A strange thing happened during a closing activity at a retreat I recently facilitated for elected officials of a large area city.
People shook hands. They laughed. Some even hugged.
What they didn’t do was hurry to get to their separate corners of the world, checking messages or catching up on other priorities. Rather, they moved toward each other – they connected.
Over the years, I’ve facilitated dozens and dozens of similar retreats designed to help colleagues connect and work better together, but they never ended with a spontaneous show of warmth . It was clear that after more than two years navigating Zoom calls, muted mics and boxed-in faces, they were ready for connection. Real connection.
That said, we all know virtual meetings aren’t going anywhere. In fact, many would argue they’re one of the best employment-focused by-products of the pandemic. Companies learned productivity doesn’t stop when people work at home. Employees learned what it was like to have more work-life balance. Everyone got a peek behind the curtains of their co-workers’ lives, for better or worse.
Still, the idea of virtual fatigue is real. Zoom meetings are draining. Stanford University researchers recently published the first peer-reviewed article that systematically deconstructs Zoom fatigue from a psychological perspective. The conclusion: It’s unnatural. All of that face-forward eye-contact. Staring at ourselves. The inability to send and read cues.
Watching the elected officials connect so enthusiastically after the meeting underscored how much they’d missed natural interactions. A shoulder pat. A handshake. A quick catch up about the family.
So if virtual meetings aren’t going anywhere, how do we infuse some of the benefits of real-live interactions into them?
For us, that’s the next big idea. We’ve talked about a hybrid workplace but how do we create a hybrid meeting? A virtual meeting that has some of the perks of an in-person get-together?
At Shockey, we’re looking at how we can create more engaging and effective virtual meetings. For example:
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Including time to share personal updates. In-person meetings organically include some personal updates. We can make room for those in virtual meetings by either vocalizing them or including them in the chat feature.
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Making space for brief icebreakers and team building exercises. Typically, these are reserved for big groups of people who don’t always get in a room together. But these have a place in the re-imagined virtual meeting.
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Using breakout rooms for chatting. A small part of a long meeting could include breakout rooms without an agenda. Just randomly assign people and give them five to ten minutes to chat and get to know each other.
A few days after our retreat, the elected officials had to tackle a tough topic at a meeting that lasted into the wee hours of the morning. Because they’d had a bit of time earlier in the week to connect and nurture their relationships, the meeting didn’t get contentious. Instead, people told me they thought the tone of the disagreement was significantly less personal. They argued the issue rather than attacking the person.
They credited the connection we made – and we’ll keep making. Because if we’ve learned one thing in the past two years, it’s that connections matter more than ever.