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The Power of Rituals in Transforming Virtual Meetings

Introduction

"Imagine if tomorrow - like literally tomorrow, the day after today - there was some kind of global disaster, and suddenly humans could interact only through computers. It's unclear when - or if - face-to-face contact will be possible again. It might be a while. Maybe that disaster is a zombie apocalypse, or a sudden change in the atmosphere, or something else."

This is a prompt for an exercise called "Virtual Humanity" that one of us (Glenn) developed in 2017. We never imagined this exercise would become too real in early 2020. People were scrambling to make virtual "work" in schools, businesses, nonprofits, governments, and communities. Virtual collaboration had previously been an emerging topic in "future of work" discussions, but suddenly became a pressing topic in "present of work" conversations. People were suddenly struggling to connect.

Humans are social beings. We are wired to connect with other people to feel alive and well (Liebermann, 2013). Without connection, our very existence is in danger and crisis. In the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, we found ourselves in the midst of such a crisis across all walks of life. Social distancing made "social" feel distant.

In theory, we had a set of miracle technologies that could help us stay connected. When you think about it, it's kind of crazy that technology such as video conferencing - or the Internet itself - could be so widely available. But in reality, it was frustrating for many people. Why?

Part of it was the limitations of the technology. For example, there were many news articles about difficulties on Zoom calls, with common themes such as Zoom not accounting for things such as cues, synchrony and mimicry (how humans synchronize and mimic each other), eye contact, who's where in the grid, and constantly seeing yourself.

However, there was a more fundamental problem. Many of the norms and conventions from in-person meetings didn't work well in the virtual meetings that we were suddenly thrown into.

People largely tried to recreate what they did in-person in their virtual meetings, largely because that's the only experience that was familiar to them. Many people approached virtual meetings with a deficit mindset where "it's never as good as in-person," and they ended up with sad, second-rate copies of in-person experiences. So the screen-bound interactions frustrated people (Murphy, 2020), made them feel awkward, and tired them out (Kost, 2020). People longed for better human connection.

However, if we are honest with ourselves, we weren't thriving at connecting and building relationships in-person before the COVID-19 pandemic forced people completely online.

The so-called loneliness epidemic had been sweeping the world. By 2020, three out of five Americans were feeling lonely and a sense of abandonment (Renken, 2020). The U.K. government, for instance, assigned a minister to address the challenges of loneliness (Yeginsu, 2018). By 2015, China was raising the "loneliest generation" as the one-child policy was just ending (Wong, 2019). Loneliness is related to higher health risk and premature death (Holt-Lunstad, 2018).

Work life has been reinforcing this feeling of isolation with its sterile workplace conditions and its culture. Engagement across the U.S. workforce has been fluctuating around 30% for the past two decades (Adkins, 2016). The disengagement and a sense of loneliness increases when coworkers don't have shared goals. Meetings are one of the most prominent manifestations of lack of common purpose. 67% of meetings are seen as failures (Gandhi, 2019). Meetings are perceived both as a necessity and a curse. On the one hand, they can be key to moving things forward. But on the other hand, they often end up as missed opportunities to connect and as distractions to deep work.

We believe meetings are moments to be elevated and nurtured.

Good meetings help people build relationships, align on purpose, and get things done, whether a meeting is in-person or virtual. However, virtual is newer terrain for most people. The challenge is the disorienting unfamiliarity. The opportunity is the possibility to have deeper connections, shared purpose, and greater accomplishments wherever we are.

Rituals can support us with scaffolding as we find our footing in virtual meetings.

Our perspective is informed by our experiences in virtual collaboration and ritual design, including both of our teaching experiences at the d.school, a.k.a. the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, at Stanford University. For 12 years, Glenn has been a practitioner of virtual collaboration, working with people and organizations across six continents engaged in social impact work. He specializes in teaching classes and workshops on how to collaborate virtually, such as Design Across Borders. Kursat has been teaching and researching rituals with students and partner organizations both in the U.S. and in Europe. He shared his recent learnings from his teaching and consulting in Rituals for Work (Ozenc, 2019).

Our perspective is rooted in a vision that virtual meetings can be satisfying experiences with high-intensity and high-quality human connection, like a good movie. The inspiration for this vision comes from an unusual place: Sufi concepts of time and space. Kursat grew up in a culture where mythical Sufi stories shape the hustle and bustle of everyday life.

Bast-i zaman and Tayyi-mekan

In Sufism, the concept of bast-i zaman articulates the possibility of expanding time within a set time. A surprising number of important things can happen in a short amount of time when there's alignment between the individual(s) and a higher purpose. For instance, you can finish a month-long task in an hour when you experience this alignment and connection.

In organizational psychology research, Jane Dutton talks about a similar idea with her high-quality connections concept. She defines a high-quality connection as a "shorter-term interaction you have with someone virtually or face-to-face, in which both people feel lit up and energized by the connection." Jane articulates how to nurture such a rich relationship with empathy, resilience, and openness.

The concept of tayyi-mekan adds another layer to the high-quality connections. If a Sufi passes certain spiritual states of consciousness, there is a sense in which he can be present in multiple places at once. It's somewhat analogous to a person being virtually present to colleagues in different parts of the world. But the concept is deeper than that. You might have noticed that there's a difference between simply appearing on a screen in a virtual meeting and feeling present to your colleagues. In Sufism, multiple presences happen when people feel a core presence of a shared goal and purpose (i.e. unity with a higher cause). Virtual meetings are most engaging when participants feel a strong sense of shared purpose, and rituals can help. There's a strong body of ritual know-how that is rooted in centuries-old traditions of connection and community, from Sufism to Zen Buddhism. More principles from such traditions are waiting to be rediscovered as ways to guide virtual connection and community.

How do we make this vision of core presence and connection a reality? We draw upon three inspirational spaces: 1) waves of experimentation during the pandemic, 2) audiovisual arts and game design, 3) cognitive science and organizational psychology.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, preventive measures such as shelterin-place forced people to connect with other people virtually, and the world felt like a big laboratory of social interactions. From virtual whiteboard games (Alvensleben, 2018) to sing-a-long rituals of Italian neighborhoods (Kearney, 2020), these experiments created energy to define new ways of interacting and participating. We think experimentation can be further sharpened with the tools of design thinking, where we notice underlying needs, define actionable opportunities, and experiment rapidly.

We're inspired by what we can draw from audiovisual arts and game design. There's a lot we can learn from how movies, radio shows, and games create alternate worlds that we can enter, engage in, and come out changed.

For example, consider screen fatigue. How often do you get screen fatigue when watching movies or Netflix? It's probably a lot less often than you do with video conference meetings. But why? Some of it has to do with the level of concentration required, but some of it has to do with how movies are in some ways closer to how we see the world. (We'll explain that and other inspirations in Chapter 3.) This book will help you plan your meetings with a narrative structure so they feel a little more exciting and memorable, a little more like a movie.

This book will also draw on cognitive science and organizational psychology. These fields have critical insights that help us interact in more human ways when we are not in the same room. When we understand a bit more about how our brain works and how groups work, we can create meetings that feel more human using technologies available...