For many companies, the virtual meeting is becoming the rule rather than the exception. Geographic dispersion, teleworking, extended working hours, and security concerns have all contributed to a trend away from live meetings. IBM is a case in point. According to Robert Paré of IBM's portal division, IBM in North America has approximately 10,000 virtual meetings per month.

Virtual meetings are fast, convenient, and in the case of a company like IBM, save millions annually in travel costs. However, there's no doubt that there is a downside. "The best form of interaction that people can have is face-to-face," explains Paré. "However, in business reality, we cannot afford to have face-to-face meetings every time we meet with people. That's reality."

The biggest problem with virtual meetings is that human communication is not strictly verbal. Communications practitioners frequently cite a phenomenon known as the "7-38-55 Rule," which is based on research by noted psychologist and author Albert Mehrabian. The rule states that when live communication takes place between two individuals, the meaning of the spoken words conveys only 7% of the message. How the words are spoken, in terms of tone, diction, and other variables, conveys 38%. The biggest component is visual - 55% of the message is delivered through facial expressions, hand gestures, and body language.

The emotional component

The rule, of course, needs to be applied in context. If it's illegal to park somewhere, the verbal message on a "no parking" sign gets the job done, 100%. Similarly, you don't need the paraverbal or visual component to get many messages across, such as a revised start date of a project, the results of a test, or the quarterly revenue figures.

On the other hand, intangibles can be critical to the success of a meeting. Rick Wolfe, president of PostStone Corporation, a Toronto-based strategic consulting firm, often helps clients conduct what he calls "kitchen table conversations," the kind of thoughtful and intense discussion that often occurs naturally in an informal environment.

According to Wolfe, the need for live meetings stems from the need for emotional as well as verbal content. "If we are hoping that people will change their beliefs, and change their behaviours, then it's unreasonable to expect that they'll get enough emotional information on the phone. To get that information, it's got to be face-to-face."

Wolfe sees the emotional component as essential to the human learning process. "People learn viscerally," he explains. "And just because we're on the phone doesn't mean we're not learning viscerally. But it's more efficient and effective to learn viscerally when we can share our visceral communication with the other people that we're dealing with."

An interesting footnote is that when it comes to establishing the emotional connection, two-way video doesn't seem to cut it - at least not at IBM. "The incremental value of video is very, very minimal," explains Paré. "We tend not to use the video. That's the consensus at IBM."

Do's and don'ts: the subtle questions

Global consulting giant Accenture is, like IBM, seeing a growing number of virtual meetings. However, according to Deanna W. Grywalsky, outsourced services manager at Accenture, there is a strong awareness of the limitations. "Looking at the numbers, it seems that it really is on the rise. But I think that there also is a fair amount of understanding that sometimes you have to meet. Our leadership does a lot of face-to-face meetings. They do a lot of their strategy meetings live. And that involves getting people together from different continents."

Accenture has a number of best practices that are used as guidelines to determine whether a meeting should be live or virtual. There are some interesting "don'ts." For example, the guidelines caution against using virtual meetings as a way to avoid confrontation. The document also states that virtual meetings are not a good way to introduce project team members.

"I think one of the things I'm involved in a lot are project kickoff meetings," explains Grywalsky. "Just getting everybody together face to face. We're a large organization. You're put on a project with people you don't know. Or you know them by name, but never actually met them. So that seems to go really well. When you kick off a project, get everybody together, do a little team building. It's hard to do team building over the phone or over the web or whatever. So that seems to be a good use of resources for live meetings."

The virtual-versus-live decision can involve some subtle questions, as Wolfe points out. "To what extent are new ideas to be generated from the discussion?" Wolfe asks, "and to what extent will the emotions that people express and the emotions that people see on the faces of other people in the room influence their thoughts and feelings and their future action?"

The latter point came to light in the debrief of a series of meetings that PostStone facilitated for a large corporate client. "They said that being able to look at their colleagues' faces when customers would say key things was one of the most powerful things of all that happened," says Wolfe, "because they could see that they weren't the only person who was responding in this same way to what this customer was saying."

Telework: keeping in touch, in person

The benefits of live meetings aren't limited to what happens in the meeting itself. "On a conference call, people are pretty quick about getting down to business," explains Grywalsky. "I think there's a little more opportunity for some less structured personal discussion, and getting to know people more when you're in a live setting. You're taking breaks, and people are able to chat. You just have more chance to connect with people when you're in that live setting."

Teleworking is another area where the virtual-versus-live discussion comes into play. Grywalsky, for example, works out of a home office in Toronto, but travels to Chicago once every two weeks just to do the kinds of things we normally take for granted in an office.

"At first I used to go in every six weeks, and then I'd hear 'Oh my gosh, you're still around!' This might not be so good for the career. So that's one thing I sort of worked out. You kind of underestimate the power of being in the office and being seen in the office. There's more opportunity, you get pulled into more things."

IBM actually has policies to prevent its teleworkers from losing touch. "This is always a concern, and there are some policies that IBM has implemented," explains Paré. "IBM, for example, doesn't forward internal mail to your home office. You need to go pick it up. It's an incentive for me to go downtown once in a while, pick up my internal mail, and maybe spend a half a day in the office and go meet people, have lunch with people, to keep in touch.

"So the technology has this tendency to isolate people," Paré continues. "However, the organization has to take some steps in making those kinds of policies so people don't lose touch with each other."