Zoom Blah: 7 Strategies For Getting The Most Out Of Video Conference Calls
A recent Take The Lead Virtual Happy Hour on Zoom with (clockwise from top left) Reshma Gopaldas, head of video at She Knows; Gloria Feldt; Stacey Tisdale, President, CEO of Mind Money Media, Inc.; and Sonya Smith-Valentine, President and CEO of Financially Fierce, LLC.
The whole concept wasn’t so bad at first; you only had to look nice from the waist up. No shoes required. Commuting time was zero. You could speak with all of your team across the globe at one time. Occasionally your family wanted to check in together, and then there were those dance parties.
But occasional Zoom time turned into who isn’t Zooming whom.
Four months into the COVID-19 crisis, with millions working remotely, the Zoom conference call has morphed into a huge physical, emotional and psychic drain. If you have Zoom Blah, you’re not alone.
“Four months into the #COVID19 crisis, with millions working remotely, the Zoom conference call has morphed into a huge physical, emotional and psychic drain. #ZoomFatigue”
The Verge reports as of April, Zoom had more than 300 million daily users. They were quick to correct that users are not the same number as people — especially since one person can be on five zoom calls a day. More than 300 million times someone entered a Zoom room in April.
Read more in Take The Lead on zoom growth pre-COVID
“Zoom fatigue is a unique kind of exhaustion that occurs when people participate in teleconferencing calls for an extended time period,” Savitri Dixon-Saxon, Ph.D., the vice provost for Walden University’s College of Social and Behavioral Sciences and a licensed professional counselor, tells Good Housekeeping. “Mental health experts suspect that Zoom fatigue happens because interacting over video calls is so different from meeting in person.”
Eric Zillmer, Psy.D, the Carl Pacifico professor of Neuropsychology at Drexel University and licensed clinical psychologist, tells GH: “The problem is not Zoom — it is a great technology — but it’s the fact that we are sheltering and working from home, and we need to pay attention to taking care of ourselves, strengthening our social support system, being honest with ourselves and others, and taking stock of how we are feeling.”
Read more in Take The Lead on resilience in remote working
Some experts say one hour in a meeting on Zoom is the same toll on your mental and physical health as three hours in person. So what can you do about it?
“Some experts say one hour in a meeting #OnZoom is the same toll on your mental and physical health as three hours in person. @Takeleadwomen has tips to solve that. #Workplacewellbeing”
1. Prepare to break up. Connections can go in and out, people can suddenly drop off the screen. We’ve all seen a person freeze in the middle of reporting the most crucial bit of information. It’s important to record the conversation and share later with participants. “There’s having to deal with erratic Internet connections while trying to process non-verbal cues like body language, all of which take up a lot of energy,” Dr Gianpiero Petriglieri, an associate professor of Organizational Behavior at INSEAD, tells Harper’s Bazaar.
“Our minds are together when our bodies feel we’re not. That dissonance, which causes people to have conflicting feelings, is exhausting. You cannot relax into conversation naturally.” So brace for that possibility. Do a hardwire connection whenever possible, not relying on wifi. Don’t walk around during Zooming (you also make the other participants dizzy.) Have the alternate call-in number ready so you can phone it in. If it is a crucial meeting—reporting quarterly numbers, delivering the results from a recent funding meeting—put the key points in writing and have them available in a google doc in the chat. That way, while you’re trying to reconnect, people still can access your key points.
“Prepare to break up. If it is a crucial meeting, put the key points in writing and have them available in a google doc in the chat. #OnZoom #RemoteWork”
Read more from Gloria Feldt in Take The Lead on zooming
2. Schedule a pause. Avoid scheduling back to back Zoom meetings. Every hour or so get up and walk outside if you can—to the porch, balcony, out the back door, out the front door into the hallway, just for some relief. “Take a break between meetings—the mere act of walking from one room to another sends a signal to your brain to switch gears,” Harper’s Bazaar reports.
“Schedule a break. Avoid scheduling back to back #Zoom meetings. Every hour or so get up and walk outside if you can, just for some relief. #Business #MentalHealth”
In Ten Percent, Dr. Susan Pollak, author of Self-Compassion for Parents and the co-founder of the Center for Mindfulness and Compassion at Harvard Medical School, advises that a cure for Zoom “apnea” can be meditation and deep breathing.
“In the short term, screen apnea can affect our well-being and our ability to work efficiently. Shallow breathing can also trigger a nervous system ‘fight, flight or freeze’ response if we stay in this state of breathing for extended periods of time. It can not only impact sleep, energy, memory and learning but also exacerbate depression, panic, and anxiety.” She adds, “Fortunately, combating screen apnea can be very simple, especially if you already have a meditation practice. Simply bringing attention to your breath and body can make a huge difference.”
“Dr. Susan Pollak, author of Self-Compassion for Parents and the co-founder of @CMC_CHA, advises that a cure for Zoom “apnea” can be #meditation and deep breathing. #WorkplaceWellness”
3. Purpose is powerful. Stay on task with the meeting, set the agenda in advance, and stay within the boundaries of the set time of one or more hours. Do not expect everyone to keep going if you have exceeded the time limit. What can help is if you limit the time for chatter in the beginning. Sometimes that can go as long as 20-30 minutes and create anxiety with team members.
“Purpose is powerful. Stay on task with the meeting, set the agenda in advance, and stay within the boundaries of the set time of one or more hours. #Meetings #OnZoom”
Gloria Feldt, co-founder and president of Take The Lead, offers Leadership Power Tool #2, that can be assigned to a career in large terms, but also to a Zoom meeting in finite terms. According to Feldt, “Define Your Own Terms—First, Before Anyone Else Does,” allows you to name the purpose. Feldt writes, “Whoever sets the terms of the debate usually wins. By redefining power not as ‘Power-Over,’ but as ‘Power-To’ we shift from a culture of oppression to a culture of positive intention to make things better for everyone. ‘Power-To’ is leadership.”
“@GloriaFeldt, president of @Takeleadwomen, offers #LeadershipPowerTool #2, “Define Your Own Terms First, Before Anyone Else Does,” that can be assigned to a career in large terms, but also to a #Zoom meeting. ”
4. Stay on message. Don’t let one person derail the meeting and go off on a tangent. This can happen with a set of agreements sent out before the meeting, or literally announced at the start of a meeting, and asking for a show of hands or an agreement in the chat to the code of conduct.
Bytestart reports, “Meetings can sometimes lose sight of a clear purpose and message. Starting at the end of your presentation or meeting with how you want people to think, feel or act after they’ve listened to what you have to say will help you stay relevant, show you’re in touch and on point. Identify your message and then incorporate only content which supports that message.In the interest of vibrant online meetings, be selective about who you invite to come along so that the content is really relevant to them and they can see the value in joining.”
“Stay on message. Don’t let one person derail the meeting and go off on a tangent. #Meetings #LeadershipAdvice #VirtualWork”
5. Breakouts are good. If this one call is longer than a few hours, or a full-day seminar on Zoom, it is essential to carefully orchestrate smaller group breakouts, or even pair shares. “In Zoom and Teams you can create breakouts. Dividing your audience into smaller groups and sending them to separate rooms where they can discuss a specific topic and report back to the main meeting engenders both energy and new ideas.Aiming to make some 70% of the time interactive (interspersed with short presentations) will make your meetings more dynamic, relevant and memorable,” ByteStart reports.
“Breakouts are good. If a call is longer than a few hours, or a full-day seminar #OnZoom, it is essential to carefully orchestrate smaller group breakouts, or even pair shares. #EmployeeCare #Collaboration”
6. Stop looking at yourself. This does not mean hide your video camera because that can be seen as somewhat of a passive-aggressive move. You can click in the upper righthand corner on the option to hide your video to you. Others can still see you. In Duke Today, Scott Kollins, professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Director of the Duke ADHD Clinic, says, “One way to help enhance your focus during video meetings is to hide your self-view so you can’t watch yourself.”
According to Duke Today, “Kollins said people often stare at their own display because the strain of having to look at multiple people’s faces and backgrounds is so overwhelming that you end up staring at yourself. There’s also the worry that you’re not appearing attentive.” Kollins adds, “There’s this feeling that people are fixated on you, so you start watching yourself to make sure your reactions are appropriate. In reality, that’s not the case. No one is paying as much attention to you as you are. Hiding your own display can give your brain some respite. You can turn your attention to what’s being discussed.”
“Stop looking at yourself. @Skollins1, professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at @DukeU says, “Hiding your own display can give your brain some respite” when #OnZoom. ”
7. Buh-Bye. Keep yourself to the time period promised. End on time. Leave on time. According to Aleteia, “Uncertainty is stressful and makes it difficult to plan out how to use our time, much less to use the time well. Meetings will expand to fill the time available, so if that time is indeterminate, the meeting will drag on, resulting in frustration for everyone. Set a time limit for virtual meetings and stick to it. In this way, virtual gatherings have a certain advantage over meetings in-person. It’s easier to type in the text chat, ‘Sorry, my time is up and I have to go, thanks and have a great day,’ click ‘leave,’ and simply disappear than it is to interrupt the speaker, excuse yourself, stand up, and walk out in front of everyone.”
“Buh-Bye. Keep yourself to the time period promised. End on time. Leave on time. #OnZoom #VirtualMeeting”
The good news is new technologies to ease Zoom Blah are emerging.
According to Forbes, “Recently, Microsoft announced a solution to the problem, and I think it’s a step in the right direction. It’s not just a virtual background, although that’s part of it. In Microsoft Teams, you can enable Together mode, which not only creates a virtual room but also puts everyone on a chair or (coming soon) at a desk or even in a coffee-shop. It’s not meant to increase variation but to minimize it and reduce sensory overload.”
Tech Crunch reports Macro, a new FirstMark-backed company, has raised $4.8 million to improve Zoom meetings. “Macro is a native app that employs the Zoom SDK to add depth and analysis to your daily work meetings.”
And then there is the solution that is just to walk away from Zoom meetings altogether—that may not be the most practical.
“Zoom meetings have been slashed at Heritage Bank after the explosion of online gatherings resulted in staff being enslaved to computers at home,” reports The Australian Financial Review.
“There’s so many Zoom meetings that it’s just gone past a novelty now and now is a pain in the neck,” said Heritage chief executive Peter Lock.
It’s hard to imagine the need for Zoom convenience will go from 300 million users to zero, but these strategies may improve the experience.
