. It's also more efficient. If you can make your question clear and concise, you're more likely to get what you're looking for. In addition, it's a way to demonstrate empathy for the recipient. This shows respect for their time and daily influx of messages.

 Also, text formatting. Bold, headers, bullets or italics to indicate important requests...these don't belittle the recipient. They help them digest your message ."

Laura isn't the only one who believes that providing context is an effective method to use async communication. Michael Steele, CEO of Flywheel Digital (a remote first technical marketing firm), who is an avid user of Notion, Google Docs, and Slack for their tech stack. Also, he mentioned:

 "A big key to success in asynchronous communication, with employees and clients is the ability to give context. Everybody involved needs to know what the goals are and the most recent developments or events that are noteworthy, and also have the ability to access important documents like strategies as well as marketing personas and the performance reports.

 In asynchronous communications, miscommunications often arise and time is spent repairing mistakes or making changes which could easily be avoided with the right data available at the very beginning."

Concerning the operational aspect of running the meetings, founder of ScrapingBee (a 100 100% remote-based company) Kevin Sahin says that aside from having quick real-time meeting that are facilitated with memos written in Notion as well, they use Slack:

"Slack is used asynchronously, it uses Slack status to determine if a colleague is available for a call or not. If we post a message in Slack it's not expected to receive an answer immediately, that's what the purpose of it. In general, our philosophy is to use the best software for the task."

For an effective asynchronous meeting it is essential to be sure that the software you're using that are properly designed, and provide context and the points you're covering will be done in a way that's simple and easy to handle.

9 tips to organize and conduct the perfect meeting remotely

If your meeting via remote is either synchronous or non-synchronous however, there are a some general guidelines to make them more efficient. A few of these suggestions come from the research that is already in place and others are derived from personal experience. The tips will be presented in a before, during, and after format for those favoring real-time. However, the content of these tips is applicable to async-based meetings.

 Prior to the session:

1. Be sure that only those who are essential are invited. If you overcrowd an online meeting regardless of whether it's a video conference or a Slack channel, information can be lost quickly and less individuals will be able fully participate.
   
2. Make a crystal-clear agenda. You can set agendas that are either in real time or async meetings in the program of your choice as I did when working in a banking sector, we created Notion templates with fill-in sections like issues we're facing and actions points.
   
3. Create meeting guidelines. Laura also mentioned an interesting strategy she likes to employ in which she creates and distribute "how to collaborate alongside me" documents ( like this one), to help define norms and expectations in meetings, as well as for other communications.

 During the conference:

1. Begin and end within the timeframe. This point is especially relevant for remote meetings, there's not anything worse than showing up at a meeting early or extending the time. The time of the attendees is valuable. The same is true of meeting async -- if you fail to respond in a reasonably timely time, information may either get lost or other deadlines could be missed.
   
2. Make it brief. Similar to the above point, there's not any point to having an hour-long real-time meeting where you're able to achieve the goals that you wish to with async messaging or shorter sessions. When it comes to async, avoid writing huge pages of text, or making long pauses in recorded videos.
   
3. Make sure everyone can be heard or recognized. As I mentioned previously, not everyone is the personality type to be able to voice their opinions in real-time conversations, async comms allows those who aren't to do so. As the manager or as a host, it's still important to be vigilant about the participation of members.

 Following the meeting:

1. Get feedback from attendees. If you're experimenting using different kinds of gatherings, you must get feedback from the participants to find what's working regarding the communication style and the channel. Certain software is more effective than others, depending on the type of person.
   
2. Provide a means of follow-up communication. Generally speaking, it's best to establish a communications channel or area where people can offer specific points regarding the event or update about action points, without messing in the actual meeting.
   

You might be thinking at this point, "those tips are all well and good, but what about software?", this next article will answer that question.

Software to facilitate remote meetings

Of course, one of the most important considerations when having remote meetings of any type is to ensure that you have the right tech in the first place. For meetings that are synchronous the most well-known videoconferencing solutions such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams/Skype, and Google Meet do the trick quite well. However, it's slightly different with synchronous meetings.

A few of the most well-known programs for asynchronous meetings (which are mostly tools for managing projects) Some, which were previously mentioned include:

•   Slack
•   Trello
•   Google Docs
•   Asana
•   Notion
•   Basecamp
• If you're in a group of devs, Gitlab or Github is a good option.

Choosing the right tool for your virtual meeting

The majority of collaboration tools I've listed above are text-based or for messaging and other collaboration tools may be made up of images, text or video. So, just as Laura stated in the past, context and formatting are key.

 For simple project updates

If you're just looking to get people up to the speed of what your project's state is, software like Trello, Asana, and Notion are great for this. For example, I (and my old work colleagues) use Notion "boards" to give an overview of project statuses as well as a way to dive in to see comments:

You can do a similar "board" style of organization in each of the applications previously mentioned.

 For continuous updates

If your group or project requires a simple way to get in touch with but doesn't require live in-person meetings every day The majority of the apps mentioned are okay, Basecamp in particular is great, but Slack tops the list on this particular aspect.

My old job had each team would have its own Slack channel to be able to communicate asynchronously and there were companies-wide channels to share general discussions. Naturally, I do not have access to that particular Slack workspace any more, but I do have some Slack workspaces that I utilize in a similar way:

 For more intricate or sensitive data

Like Laura said, certain kinds of data require personal touch. You don't want to have data that is misunderstood or lost among all the blog posts and other projects. In order to avoid that, you'll need to make use of video and will be able to count on us.

As a bonus as an added bonus, you can track who has viewed your videos and participate in the comments.

It's sometimes difficult to decide the best software or technique to use since every team has its own unique approach, so you should start by experimenting and never being afraid to switch gears if one isn't working out for you.

The remote playbook: etiquette for virtual meetings

The final topic discuss in this article is etiquette for meetings. Certain aspects are likely to be familiar from what we've already covered, but it's worth summarizing exactly what common remote meeting etiquette looks as.

For synchronous meetings, we've been on a lot of Zoom calls and have learned the general guidelines (and often, they're broken):

• Be sure to not be talking on mute while you're speaking.
• Make sure you are in a calm area where other people can focus on you (not your washing machine running in the background).
• Check out the features you would like to use before you start so that you don't waste time trying to figure it out at the time of session.

The situation, however, is somewhat different when you consider meeting that are synchronous, and rules of engagement can be different based on the method or channel of communicating.

for text-based channels (e.g. Notion, Slack etc.)

• Keep on-topic information in the proper channel/thread/page (or when you're making reference to an item of interest, include the link to that thread or page).
• Do not treat it as emails. That's how I define acknowledging a message or a project instead of putting messages in your inbox (in Slack, it is possible to make a mark on a message using an emoticon! ).
• Be mindful that people have personal lives. If you're using asynchronous communications is easy to forget that you're not doing the same thing as you. Make sure that someone is online prior to sending them a push notification.

 For asynchronous video meetings

• Make sure your camera and microphones are of high enough to allow people to be able to grasp what you're talking about.
• You should have a specific takeaway that you want to impart to other people -- nobody is looking to watch an entire video without learning something new.

Naturally, these are only general etiquette guidelines. You may be in a position to have your own rules for communicating to each other, and which technology to use. This is why keep these rules in mind while learning how to use them or creating these rules.

Get off to a good start with remote meetings

Like the majority of relationships in our lives Effective communication is essential ingredient to a productive day-to-day operation, but that communication doesn't always have to be in real-time.

Remote meetings that are synchronous can assist you in having more productive conversations, involve more of your team members, and foster a culture that is open and transparent (since communications that are synchronously conducted are typically recorded). If you're contemplating using a more asynchronous method, consider experimenting with different methods to determine which one works best for your needs.