In Person is Superior. Or is it?

Meeting in person is critical to business success and is crucial for collaboration and building relationships for reasons x, y, & z.

We’ve all heard it. It’s been written about by every business article producer I can name. Companies spend billions of dollars on it annually. We’ve seen companies disrupt their entire workforce over it. Yet, according to Gallup, less than one-third of the workforce feels engaged and connected. Why is that?

Well, for those of you who know me, you know I have a perspective on this very topic, and it’s one that’s often misunderstood and almost always seen as radical. It’s the perspective that, if done right, it’s possible to be more effective as a business, have a tremendously engaged workforce, and build strong human connections without ever having to be in the same room. Now that perspective is sometimes received with the reaction I sketched into my cover doodle. (Perhaps, slightly less extreme.)

The first misconception I’ll address is one that often comes up when I first share my thoughts. I am in no way advocating that seeing one another is the same as asynchronous, text, or verbal only interaction. Sending a text or picking up your bag phone cannot replace the power of looking someone in the eye while having a conversation. Neuroscience, body language, eye contact, and many other arguments would blow that tinfoil hat perspective out of the water.

I’m also not suggesting that in a perfect world, virtual face-to-face would trump being in person. If I felt that way, I would advocate that even if people can conveniently show up to the same conference room they should go find a desk and fire up their webcam instead.

I’m simply advocating that with our ever-growing global and remote workforce, the in-person nirvana we aspire to and often wait around for, is an almost impossible reality. As a result, we often waste more time and money trying to align the stars for in-person collaboration than we do actually collaborating.

To illustrate my point, imagine the following scenario:

You’re invited to a last-minute, 3-hour meeting at the corporate office to ‘boost engagement and foster collaboration’ following the latest engagement survey results. Some senior level folks will be stopping through to shake hands, share slides, and say hi to people. You don’t live anywhere near your corporate office or have a conflict that makes going in for it almost impossible. This type of meeting hasn’t happened in 2 years because money is tight and you have no idea if it will ever happen again. You look in the invite and see there’s only a t-con available for remote participants. You appreciate the effort and know how important some face-time with these folks are, so you move heaven and earth to make it happen. When you arrive, you sense the leaders seem a little groggy, probably as they recover from jet lag due to the post-survey roadshows. It gets worse - 400 people show up to a room clearly not designed for 400, and it looks like every piece of food you aren’t allergic to has been eaten. You drift off after 2 hours of bullet points only to wake up and realize the presentations ran long, shortening the already dismal networking time. In the end, the only interaction you have is a brief moment of eye contact as the leaders walk out the door and several awkward weather conversations with the colleagues you haven’t seen in 2 years. 

While this type of event was probably well intentioned, a ton of work, and designed to boost engagement and foster collaboration, I highly doubt you’d feel like it did any of those things. You’d probably drive or fly home exhausted, frustrated, and disengaged. Not only did the alleged objective of the meeting not occur for you, you’re left picking up the pieces from everything you moved around while simultaneously trying to catch up on all the work you fell behind on. All this just to attend this meeting ‘in person.’ Now, you might contest that I painted the perfect series of bad events, but I’d say the scenario is probably more the norm than the exception. I’ve seen it happen more times than I’d like to admit.

The reality is this happens far too often because we believe in-person engagement is superior just because it’s in person.

So, what do we do about it? I believe we have to first redefine ‘in person’ as the only way effective face-to-face communication happens. Once we do that, we can begin thinking outside the box about ways to leverage technology, collaborate virtually, and then actually go out and do it. Before you know it, the lines between virtual and in person begin to blur, creating an almost seamless experience. This allows collaboration to happen regularly, no matter where everyone is located.

Now, I will add that it’s not as easy as throwing a webcam into an in-person meeting so your virtual participants can see all the fun things happening in the room. Unfortunately, that’s typically what happens, which is why the idea of virtual collaboration gets such a bad rap. In that example, the virtual experience wasn’t ineffective because it was virtual, it was ineffective because it was an afterthought and remote participants were treated as such. In fact, if that’s your approach, you probably do more to disengage your remote talent than anything.

‘Wow, thanks for patronizing me and making me feel inferior by letting me watch everyone eat their complimentary lunch, be muted while watching all the conversations, and then having the incredible opportunity to be ignored the entire time.’

Let’s look at another scenario, this time removing the ‘in person is better’ component and see what happens.

Your company’s leaders are busy like every other leader of every other company. Travel expense is limited or not an option. However, your leaders decide to throw out the ‘in person is the only way’ mindset. With the time saved on travel and the restriction of people needing to be physically present removed, new possibilities are opened. Now you’re invited to a regularly occurring series of meetings where different leaders host each one. You look closer at the invite and realize the meetings are shorter, but limited to a much smaller group and include people from all over versus just your local(ish) office. Webcams are required to ensure everyone can still see each other. You join your first meeting and spend 30 minutes having an actual dialogue with the leader and your colleagues. You learn more about the people you work with, the vision for the organization, and you have a chance to have your questions answered. The meeting runs later than expected, but you’re not stressed because you just need to shut your computer and walk upstairs when it ends. As an added bonus, you’re already wearing sweatpants with your button-down shirt. Because the meeting was shorter, you didn’t fall behind on your work, so you’re not up late catching up or scrambling the next day. While you didn’t get every question answered, you’re not worried because you don’t have to wait for the stars to align for another opportunity.

I don’t know about you, but I would take a single scenario 2 over a million scenario 1s.

Now, I recognize a heckler could argue that scenario 2 would be better in person. That could be true, but nobody in the history of the world will ever know because it’s a logistical and financial impossibility.

Ultimately, that’s the point I’m trying to make. I think part of the reason so much of the workforce is disengaged is that we’re spending more time waiting to get together in person than actually just getting together. We have a wealth of technology that allows us to engage, collaborate, and do things we never could and will never be able to do in person. Maybe in a side-by-side comparison of the exact same event, in person is superior. However, I’d contest that the limitations, expense, and lack of flexibility make it significantly inferior.

So, stop sitting around planning your next trip and start collaborating.