With or without a camera: how to hold a team meeting?

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Meeting is one of the most popular team management tools among leaders around the world. An effective meeting allows you to synchronize the team and discuss solutions to specific problems and blockers. An ineffective meeting burns the organization's money and demotivates employees. Here we"ve covered the basic steps to Occam's Razor-sharp Meetings and promised to share our experience and insights of using the camera on team calls.

In this mini-article we fulfill our promise and briefly share our observations and conclusions.

Important ot not?

While conducting remote meetings with teams from around the world (more than 1000 calls over the past few years), we noticed that there is a relationship between the meeting format (with or without a camera) and the level of psychological comfort in the team: the more video calls in the team, the higher the level of comfort; the more calls without a camera, the lower the level of comfort. It is worth noting that this connection should not be considered as a direct cause and effect, however, we tend to believe that calls can be a kind of indicator, a litmus test of the state of interaction culture in a particular team. An interesting fact: in some teams all the participants of each meeting turn on the cameras on their own, without reminders and with joy (the absence of a camera is regarded as an out of the ordinary case), while in other teams, from the first call, there is an atmosphere of avoiding the use of the camera - there is a feeling that everything is done so that the call was without a camera.

Let's try to figure out why this is happening and what to do about it.

Hey, I'm without a camera today

Meeting is one of the most popular team management tools among managers around the world. An effective meeting allows you to synchronize the team and discuss solutions to specific problems and blockers. An ineffective meeting burns the organization's money and demotivates employees.

Hey, I'm without a camera today

While conducting remote meetings with teams from around the world (more than 1000 votes over the past few years), we noticed that there is a relationship between the meeting format (with or without a camera) and the level of psychological comfort in the team: the more video calls in the team, the higher the level of comfort; the more calls without a camera, the lower the level of comfort.

Let's recall the research results of our colleagues from Atlassian:

• 91% of respondents answered that they dreamed at meetings, thought about something of their own, but not about the meeting;
• 39% of respondents said they slept during meetings;
• 45% of respondents at meetings felt depressed because of the "endless number of meetings";
• 73% of respondents at meetings were engaged in other tasks;
• 47% of respondents complained that meetings are the timekiller №1.

And now let's compare these numbers with what opportunities a video call and a voice-only call give us.

Video call:

• Gives fewer temptations and reasons to divert our attention from the meeting process;
• Allows us to see the reactions on the faces of colleagues during a conversation, which gives a more complete picture of what is happening;
• Motivates us to keep oneself neat, especially in the case of a home office (washed, combed, in clean ironed clothes).

Voice-only call:

• Gives more temptations and reasons to turn our attention away from the meeting process (remember that 39% of respondents answered that they slept during meetings), at best - allows you to do tasks (73% of respondents were engaged in other tasks at meetings), at worst - be completely disconnected from the meeting (91% of respondents answered that they dreamed at the meetings, were in dreams, thought about something of their own, but not about the meeting);
• It does not allow us to see the reactions on the faces of colleagues during a conversation, which gives a limited picture of what is happening. Even in the case of a video call, the connection between intonation and the essence of speech is not always clearly understood, while in a voice-only format this connection is even more difficult to find. One and the same phrase, said “eye to eye” and “behind the scenes”, can be perceived in completely different ways;
• Does not motivate to keep oneself neat, especially in the case of a home office.

It is worth noting here that it is important to distinguish between everyday routine practice and an emergency situation. There is nothing wrong with a colleague being forced to be in a meeting less than 100% (without a camera) in the event of an emergency, but it is worth considering if this becomes a regular practice.
When interviewing team members who always use a camera, we received answers that, from their point of view, the lack of a camera even for one of the participants in the call causes a feeling of discomfort for the rest, reduces the level of openness and trust.

What to do?

• Implement the recommendations described in our previous material;
• Understand what meeting format (with or without video) is preferable for you as a team leader;
• If you are close to the video call approach, then you need to take it for granted that the introduction of a video call culture is, first of all, a story about the introduction of a team habit that requires certain conditions, time and patience;
• Assess the current (initial) state of your team, analyze the attitude of each of the participants to video calls, in some cases apply an individual approach to fixing the habit;
• Be an example to your team and encourage video participation.

We understand that it is not possible to make all meetings run exactly the way you would like them to at once. However, with these steps, time and patience, you can significantly speed up the implementation process and increase your chances of success.
Let's create a culture where all team members not only enjoy attending meetings, but also actively participate in them!