Rituals for Virtual Meetings: Creative Ways to Engage People and Strengthen Relationships

Rituals for Virtual Meetings turns a genuine 2020-era crisis — the sudden shift to all-remote work — into a practical playbook for making screen-bound meetings feel human again. Drawing on their backgrounds teaching at the Stanford d.school and researching how humans create meaning through shared practice, Kürşat Özenç and Glenn Fajardo argue that the problem with most virtual meetings isn't the technology, it's that people tried to copy in-person habits onto a medium that needs its own norms. Their answer is a field guide of more than 50 concrete, testable "rituals" — small structured practices for opening a meeting, closing it, staying focused, building trust on a team, or making a 1:1 check-in actually land — organized around when and why to use each one. Backed by research on loneliness, connection, and workplace culture, and full of real stories from teams who tried these ideas, this is a hands-on toolkit for any team, manager, or teacher trying to make virtual time together feel worthwhile rather than draining.