During this time of social distancing, virtual board meetings may be your only option. Make sure your bylaws allow for virtual meetings and, more importantly, recognizes voting when not done in person.
Scheduling meetings has become more complicated. Review your workflow to see if you can work collaboratively offline, using other tools such as Monday or Google Docs. Poll your board for meeting attendance conflicts. Virtual meetings and conference calls can create stress because of excess screen time, lag in audio/video, difficulty in reading body language, having to watch oneself on the screen. Well managed meetings are a good way to reduce this. Here are simple ways to manage scheduling well.
Have a hard stop at a fixed time, people magically learn how to compress what is most important when they know that there is a clock running.
Have an agenda! And when people stray – you can say things like, ‘Let’s put that in the parking lot’, or ‘Let’s add that in the meeting notes to review offline”.
Restore your staff with sporadic moments of simply connecting with each other person-to-person, or, just share this video when you’ve been in a particularly long and draining remote meeting. A Conference Call in Real Life