You have 1 article left to read this month before you need to register a free LeadDev.com account.
Your inbox, upgraded.
Receive weekly engineering insights to level up your leadership approach.
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
Remote environments have their perks, but with some people working a way across the world from each other, how do you build an authentic meeting and team culture?
Have you ever been in a team meeting where everyone is muted, cameras are off, no one is asking questions or making comments, and once the meeting has ended, it feels like everyone is in an unspoken race to exit as fast as possible?
Poor meeting engagement isn’t just an inconvenience; it’s often a symptom of deeper cultural issues in the workplace. When team members disengage, you lose valuable perspectives, collaboration tends to suffer, and your organization’s collective potential remains untapped. But with a few simple adjustments to your approach, you can transform these gatherings from obligation to opportunity.
Drop the filler and beware of jargon
Stop saying, “Happy Monday.” Filler phrases like this are the equivalent of a pop-up ad in the modern world. These jargon-y phrases irritate meeting attendees for a variety of reasons, but the most common complaint I hear about this particular phrase is, “It’s the bare minimum.”
The above could be said for any jargon; when you lean on clichés, team members perceive a lack of authenticity and preparation, making them more likely to check out during meetings.
Instead, try pulling on a common thread, or if you don’t know enough to find that thread share a little bit about yourself. If your meeting engagement is low, it’s up to you to lead the way. Have you read a good book lately? Listened to a new podcast? Tried a new latte? It doesn’t have to be a revolutionary question that plumbs the depths of human experience, but by replacing jargon and filler with simple personal anecdotes or some genuine curiosity in your teammates, you open up the space that was once filler for a moment of human connection.
Standup meetings are better with authenticity
The standup is one of the most prevalent meetings in engineers’ day-to-day. In a world of loosely defined agile ceremonies, standups can take on a lot of forms. In a bid to save time overall, most standups may evolve into async territory. But we need to rethink that approach.
While async communication seems efficient on paper, it often strips away the human element that delivers true value. Standups aren’t just status updates; they help set the scene for spontaneous problem-solving, allow you to pick up on nonverbal cues that indicate other issues, and overall introduce team bonding that happens between those moments.
Asynchronous communication can serve a purpose, but an authentic approach with a human behind it will always deliver better results. In a world of Jira tickets, kanban boards, and TODOs, there are plenty of ways for an engineering manager to get status reports on projects, but there aren’t as many avenues to hold conversations with your team. A Slack message might scratch the surface of a topic, but a human conversation will get to the bottom of it.
If you absolutely must have an asynchronous ceremony of some kind, make sure that you or another team member kicks it off, don’t let a chatbot become another level of abstraction between you and your team.
More like this
Eliminate meetings that are destined to fail
Eliminating unnecessary meetings can seem like a no-brainer, but somehow teams still fall into this trap.
The number one blocker of a good meeting is a distracted or stressed team. If everyone is working under the weight of cognitive overload and a looming deadline, a meeting is a surefire way to dampen spirits.
Learn to read the room (virtual or physical) and be willing to make real-time adjustments. If everyone looks exhausted during a sprint planning session after a production incident, consider shortening the meeting, rescheduling, or making attendance optional.
Create a culture where team members can speak up about meeting fatigue without fear of appearing uncommitted. Simple check-ins like, “Does this meeting still make sense given our current workload?” can save hours of unproductive time and prevent resentment. One thing we have found useful in my team is a quarterly survey where members can rate the value of recurring meetings. There is also room for individuals to provide guidance on the cadence of specific rituals.
Remember that every meeting carries an opportunity cost, if your team and your collaborators weren’t in this meeting would they be making real progress elsewhere? Or is the interruption just enough to disrupt their flow? Meetings carry hidden costs, not just in time spent but in mental energy and context-switching penalties. Be prudent about protecting your team’s time; each meeting should give more value than it consumes.
Intentional moments of connection
Creating low-pressure moments for personal sharing can also transform remote teammates from anonymous faces on a screen into real people with mutual passions.
On my team, we have a staple, Tunesday. We encourage everyone to share what music they’re listening to that day as they code or what they’ve been listening to recently. Yours can be anything that works. Film Friday, Tech Thursday, tap into whatever makes your engineers excited.
These moments might seem trivial, but they build psychological safety and genuine human connection. When team members share small parts of their identity and interests, they become three-dimensional colleagues rather than just faces in a box on Zoom. This opens up your team members’ willingness to contribute to discourse and engage with others.
The key is finding connection points that feel authentic to your specific team culture. Don’t force activities that don’t resonate, observe what naturally generates enthusiasm and build from there. For some teams, it might be gaming references, for others, it could be cooking adventures or pet photos.
Whatever your choice, keep it brief and optional. These moments work best when they feel like a welcome break rather than another task to complete.
London • June 16 & 17, 2025
Speakers Gergely Orosz, Camille Fournier and Lara Hogan confirmed.
Transform your team meetings, transform your culture
Improving engineering culture isn’t just about better meetings or setting the right agendas; it’s about building a team culture where people want to show up. By removing meaningless fillers, prioritizing authentic interaction, creating intentional connection, and monitoring cognitive load, you build an environment where team members actively contribute because they want to be there, not because they have to.
The true measure of success isn’t perfect attendance, cameras turned on, or icebreakers answered, it’s the quality of collaboration, the willingness to speak up, and the energy that remains after the meeting ends, and that all starts with culture.
If you build the culture, the engagement will come.
