Each of us now has more options than ever to connect with colleagues, family members and friends. New video conferencing tools are bound to create new communication norms, and greatly influence our collective habits well beyond this crisis.
When LogMeIn (NASDAQ: LOGM), the owner of GoToMeeting, and Join.Me (video conferencing software), sold to private equity firms for $4.4B this past December, no-one could have anticipated how essential this type of software would become to our daily lives.
A few months later, Verizon (NYSE: VZ) reportedly spent $500M to acquire BlueJeans and Zoom (NASDAQ: ZM) experienced a daily user growth of 3000% between December and April (from 10M users to 300M).
Zoom
The market counts an interminable list of players that keeps growing. There are of course solutions like UberConference, RingCentral and more established names like Skype and Teams (both owned by Microsoft), Webex (owned by Cisco) or Meet (by Google). This past week, Facebook introduced Messenger Rooms, a free group video calling product that lets up to 50 participants join calls simultaneously, with no time limit. As of its last earnings, Facebook claims 2.5 Billion Monthly Active Users.
Like many of you, I’ve been stuck at home for many weeks and I’ve looked for creative ways to increase my teams “inter-connectiveness” as my friend Keith Ferrazzi explains in his last Harvard Business Review interview here.
I’m sharing below the practices that have helped me stay healthy, human, happy and sane. Let me know about yours!
1) Stay Human and Be a Little Funny
A big part of my happiness at work and at home comes from seeing people’s faces and making them laugh (or at least, attempt to). Here are 2 practices I’ve been using:
- Epic backgrounds: by now, all major brands have come up with the most amazing and free-to-download background pictures. Your video conferencing software probably already comes with preloaded options. I have about 20 that I rotate through depending on the time, type and theme of my meeting. The one that’s getting the most positive feedback so far is my Top Gun background.
- The “Clone” background: want to get a laugh from your friends or colleague? Record yourself attending a call, load that as your background...and appear in picture twice!
You’ll find loads of tips and tricks for making your backgrounds look amazing online but, whatever you do, don’t force people to join with video. While there are many benefits to seeing each other, there are also many personal reasons why a person may not wish to be seen. Respect that.
2) Stay Healthy: Physically and Emotionally
Joining online meetings without much of a break all day can be draining. To make sure you get some level of activity, here is what I suggest:
- Don’t join all calls from your computer or from the same spot. Whenever possible and appropriate, use your video conferencing mobile application and take a walk. You might be able to walk around the house or your neighborhood. I often login twice in my meetings so I have the option to move about (“login twice” has more benefits than just this one: read more about that in the next section).
- Be playful. Imagination is what makes us human. Encourage it where appropriate. This past week, I introduced a game option at the beginning of my Friday stand-up.
- Here is how it works. After everyone’s entered the room and is ready to participate, I pick a participant number using a randomizer phone application. The participant whose position matches that number must tell a joke. The whole game lasts less than 2 mins but it kicks off your meeting with a joyful spirit. Watch here how my own team burned me at this game on Friday.
Other tactics include sharing music or sounds you like into the meeting. Many of the market options offer the ability to share your computer’s audio.
Whatever you do though, don’t multitask! While you might think that video conferencing can increase productivity by ‘semi-attending’ meetings, it doesn’t. Multi-tasking will drain you mentally and will render your meetings counterproductive.
3) Stay Safe, Sane… and Become More Productive!
Speaking of productivity, you might find it affected when your meeting falls prey to unwanted noise or difficulties with content sharing. Here are easy ways to solve these issues:
“Can you see my screen now?”
You’re sitting in a meeting waiting to see the presenter’s slides. They attempt to share content via the video conferencing system. But they can’t seem to make it work. You get frustrated because you can’t help. They get nervous because they have no idea what everyone else is seeing.
- An easy way to get rid of the frustration it creates with attendees and the uncertainty felt by the presenter is to login into the meeting twice: I use my phone and my computer.
- I use my computer to share and my phone to see what others see. That way, when I push that share button on my computer, I can see what everyone’s seeing from my phone.
“Not sure I was meant to hear that...”
Each of us has experienced unwanted background (or foreground) noise during a conference call. This past week, a participant in a meeting I was in, sneezed loudly (thinking that he was muted). All attendees became deaf for a few seconds. Don’t be that guy. Mute your participation by default. Most videoconferencing has default settings and shortcuts to unmute quickly. Become fluent at those so you don’t have to surprise attendees with unwanted noise or continue talking in mute wondering why nobody’s responding to your questions...
4) Finally, Make Meetings Better!
If there is one thing virtual meetings can be better at, it’s leveling the playing field for all personality types. If you’re an introvert, you’ll know what I mean. How many meetings have you attended where some extrovert team member takes up most of the meeting’s attention or its time? How often have you wished you could give your boss feedback about the poor quality of a meeting but were afraid or too shy to express it?
Luckily, there is a great strategy you and your boss can use to encourage feedback that will make your meetings better. Many conferencing applications offer polling options that can be filled out anonymously at the end of your meeting.
So, next time you run a meeting, simply add the poll at the end of it!
I hope the above will serve you well. I would love to hear about your best practices. Please contact me via LinkedIn or twitter with feedback.
5) One Last Tip
Change meeting times from 60 mins to 45 mins. People need breaks between meetings to “attend to life”: kids questions, snacks, bio-breaks or reading articles or videos like the below to take a mental break….
I hope you’ve enjoyed this. Stay Home. Stay safe, and stay sane!
