A #DayWithoutZoom (or without Bluejeans, Microsoft Teams, Webex, GotoTraining or the like)
I am not against videoconferencing, I just want to make that clear.
I am fan of Zoom, which for me is the tool that until now has been the most effective, elegant and useful to carry out virtual meetings in a facilitated environment. What's more, most of my job today is teaching others how to make their virtual meetings truly collaborative, full of energy and generating results.
And yet I repeat it, I would love for us all to join a #daywithoutzoom).
Why?
I am observing so much use and abuse of virtual meetings that not only exhaust their participants, but also render teams unproductive. And it is because bad meeting practices in the face-to-face environment become worst practices in digital environments.
Why to have a #daywithoutzoom?
When I was just beginning my career as a consultant, I participated in a project in a Fortune 500 insurance company. Among the improvement and transformation initiatives, an employees in one of the departments proposed what he called "the hour of silence". What was that? For an hour a day, the claims payment department would be dedicated to working in complete silence, that is, no text messages, messaging, mail or phone calls, would be permitted including those outside the department (the customer service department would take over during that period).
Sounds a little crazy?
The result was that in the pilot's first few weeks the productivity of paid claims increased by almost 30%. As a result, payment time decreased, satisfaction increased, and calls from dissatisfied customers decreased dramatically.
It turned out that communications seeking to investigate the situation of particular cases delayed the service, and this "hour of silence" helped focus team members in doing their jobs.
(Un)Focusing the team
I think the same thing is happening today in many organizations. Not being able to have the routine face-to-face interactions, the bosses, leaders and team members seek to find the certainty that things are happening every step of the way. And they seek this certainty through more frequent meetings and communications.
It is a widespread thought to assume that working from home makes people irresponsible (and Harvard reports that mostly is a correct assumption but mostly when a part of the workforce and another is stuck at the office). And from there the excessively frequent digital meetings begin.
After all, daily 10-15 minute check-up meetings don't take up much of your time, do they?
Videoconference meetings are everywhere: the kitchen, the dining room, the study and the bedroom (and some even in the bathroom!). There seems to be no escape.
The following is quite common, working from home, professionals report work days of 11-12 hours or more. They now invest the time they previously used to commute to the office for meetings and then some.
Exhaustion and tiredness: Zoom fatigue
In addition of this exhaustion in the workforce, there is also the fatigue that many report due to the constant use of videoconferences. "I can't take another call anymore," is something that many of us have heard and possibly even said ourselves. All of this impacts productivity.
There is a saying that 15% of our communication is verbal and the remaining 85% is through body language and non-verbal. And that is largely lost through the technology we are using.
We are now looking to de-construct a message across the screen. We constantly ask ourselves, "Did he really mean that? Did he like the proposal or not? I can't read his expression well." This makes the bandwidth of our attention focus on our sight and the multitude of faces in front of us, instead of using all our senses to do the interpretation.
Some already speak of "Zoom fatigue".
And to all this we must add the technical aspect. According to various studies, when there are delays in the transmission of audio / video of 1.2 seconds or more, the speaker may seem less attentive, friendly and disciplined (and worst of all, the speaker may have no responsibility for the technical failure ). According to Psychology Today, a round-trip communication process between the participants of a video call can take up to 300 milliseconds. Yes, it is very small, but for our unconscious brain that is constantly evaluating whether the other person is worthy of our trust, this delay could make us doubt or the person may seem less convincing.
So this exhaustion further reduces our productivity. Our emotions direct our connections. If the energy is absent our video conferencing will turn into a slow agony.
It is critical that we adopt good practices that help our now digitized teams achieve their goals.
REDUCING FATIGUE TIPS
- Prioritize audio over video. What is tiring is not seeing pixels, but the effort to understand and interrupted message, our brain seeks to fill in the empty spaces, if necessary the person with the problematic connection can disconnect the camera to prioritize bandwidth. Take advantage that some videoconference tools allow you to connect via a phone call.
- Set times between meetings so you can get up, drink water, stretch. It's miraculous what 10 minutes can do when you focus on yourself and take care of your mental and physical health. Schedule 45-50 minute meetings instead of 1 hour.
- Learn how to design truly collaborative meetings by training as a meeting facilitator, or if you already are, take a virtual facilitation course to transfer your skills to the digital world (www.virtualfacilitation.com)
- Take 4 minutes to get immediate feedback at the end of the session, one minute for each of these questions: 1) How well are we achieving the goal today? 2) Something you want happen more during the meeting. 3) Something you want to happen less in the meeting. 4) What do you leave the meeting with, that you can carry out? (Mark Murphy)
#DAYWITHOUTZOOM TIPS
- You can start using a cloud collaboration system like Samepage to reduce the use of email and video conferencing. The key is information to flow and have meetings to truly collaborative decision-making and creation spaces.
- Combine media and communication styles. Use videoconferencing for meetings; text messages (e.g., whatsapp) to keep the team informally informed (without abusing memes); individual phone calls to stay up-to-date and identify how each member of your team is. You can learn more in our Agile Management of Remote Teams course.
- Lock times in your schedule to focus for work. Don't put any meetings in this block, let alone a video call.
- When you have to interact one-on-one propose if some of the meetings can be by phone (people on the phone normally get to the point quicker).
- Trust your team, establish communication routines that are based on results. In the end, supervision is to provide results, it is not checking on the team all the time.
- Agree with your team on those #zoomfree times when the team will avoid interrupting each other as much as possible, establishing productive and effective routines.
- Make the decision, when will your day be without Zoom?
REFERENCES:
Trainer / Coach / Facilitator @ Pinnacle Performance. Chair of IAF Malaysia. Certified HRDF Trainer/ Certified MasterCoach Facilitator/ Certified Virtual Learncaster (VLC)/ Certified EQ trainer
4ywe become Zoombies with too much online meetings!!
Process Facilitator I Catalyst I Community Builder I Certified IAF Professional Facilitator I Certified Technology of Participation Facilitator I - building consensus in teams and getting groups to work together
4yThank you Hector...very useful!
Transforming Collaboration Across Healthcare and Beyond with Certified Professional Facilitation at Health Data Forum, Health Regions Summit, and Digital Health Portugal.
4yThis must be a trending topic thanks for writing this article Hector Villarreal Lozoya, CDA
Mãe da Lisa e da Maria | Psicóloga Clínica e Organizacional | Coach | Mentora | Consultora em Desenvolvimento Líderes e Equipes
4yCongrats for This article 👏👏👏