While an in-person meeting is ideal, not everyone can always make one. Thankfully, due to technological advances, virtual meetings are becoming a more viable option. However, much like their ancestor, the conference call, they can be plagued with certain difficulties that can make it tough to be productive. While some of it is technical (“buffering… buffering… buffering… Server not found”) much of it comes down to individual behavior. How many times have you wondered just who is chewing so loudly? Or someone who doesn't realize everyone can hear their argument with their spouse? What about the person who is clearly doing a million other things as they hold the phone against their ear?

Perhaps the next time you’re going to hold a virtual meeting, you should forward them this article from the Harvard Business Review that goes over some tips and tricks for getting the most out of them. The author advises taking steps such as this to make your virtual meeting a productive one:

• Turn video on
• Cut out report-outs
• Make sure you did your homework by reading what you needed, and knowing the agenda
• Begin meetings with persona-professional check-ins to prime people to talk
• Encourage collaboration
• Give each person time on the agenda
• Don’t let people use the mute button, it encourages people to “check out”
• No multitasking!
• Have someone keep the meeting on point and civil
• Don’t just leave the meeting—give time for people to do the typical chats people tend to do around the water cooler.

The article itself goes into these items in much more detail.