Video Is Not Always the Best Choice

For remote workers who must forego the connected feeling of in-person meetings around the conference or lunch table, videoconferencing often seems like the next best thing. Through the screen we can see one another’s faces and talk more or less spontaneously. We can sort of make eye contact and read one another’s facial expressions or gestures. Backgrounds that reveal a portion of our team members lives – the lovely plants! the interesting wall décor! – may serve to strengthen a personal connection that geographic distance and technology can weaken. It is, after all, the richest form of digital communication. Yet there are some situations when videoconferencing is decidedly not the best choice for remote teams who wish to collaborate productively.

Hostile Dynamics Don’t Mix Well with Videoconferences

Consider Fernanda’s situation. The newest member of a four-person virtual team responsible for long-term growth planning for a global team, she was troubled by Steve, a company veteran. Steve’s very direct communication style included bold assertions and strong opinions on matters large and small. Fernanda noticed he often cut her off when she was speaking, and the other team members, too. Yet everyone seemed resigned to this dynamic. Steve’s dominating personality made meetings unpleasant, but that wasn’t Fernanda’s biggest concern. After a couple months in her new role, and having had time to look through the company’s documents, she had come to believe that Steve’s opinions and assertions were pressuring the team to make some decisions that would be unwise.?

But how to bring up her dissenting view with him and the rest of the team? Sometimes Steve’s voice got so loud she turned down the microphone’s volume on her device; Fernanda could imagine how bug-eyed and angry he might be if she voiced insights that ran contrary to his.?

Fernanda’s concern was real. Teams who have a preexisting negative relationship to communicating with one another—for example, a history of disagreement or antagonism— actually fare worse when asked to make decisions or negotiate tricky terrain using rich technologies such as videoconferencing. When hostility is a factor, lean technologies, such as email or written documents can buffer or deflect potential unproductive conflict. Rather than bring up her concerns in a videoconference meeting, Fernanda decided to write everything out in a report that she sent as an email attachment to the rest of the team. That way she could be sure of making her case completely without being interrupted or scorned by Steve’s angry objection.?

Receiving Fernanda’s report away from the full-on contact of the videoconference was beneficial for Steve as well. He could open up the document and rave in the privacy of his own home until he’d calmed down enough to see that Fernanda’s insights were helpful and accurate.? He could take his time to respond in writing with some well-considered points of his own. As for the other team members, who tended to let Steve get his own way, they too had the time and space to carefully read Fernanda’s report and make thoughtful contributions. For the next week, the team was able to hash out their differences of opinion over back-and-forth emails until they’d come to sound planning decisions that represented everyone’s viewpoint.

Virtual Teams with Positive Relationships

By the time Arielle, George, and Chloe had worked together for a year they knew each other well. Although most of the time they worked virtually, they came together in person for several days about once a month or whenever they had to launch a new project for a client. These meetings often included meals or evening social gatherings; they all enjoyed each other’s company. When working from their home offices in different cities, they saw no reason to hop on videocalls to clear up what was often a simple matter that could be quickly addressed in the shorthand emails and texts they’d developed. Like most teams with generally strong and positive relationships, especially those who may have friendships that extend beyond the office, they benefitted less from richer technology such as video. Indeed, defaulting to richer forms of media on the assumption that “more is more,” especially when a group is already tightly knit, may be one cause of tech exhaustion that so many employees reported experiencing when COVID-19 work-from-home orders first went into effect in March 2020.?

Tech Exhaustion

Let’s not forget about garden-variety tech exhaustion as a reason to videoconference judiciously. Complaints of cognitive overload, headaches, and even the slurring of words are often accompanied with complaints about going from one videoconference to the next. Tech exhaustion happens when we treat work communication activities in the virtual world in the same way that we do in the physical word, yet don’t add the constraints that we do in the latter. For example, if we have consecutive in-person meetings, we always add transition time between meetings. This is partly because in-person interactions, which usually require some kind of travel time from point A to point B, even if only down the hall, don’t allow for these tight adjacent meetings. One or two meetings may occur in close succession, but it doesn’t happen with every single meeting. If we must rely on videoconferencing, it’s crucial to create a period of transition between meetings. Better yet, try not to be constantly on videocalls.?

Neutral Virtual Teams Benefit Most

The teams who benefit the most from videoconferencing are those whose members have neutral relationships; for example, teams formed randomly by lottery or location, teams where people meet infrequently, or newly formed teams where people do not yet know one another. When teams are comprised of people with distant or neutral relationships, videoconferencing provides more helpful information about how the others think, act, and look than do other types of digital communication. Seeing one another through the screen helps to strengthen connection and positive relationships.?

In sum, when making decisions about whether and how much to use videoconferencing to communicate with your colleagues, consider the social dynamics and history of your teams as much as, if not more than, you consider the technology itself. Less is sometimes more!

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