Cameras ON (even if your hair’s a mess)
In my last post, I made the case for more you, more people, more human interaction, and fewer slides and less text. Today I add, CAMERAS ON!
We all have reasons that we keep the camera off during meetings:
I’m in my pjs (robe, undies).
I’m in my unfinished basement (attic, dorm room).
My kids (dog, cat, bird) could come in at any moment.
But we all know the real reasons:
I’m multitasking.
I’m on screen all day and need a break.
I’m in the finals of a Clash of Clans tourney.
So really, why meet at all? Why not have a conference call? A nap? Because, when we do meet virtual-face-to-virtual-face, we get a lot more done, we get a sense of our team and how they’re doing, we have an interpersonal dopamine bump, and we are able to be more creative, productive, and innovative.
Use the One-Third Rule
When you are in charge or have any influence at all, structure meetings this way:
Send any pertinent documents along in advance and promise to send any follow-up notes after the meeting.
Use very few slides (about 1/3 of what you usually do).
Use little to NO text on the slides.
And cut the time of the meeting to 1/3 of the time allotted.
My husband, Hal Movius, helps leaders and teams to negotiate more effectively. He is also a psychologist, so when he wrote this article for the Harvard Business Review about best practices for virtual negotiation, he included findings that support the idea that shorter is better:
5. Short and sweet. While video and telephone conferencing are “richer” media than email or text, they are also more cognitively taxing. Human brains are prediction machines, and they must work extra hard to understand gaps, glitches, time lags, and other ambiguities in the interaction. Short, structured video and teleconferences can help keep parties engaged and at their best.
So this week, when you are setting up your next meeting, say, “Hey Everyone! Instead of meeting for 60 minutes tomorrow, we’re going to meet for 20 minutes, but in order to do this productively, I’m going to ask that we all turn our cameras on. Then, you can use the rest of the time to do what you would have been doing anyway during the meeting!”
Give it a try and let me know how it goes.