An Admission of Guilt, by the Numbers

Did you hear? Nvidia Broadcast now uses AI to make your eyes appear focused on the camera no matter where you’re looking. Imagine how powerful this is…for realism it even blinks for you!

No more paying attention in Teams/Zoom meetings. You can now email, chat and surf with impunity as participants will never know you’re off in la-la-land during the call.?

Actually the plugin is a parlor trick, but still a super marketing hit for the company. Why? Because so many of us have a problem with focus in meetings.??

Yes, us.??

As in, primarily me. And I really need to stop.?

Is this really a problem??

I purchased a hi-res webcam to move between my laptop and second monitor on my desk. Why, you say? Of course, to make sure I’m looking at customers when presenting a PowerPoint deck or demo! Well yes, but actually no. See, my larger monitor can keep both email and chat open at the same time.?If I just move the camera to the same screen, I can keep my head turned in the direction of any video call I’m on. Maybe they won’t notice me looking down at the keyboard…?

I used to value this trick:?sitting in a meeting, my mobile phone on the table while a speakerphone conference droned on quietly on my desk. Three streams of information at once! I thought it clever to raise my hand mid-sentence (mine or someone else’s), take the speakerphone off mute, speak into the phone on the exact topic being discussed, then mute the phone and return to the table with “sorry, please continue.”?My staff expressed amazement at how I could keep it all together at once. How smart I was!?

And how very, very dumb.?

I definitely have a listening problem.?

"When you fail at listening you’re sending out an armada of negative messages.?You’re saying:?

• I don’t care about you.?
• I don’t understand you.?
• You’re wrong.?
• You’re stupid.?
• You’re wasting my time.?
• All of the above?

It’s a wonder people ever talk to you again."?

-- Marshall Goldsmith in his book, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There?

First, let’s see how big this problem is?

I did a research study this past week on my meeting participation and focus. The results are devastating, embarrassing, and presented here so I can get better once my colleagues and customers finish beating me over the head with the numbers. Using a combination of calendar, email, browser history, cellphone records and Teams chat logs I built a grid of every meeting and what I did on the side. If you’re interested in doing the same research, I’ll show you later how I tracked all this info down.?

My week of listening with rapt attention:?

Video meetings this week:?44, covering 29.5 hours (Are you kidding me??Another topic for another post.)???

• 16 Customer/Prospect/Vendor?
• 10 Internal Team?
• 18 Group (new Parent Company) Internal Team?

Meetings where I was on-time and completely focused on the call: ONE?

Meetings where I was late, but once in the meeting remained completely focused:?5?

?

For the 38 meetings where I was NOT focused here are the embarrassing stats…?

Emails sent during meetings: 45;?Emails deleted during meetings:?241?

Meetings where I did something in a browser unrelated to the topic at hand: 21?

Phone calls taken during a meeting:?5; Total minutes on-phone and off-camera: 34?

Total number of minutes late to meetings:?142??

Average late attendance time:?5 minutes?

So what’s grabbing my attention??

Emails are my number-one problem.?I send these constantly to ensure my clients get what they want, my teammates get good advice, and my boss gets the best information, right??Well, not during meetings.?What kind of email can be sent during a video call? A quick furtive note. A forward of a document with no context.?I even found cases where I sent email responses to the leader of the meeting I was in, on a completely different topic – a dead giveaway that I’m completely useless to that person who’s speaking directly to me at that moment.?

A variant on the email problem is deleting them.?Watch and listen closely when you’re on a call and you might see the telltale signs of mass deletions:?eyes darting, a rhythmic tap-tap-tap sound, and motion in the shoulder or arm.?Could there be anything more frustrating to a meeting attendee when they catch you doing this??Maybe only if you sat there with your phone doing a swipe-left for 5 minutes straight.?Thankfully, only 60% of my meeting attendees last week were subjected to this treatment. Ugh.?

Browser activity not directly related to the meeting.?This doesn’t count looking at my computer for something I announced in-meeting that I was going to share. But it DOES include times I looked away to find that thing without first telegraphing to the attendees.?From their perspective, my 30 seconds of “find the mystery file to share” or that quick Google Search to find a useful topic reference could just as easily have been me:?

• doing my expense report?
• checking bank transfers?
• looking at that cool new guitar component?
• signing a DocuSign contract??
• finding a funny picture that reminded me of a colleague’s well-coiffed hair?
• booking a flight?
• paying an invoice?
• researching the dress code for my 11-year old’s school dance?
• approving payroll?

(Yes, all of these were found in Browser History during a scheduled meeting).?

Teams/Slack/SMS during a meeting. This one’s tough as I can see some appropriate times for discussing things offline in a meeting between participants.?But when the topic has nothing to do with the meeting, it’s a negative impact on the people in the room.?A possible allowable chat message: “I’m running a few minutes late, can you delay our next meeting?” Want to know how many times I sent that this week??See my lateness score…?

Phone calls are particularly bad: I can’t really hide these, so I turn off the camera and mic and hope the meeting goes on without me and I’m not called on.?I did have one video meeting this week where the mobile call came in and lasted about 15 minutes. In the middle, I put the call on hold, did my business on camera, and then went back to the phone call to realize I’d messed up the mute button and the caller had heard the whole videoconference. Anyone who noticed this on the Teams call (it was a BIG meeting, 20+ attendees) will surely razz me this week for it.?

Late attendance deserves special mention.?If you book back-to-back meetings, you’re bound to be late to some and a lack of meeting discipline can mean that each one rolls late to the next.?Just like a doctor who gets backed up on an appointment and delays patients in the waiting room. Keep this in mind: being late means you’re not working the meeting topic full time.?Or you might miss critical relationship-building that occurs typically at the top of the session.?You certainly make everyone else wait for your presence. In all scenarios you show yourself as uncaring for the other person’s time and uninterested in them personally or professionally.?

Why do I do this??

A diversion:?I joined the Navy in college…more accurately, I was horribly unfocused in college and needed a swift kick in the rear.?Boot Camp sure did that for me. My time in the Navy was no Top Gun, no knot-tying, no swift-boating for me.?I ended up a lowly Yeoman processing pay statements, correspondence and officer yearly reviews.?My limited time as a naval secretary served my future career well in this regard:?I became a reasonably fast typist. In that day we were trained on the IBM Selectric typewriter.?Yes, we used Wite-out on occasion too if you’re wondering.???

Here’s the win: to make my Navy promotions I needed to hit 80 -100 WPM.?That’s touch-typing, and it’s a great skill to have. Years later, I’m still able to hit fast typing speeds without looking down.?What a boon for me the multi-tasker!?I can now stare directly at the camera and still send my chat messages.?As long as the keyboard’s quiet, people will never know.?Unless I actually need to type coherently of course – let’s just say accuracy tends to degrade with age.?And of course, I can’t read the responses coming back in without eyeballs moving.?

In my last corporate gig I had staring contests with my boss across the table in the conference room. He’d look directly at me as I typed and ask a question to trap me – I’d do everything in my power to look right back at him and answer while simultaneously typing unrelated instructions to the ops team.?I’m sure we had more than one outage based on bad info I was sending while playing this silly game.?

Joking aside there’s a real sickness to this process, and what could be a fun story is instead indicative of my lack of concern for others, their time, and how they can get what they need from me.?What is it about me that thinks just a portion of my attention is appropriate, really in ANY situation? I’m not fooling anyone with my quick-note game – I’ll bet my multi-tasking behavior is fully known and only slightly tolerated by everyone I meet with.

It begs some questions about why I’m showing this behavior.?I wrestle with these and you might too. If you’re an unfocused attendee, see what fits your belief about yourself:

• I don’t really need to be in this meeting, so I should at least try and be productive
• I’m good-enough at multitasking that people won’t notice
• I’m too important to give my full attention to the people I’m meeting with

None of these are true, of course.?Just something I’ve told myself or tricked myself into believing.

So what will I do about it?

Firstly, I’ll show I’m sorry.?Not the sackcloth-and-ashes type, not the dramatic Oscar-winning heartfelt anguish type (though making this public does subject me to doubts you might have in that regard).?I’m sorry firstly that I’ve wasted your time, and shown you a lack of respect.?I’m sorry that my lack of focus and late attendance actually makes meetings go longer for both you and me.?And I’m sorry that I’ve let it get this far before trying to make it right.?

You deserve better from me, so here's what’s going to happen:

1. I’m going to track and release comparative figures against this baseline.?I’ve got a long way to go to correct this issue and there’s nothing like a trot down the village path unclothed to quicken the mind towards improvement.
2. I’m going to put the devices, browsers, popup notifications and emails away during meetings.?I’ll stop behaving like the dogs in Disney’s “Up” who jump after squirrels.?Blinders are needed.?Ask me about this as often as you wish the next time we meet.
3. I’m going to work with you to keep my meetings tight and on agenda, only scheduled when needed, and limited to the amount of time necessary for the task.
4. I‘m going to listen to your suggestions on how to improve further.

Watch me closely.?Please.