Hello and welcome to another episode of the working conversations podcast where we talk all things leadership, business communication and trends in organizational life. I'm your host, Dr. Janel Anderson.

As we continue to ride the ever evolving wave of workplace dynamics post pandemic, one thing is crystal clear, virtual meetings are here to stay. Whether you are a seasoned remote worker or someone working in a hybrid schedule, virtual meetings have become a given in the professional landscape. Today, I'll share some insightful tips backed by the latest research to help you not only survive, but thrive in the realm of virtual collaboration and zoom fatigue. So grab your favorite cup of coffee or tea because we're inclusive here. Settle into your virtual office chair and let's explore how to make those digital gatherings not only bearable, but genuinely effective and engaging.

Now we communicate even when we're silent. We humans make meaning out of everything that's being said. And everything that we can take in with our eyes and ears in even things like gestures. So everything we're taking in including dozens and dozens of nonverbal cues, such as if someone's leaning in or leaning out, or if they're gesturing, like they want to take the next turn or if they're inhaling quickly, like they're about to interrupt when we are face to face. We take in all of these cues. There are so many of them. Now, when we're on Zoom or teams or WebEx all day long, we are missing those cues.

Even if our colleagues have the cameras on we can't necessarily see if they're fidgeting or losing interest, nor can we tell if they're bored, irritated or otherwise. And the more people in the meeting, the smaller the boxes get. That is the multiple video feeds on the screen Brady Bunch style gets smaller and smaller.

Now if you've listened to Episode 149, the power of artificial intelligence or AI to transform meetings, you know that there will be some new features coming that will help you catch up if you fall behind. But there are many things that you can do to drive engagement and prevent zoom fatigue in the first place.

Now if you listened to Episode 136, stop multitasking. You've got a few of those ideas, maybe under your belt already because you've heard me talk about how the human brain can't multitask, which is exactly what people are trying to do, or at least attempt on those teams meetings. And it contributes to our resume fatigue and exhaustion while detracting from getting things done in the meeting.

When we're paying continuous partial attention to something like say the team's meeting that you're in while you're also trying to answer your email. It's extra taxing on your brain. So again, you've probably heard me talk about the primary task and the secondary task. And really thinking about campaign continuous partial attention is the same thing. We're not giving something our full attention. And it's exhausting to try to do multiple things at the same time. Nor can we do those things very well if we're trying to do multiple things at the same time.

So I'm sure you've heard of zoom fatigue. And in the past, the research on Zoom fatigue, as it's commonly called, focused on self report data, that is participants in research studies were given questionnaires to assess their own recollections of how they felt, how they performed etc. In the video conference environment, regardless if it was zoom or teams or prior to that Skype or WebEx or whatever they happen to be using.

For example, back in October 2020, the Pew Research Center study that surveyed over 10,000 workers to find out if they were feeling worn out by a video conference and about 40% Did but of course, if you're working with 10,000 people in your research study, it has to be self report data. You can't actively watch 10,000 Different people experience a meeting.

Now, according to a research, some research that came out of Stanford University video calls lead to fatigue due to intense excessive close up eye contact because most of us have been have conditioned ourselves to look into the camera to make that illusion of eye contact. But that can be exhausting to feel like you are having a bunch of people stare at you the whole time during the meeting that eye contact is excessive and intense. But it makes a connection. So that's why we do it. I'm not saying don't do it, but I'm just saying that's one of the reasons that Zoom fatigue exists like it does.

Another finding from that same Stanford study was seeing yourself on camera during video chats is exhausting. And there's a reduction in mobility. Because if you think about when you're in a face to face meeting, let's say your back hurts or you need to get up and stretch. I mean, it's easier to stretch and move in your chair because you don't feel like everybody's like staring at you or watching maybe you stand up and move to a different location because you're able to stretch your back out.

In fact, I was in a face to face meeting just this morning with one of my clients and her leadership team. And she was telling us how she was busy with something all weekend that was a physically intense project and her back was hurting so she stood up for a time and like leaned on the back of our chair. So we just feel more comfortable doing that when we're face to face then when we are cameras on in a zoom or teams meeting. So we're just not getting up to move out much. So again, most of the studies in the past have relied on that self report data. But a couple of recent studies put empirical data to the test like real data, not just self report data.

So researchers at the University of Applied Sciences, Upper Austria, used brain scans and heart scans to see whether there were any concrete neurological findings about zoom fatigue and what it is that exhausts us in. In those video conference meetings. So it's another study I'll refer to two but first we're going to talk about that study. And indeed, there were some concrete neurological findings at play. So what they found was that the video conference text technology makes us more exhausted than face to face events.

They found that with 50 minutes of video conferencing that is five zero so almost an hour, they were able to see significant changes in physiological differences and the subjects were fatigued more and again, they had observable data on this. So participants brain and heart readings indicated that video conferencing caused higher levels of fatigue, sadness and in attentiveness than in person participation did. So those on the video conference were also less attentive. They were engaged less than their face to face counterpart parts.

And to be fair, the researchers had a small sample size just a few dozen participants were hooked up to the EEG and ECG sensors to monitor what was happening in their brain and in their heart and as good researchers they do recommend larger studies be initiated to validate the initial research that they found from their fault smaller study so they want lots and lots more people to be involved in research like this.

So this is an emerging area of research, and I will continue to watch it as it unfold. But in today's session, I promised I was going to give you very specific tactical things that you could do to reduce zoom fatigue and increase engagement in your meetings. And I have got six of them for you today.

And I am going to ground my first recommendation in the research that I was just mentioning from that Austrian study. So the first thing is take breaks. So the research that I was just referring to found that the negative effects of video conferencing were present after 55 zero minutes, so just under an hour. So accordingly you're not going to wait that long. You're going to want to take breaks at 20 minutes or 30 minutes in and you don't necessarily have to stop the meeting agenda and have a formal break where people step away or log out. You could though, but simply doing some seated exercise partway through the meeting can certainly refocus people's attention and keep their interest and engagement up and if they were multitasking.

They will whip their head back around to find out what you're doing. So one of the favorite things that I like to do and if you're watching on YouTube, you'll see me do this. And if you've ever been in a video, lead class with me, like a half day class where I'm training on something you've probably seen me do this in person sometimes even in a virtual keynote. I will do this because I want to keep people's attention focused on what we're doing in the session. So I will say if you're comfortable and able to let's all together, take five shoulder rolls backwards and I will do it and in fact, if you're watching on YouTube, you'll see me doing it now and then five shoulder rolls forward.

Now to be inclusive. I always like to say if you're interested and have it and this is available to you because not everybody might want to do it nor maybe everybody might not be able to do it if they have back injury or shoulder pain or something like that. So I make it entirely optional. That even just simply taking our attention off the agenda of whatever it is we're doing and getting a little physical movement brings people's attention back and centers back on what we're talking about.

Now, the other thing that's great about it is as a large muscle movement, say in our shoulders and back, it's going to stimulate blood flow in our bodies, and we're just not moving around as much in the virtual environment. So it works on multiple levels in terms of getting oxygen to the brain and getting people back focused on the meeting if they have been multitasking. Alright, so that is number one take more breaks and they don't have to be big, long formal breaks, there can be just little things that you do to get people's attention re centered.

All right, number two cameras on. Now. I am not an advocate of the camera on all day every day because that is exhausting. In fact, that's what zoom fatigue comes from where zoom fatigue comes from. And there is some neuroscience research that says that even if your bandwidth is amazing, and you have a really high processor speed that handles video really well. There is still ever such a slight delay between the sound of my voice and the movement of my lips on this screen ever so slight, but your brain has to work to stitch that back together. And if you're doing that all day long, it does get really, really exhausting. So I don't advocate for it all day long.

In fact, I think you should have plenty of focus time in your day where you're actually doing your work. Now I know that as senior leaders in an organization, you may have fewer and fewer minutes or hours available for you to do that focus work that still you do need it whether it's processing email, reading and responding to things, whether it is working on intellectual property work, there are things to do that are not in zoom meetings. So make sure you're finding time to do that such that when you are in those zoom meetings and teams meetings, you have the mental bandwidth to have your camera on.

So also when people have their cameras on they're much less likely to multitask because if they have their camera on and they're looking at the participants in their meeting, they're not looking off at a second screen doing something else. They are more likely to be present and engaged and accountable. So cameras on again not all day every day but cameras on in your meetings now.

Tip number three related to cameras on hide yourself view. Most platforms show a square of what you look like on camera during a meeting. But it's unnatural to watch yourself, whether it's for 15 minutes or all day long. That's why people will turn their camera off when they're eating breakfast in a meeting they the in fact you've I'm sure you've heard this you might have even heard me make fun of this or talk about this. But what it just cracks me up when somebody's like, Oh, I'm gonna have my camera off for a little while because I'm finishing my breakfast. Like that is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. Because in a face to face meeting nobody would turn around and put their back to everybody else while they finished their bagel or their coffee. No they wouldn't. They would sit right there in the meeting. We are not uncomfortable with other people watching us eat.

In fact, those of us who have families do it probably at least once a day, sometimes multiple times a day on the weekend we sit across the dinner table from our families and we eat or we go on a date or we go out for coffee with a friend or lunch with a colleague and we eat in front of them all the time. It happens all the time. So the thing that people are uncomfortable with on a video chat when they are eating is that they are looking at themselves eating because when was the last time that you sat down and had a bowl of breakfast cereal and watched yourself eat it in a hand mirror like never.

There are dozens of studies in fact that predate the pandemic that show that there are negative emotional consequences to seeing yourself in a mirror specifically, we are more critical of ourselves when we watch our own performance. So this is just as true on Zoom or teams as it is watching a recording of yourself. So for example, if you were working with a speech coach and you because you're trying to get better at public speaking and you gave a speech and it was video recorded. We don't like to watch that video recording of ourselves because we are so hard on ourselves when we watch it.

That's why we don't like to do it. It's not because we don't think we can learn anything from it. Absolutely we can. But it's also exhausting on a whole different emotional level, because we are so critical of ourselves. So I want you to find a way around that and the way around that is to hide yourself view. So what you'll do the next time you log into zoom or teams is you're going to make sure that you're in the frame Okay, make sure you're nice and centered in the middle of the frame and you don't have any spinach in your teeth or anything like that. And then you are going to turn on hide self view.

In most of the platforms. It's as simple as right clicking on your own video feed. Once there are multiple people in the session, it doesn't work. Like if you're the first one there, it's not going to work. You have to wait until there are multiple people there. And then in most of the platforms, it's as simple as right clicking on your own picture and clicking hide self view. Now, if you are going to start using this, you might want to normalize it in your team. You might want to talk to the meeting facilitator about having everybody do it and share the research on it. And when you do it, make sure you know how to turn it on and turn it back off again because there will be times when you want to turn it back on.

And make sure that you know again maybe at the beginning of your next meeting that you're in the center of the frame and that everything looks as you wish it to. I also highly highly recommend that you put a reminder somewhere visible that you are on camera but have hidden yourself view so maybe it's a brightly colored post it note that says camera is on and you stick it up on your laptop right next to where your camera is not covering your camera. But nearby so that it doesn't interfere so that you remember that they can see you because sometimes when you turn your view of yourself off, you forget that other people can still see you. So hide self view, but practice so you know how to turn it on and off on your platform of choice. And you know what I also want you to do a little study with yourself, collect some data, ask yourself how you feel after that meeting, having not had to look at yourself, maybe you have a little bit more energy, maybe you can see the results or I should say feel the results of not having your camera on. Alright, so tip number three hide yourself view.

Tip number four, keep your microphones hot if it's a small meeting, and I think you should have a lot more small meetings. By small I mean eight participants or fewer. When you have your microphone hot, those little utterances and by what I mean by hot is not muted. Okay, so hot mic is a mic that is odd that whatever you say, or laugh or guffaw or sneeze gets heard by the other participants. So we are so accustomed to having our microphone off or muted that when we do want to laugh or sigh or you know make those little utterances and I've talked about that this in a podcast episode as well about how we just don't give each other those small affirmations and that little, those little utterances in our communication to one another.

We'll link that one up in the in the show notes as well. Because when we're muted, if somebody says something funny or sarcastic or whatever, we're gonna laugh at it, by the time we move our hand to the mouse, get our mouse over to the unmute button or if your skill even if you're skilled at the shortcuts like hitting the spacebar to mute and unmute. Yes, that's a thing. Try it out sometime. Even if you're skilled in the shortcuts by the time you get your hand over to the spacebar and unmute yourself, the moment is probably passed.

So when we keep our microphones hot, that is unmuted, we are going to share those little utterances that create the social fabric that knit our group together. When we are in a meeting setting. Again, it could be the other boy or girl at events. It could be the sneezes and you, you know acknowledge somebody's sneeze and say Kazoom died or bless you or whatever it is that you like to say after somebody sneezes just those little things. Stitch the engagement together.

Now, as a secondary bonus effective this people are even less likely to multitask if their microphones are hot, because their microphone quite likely will pick up the keyboard clacking of clickety clack clickety clack when they are trying to multitask like answering emails. Now if you do happen to take a lot of notes during a meeting and you have a lot of clickety clack clickety clack, just you might pop in a headset with a dangling microphone so that your microphone is away from your keyboard.

Otherwise if your laptop if you're using your laptop microphone, it might be picking up your keyboard noises. And again, I say that in the spirit of if you happen to be taking a lot of notes and typing a lot during the meeting because is entirely germane to the meeting. So I like to use a number of about eight people that's give or take. It's not a hard and fast rule. Usually if we get more than eight like 10 or more, we get people who have feedback issues of their microphone picking up their speakers and things like that.

So if this is something that you are going to try to take on in your meetings, if you're the meeting facilitator, give people a heads up in advance so that they can get set up with the right headset and so forth and it doesn't even have to be an expensive headset. It can be like a $10 Sony microphone and headset that just plugs right into your laptop doesn't have to be fancy. But once we get over eight or 10 people the possibility of background noise and other things feeding into it which may making it unreasonable certainly do pick up so especially if it's just a handful of people or even like I say up to eight, experiment with it. Be transparent in your experimentation with these suggestions and tips. So that if they don't work for you, then you know you don't have to feel blamed.
You can place it on me I'll take all the blame you take all the credit. I'll take all the blame. How does that work? Alright, so suggestion number four. Tip number four. Keep your mics hot. If it's a smaller meeting of say like eight people or fewer.

Number five, and this is especially for those of you who have people who are very active in the chat in your meetings. If you have people active in the chat, have a moderator so that the meeting facilitator whoever that meeting owner is can keep on track with keeping the movement and keeping the meeting moving forward and doesn't have to read the chat all the time. So if you've got somebody who's going to be in the meeting anyway, so we're not adding an extra person to the meeting. But somebody else is in the meeting. Somebody who's already in the meeting anyway is keeping an extra eye on the chat, and then interjecting to read various things out from the chat. Hey Janel, I just see that. Jodi said that this is a really good idea and she knows where we can get some funding to try this out.

So those kinds of things if there are a lot of things happening in the chat, having somebody identified as the person who's tracking the chat, and then who is periodically going to interject by reading the chat aloud and of course, not all of them, but just when there are particularly salient points, or when there are multiple people, maybe even chiming in with a similar idea. The person who is in that moderator role can summarize the chat discussion. So the facilitator doesn't have to stop talking. Read everything to catch up, then summarize, respond or whatever. So have that moderator role, present and accounted for and have it rotate so that it is not always the same person.

This also builds empathy into the meeting, because if you've got multiple people sharing that role of being the moderator, it's a hard job and it's going to keep you on task and present in the meeting. Definitely going to keep you from multitasking. So how that role rotate but having a moderator to monitor the chat is technique number five.

All right, and technique number six have short meetings. Research published by the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology recently reported that fatigue in virtual meetings is caused by boredom and mental underload not overload. But underload the boredom was even more pronounced when cameras were off. Again, all those social cues that I mentioned at the top of the podcasts are not as easy for us to catch and pay attention to in a video conference, and they're not there at all if the cameras are off. And this boredom and fatigue increases the likelihood that we are going to multitask to try to stay awake or trying to stay engaged in meetings.

And even if it's not the meeting agenda that we are, you know, trying to stay engaged with. We might be working on email or working on some other project, just to try to stay awake and engaged. So make your meeting short. I am a big proponent of really short meetings. With just one or two agenda items and only the people who need to be in those discussions. Just a few people. So that might be 15 or 20 minutes. Now, it might be a larger number of people and that's fine too. But if you can limit the meetings to just 15 or 20 minutes with just one or two agenda items, maybe you're having more meetings throughout the day, by more I don't mean more hours in front of the screen. I just mean you have like, you know, instead of seven hour long meetings, you've got 1415 minute meetings with just the right people there.

I guarantee the velocity at which you move through things will be so much faster and your day will go faster too because you won't be feeling the extreme zoom fatigue that may just be coming from boredom. How fascinating is that? All right, that was number six have short meetings.

Now let me just give you a quick recap of the six tips. That we just talked about. Number one, take breaks they can be breaks right there during the meeting by shoulder rolls or foot stretches or anything like that. cameras on cameras on again not all day every day but cameras on. Number three, hide yourself view but put up a post it note or some reminder that you are still on camera for everybody else so you don't do something embarrassing. Number four gave your microphones hot that is nobody in the meeting is muted if it is a small number of meeting participants like eight or fewer. Number five have a moderator especially for those meetings where chat is very active. And number six, have short meetings like 15 to 20 minute meetings with one or two agenda items.

All right as we wrap up our exploration into this world of virtual meetings and 10 tips for you. Remember that adapting to the future of work isn't just about embracing new technologies. It's about harnessing them to create more meaningful connections and foster productivity and my assignment to you and as a former professor, I get to give homework. My assignment to you is to try one of these tips in the coming week.

And if you want extra credit, and I sure hope some of you do, email me at drjanel@drjanelanderson with your results, we'll put that email address in the show notes as well. This is episode 153. So you will find the show notes at janelanderson.com/153.

What you do with these tips matters. It really does because like I said, video meetings are here to stay and I'm sure that's no surprise to you. By incorporating these tips into your virtual meeting arsenal, you're not just participating, you are actively shaping the future of collaborative work. Ask others that you work with. We're in the same meetings with you to listen to this episode as well and spread the word in your organization because you can lead from anywhere even if you're not a meeting owner. You can use these tips yourself. You can talk to meeting owners meeting facilitators about these tips and suggest experimenting with them.

As we navigate the twists and turns of the ever changing workplace landscape. Let's keep the dialogue open. Share your experiences with me. Share your struggles, share your wins, so that we can all continue to learn from one another. Your ability to adapt and thrive in this digital realm is a testament to your resilience and your commitment to staying ahead.

Because remember, future of work is not just about technology. It's about the values we uphold the communities we build, and the sustainable growth we all strive for. We need to keep exploring, keep innovating and keep envisioning the remarkable possibilities that lie ahead.

As always, stay curious, stay informed and stay ahead of the curve. Tune in next Monday for another insightful exploration of the trends shaping our professional world.