Can You Read the Zoom Room?

Back in the day, most of our meetings were in person or by telephone. That allowed us to take visual or verbal cues from our audience. Body language speaks volumes. As technology has evolved combined with a pandemic that forced us into the world of video conferencing, we have lost the ability to observe many of those cues. Even though people are on camera, the ability to fully absorb body language is diminished greatly in that tiny box.

As more and more digital natives enter the workforce, those of us that like talking on the phone or standing in front of a room of people, or sitting around a conference table are dwindling. We will never go back to face-to-face meetings in the numbers we had before.

No more water cooler chatter

This is one of the big challenges of remote work. For those people that worked together for a period of time and then headed to work remotely, they had the benefit of already learning the way their coworkers communicated in person. For new hires, they have to work extra hard to feel a kinship with their coworkers when there is no spontaneous water cooler chatter. It only takes a few minutes to size someone up in person, but online people can come across very differently even though that is not their intent. You can’t see photos on their desk or take cues from their workspace. The impromptu conversation about what we did last weekend is rare. While those discussions aren’t relevant to work, they reveal a lot about a person and help build a kinship that bleeds into our work relationships. 

So now we must communicate very carefully. There are often no more reassuring nods or smiles to depend on if we are primarily writing our communication or doing a video conference with no cameras on. Our cues have been diminished significantly. In the past, we could scan a room and sense boredom or confusion. Now it is much harder to pick up on the collective cues. Also, people that might have asked a question or engaged when in person may be camera shy for some reason and stay quiet. People are less animated when sitting down and only viewed from the chest up. We often lose hand and arm motions that can be very telling. The more people in the Zoom room, the tinier the view of the participant. We may need to directly ask for more feedback.

We now need to use written cues to say what we would normally show. I tend to be a very direct communicator. It comes from years of hundreds of emails pouring into my inbox daily. It was important for me to sort through them and fire off a reply, but I did know when to slow down and pick up the phone.

 Now I often write the email response and then sit on it and go back to it and add pleasantries at the beginning and the end. Even though the meat of the communication is in the center of the email, setting the tone is important when communicating with people you don’t normally see or may have never met in person.

Even though we still predominantly use email for business, we have lost the opportunity to have email just be one way we communicate. Now we add texting or instant messaging which is designed to be quick and can diminish our ability to tell the entire story. The addition of emojis has further complicated the quest to interpret the meaning. Brief isn’t always clear.

Communicating with intent

So what does this mean? We have to be very intentional with our communication. We have to actually tell someone exactly what we are trying to convey. Is it an opinion, a demand or a request? Are we happy or irritated? Maybe we start out with, ‘in my opinion’ or ‘it concerns me that…’. By declaring our intent, we leave nothing to chance. Sometimes people can’t discern sarcasm or humor if they don’t know you are sarcastic or funny. Declaring you are making a joke is easier than trying to clear up any miscommunication down the line. Emojis might help or make it more confusing.

Being more intentional will hopefully enhance our collaboration and ensure everyone is informed and clear on the message. Recapping a meeting in writing is a great way to make sure everyone is on the same page and heard the same message. While the ways we communicate are constantly changing, our goals are the same. We want to communicate effectively so everyone feels heard.

"The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn't said." –Peter F. Drucker, Austrian-American management consultant, educator, and author