Rituals for Virtual Meetings

Rituals for Virtual Meetings by Kursat Ozenc, Ph.D. and Glenn Fajardo is an illustrated book that provides rituals for virtual meetings developed by industry professionals. The book is broken up into three sections, with the bulk of the content in the second section which is a series of chapters containing rituals that are categorized by the purpose of the rituals.

The first section discusses the importance and characteristics of rituals. Rituals are different from routines in that they are consciously performed and have intended outcomes. Routines lose meaning after a while like when people ask, “How are you?” without the intent of really finding out how anybody is. It briefly examines the Haka rugby ritual (which I have always found personally annoying and silly) and how these events have multiple purposes which positively contribute to a goal.

I’ll admit I was caught off guard when I came to the second section of the book as I didn’t take the time to peruse the contents before I bought it. I was at Barnes & Noble with my mom, and she offered to buy me some books. Seeing as I was about to start working a remote job, this looked like a way for me to build a much-needed skill. I assumed it would go over how to act and engage with people in meetings as an attendee as well as explaining the importance of using the rituals provided. When I read rituals, I assumed it meant using virtual etiquette, establishing a good workspace, and other rituals that could help anyone in a virtual meeting. The book is really for people leading meetings which I won’t be doing for a little while.

Some of the rituals I was able to identify in meetings that I was previously in. Others, I had a hard time imagining them being used or being used effectively. I couldn’t see my coworkers singing together or doing potentially humiliating micro workouts over Zoom. Laila Von Alvensleben, Head of Culture and Collaboration at MURAL, acknowledged that rituals and habits shape company culture, but I add that rituals and habits need to be adopted depending on a company’s existing culture and wanted state.

Some rituals felt like engagement for the sake of engagement and not conscious with intended goals like the authors say they should be. Each ritual did have a reasoning but sometimes it didn’t feel strong enough. Will smelling spices as a group over Zoom help the team? Should you waste your employees’ energy by making them guess what they’re going to get out of a meeting instead of just starting the meeting?

The Parting A-ha was a missed opportunity to highlight the benefits of collecting feedback on virtual meetings. In this ritual, the moderator asks each person for one insight gained during the meeting from each attendee that they will either say aloud or put in the chat. The given intention is to have participants reflect on a meeting, but it also gives the hosts the chance to see what was most impactful about their meetings. A big part of building a company’s culture is making sure what you are doing is yielding the desired result. Collecting feedback, even not on rituals themselves, will show how receptive people are to specific methods of instruction. When a teacher creates a word wall it is mostly for the teacher, not the students. Speaking of teachers, the teaching rituals were a high point for me as they were something sorely missing from my online education.

As I mentioned earlier, these were very specific rituals which, according to the authors definition of ritual, they had to be. However, I would have liked to see healthy routines as well. I guess I can’t be mad that an apple isn’t a banana. I would have also liked to see the authors discuss the evolution of the virtual meetings medium. One of the industry professionals did mention XR changing the space in the future but there wasn’t room for any elaboration. The authors pointed out how participants should change their view from speaker to gallery view every few minutes to keep engaged and simulate the visual scans one would perform in a real meeting, but what if there was a meeting app that did that for you? What would that look like?

I’ll be honest, I only read the first half of this book and then skimmed the rest. After reading through so many rituals that I didn’t think would ever be relevant to me I was just ready to move on to the next book, which I plan to start at the laundromat tomorrow. When I get to the point in my career where I have to manage meetings with coworkers then I’ll revisit this book and highlight which ones would provide the most utility. One last critique: the illustration of the ritual comes before you see the ritual which makes them confusing. I would forget this and not understand how an illustration would relate to the ritual I just read until remembering it was for the next ritual. Then I would have to flip back a page to see what the illustration for that particular ritual was. I understand that the illustrations were meant to get the reader curious about what was next but when your eyes divert to an illustration of another ritual halfway through reading the current one it can be distracting. A minor UX error in my opinion.