16.5 Meeting-enhancing Technology

Given the widespread availability and increasingly low cost of electronic communication, technologies that once served to bring people together across continents and time zones now also serve people in the same geographic area. Rather than travelling to a central point for a face-to-face interaction via plane, car, or even elevator within the same building, busy and cost-conscious professionals often choose to see and hear each other via web conferencing or telephone conference-calling. Though these channels sacrifice some nonverbal communication to the convenience of not having to leave your office, their advantages make them a necessary part of workplace communication. Knowing how to use them is a key skill for all job seekers, especially if they’re used for a long-distance job interview. We will discuss the technologies by category, beginning with audio-only, then audio-visual, and finally social media.

Audio-only Interactions

When participating in a meeting via phone because you can’t be present in person, most of the same rules of both in-person meetings and telephone calls apply. When joining the meeting, however, it’s much more important than an in-person meeting to announce yourself as being present by saying your name and your role (“Hi everyone, I’m Natalie Legere, HR Payroll Specialist. Thanks for having me here today.”) so that the meeting includes you despite your being a disembodied voice.

If your role in the meeting is relatively minor, you may be silent for long stretches, which requires some responsibility both on your part and that of your fellow meeting participants. Your responsibility is to continue to be “present” in the sense of listening carefully for when you can and should contribute, as well as recording notes if necessary. Mute your microphone if background noise (e.g., a barking dog or crying baby) will come through to intrude on the meeting. The responsibility of the in-person participants, especially the meeting chair, is to not forget that you’re there, to include you when addressing the group as a whole, and even ensure you’re still there by asking occasionally for a response.

Web Conferencing

If you’ve ever used Skype, Apple’s Facetime, Google Hangouts, or the like socially, you’re well familiar with online video conferencing. Given the easy availability of these and a wide variety of other online applications, web conferencing is now standard for both one-on-one and group meetings with coworkers, managers, clients, and other stakeholders. It’s so easy that some will use it for meetings with others on different floors of the same building let alone across the province, country, or the planet. Following some basic principles on how to prepare for and conduct such meetings can help make you a more effective communicator in this relatively new channel, or at least help you avoid embarrassment.

When preparing for the meeting, especially in your home, ensure that everything in the frame—yourself and the background—presents professionally. If you’re doing a job video conferencing interview or the expectation of your audience is that you dress formally, dress as you would if you were meeting in person, including your bottom half. Just because the framing is such that they only see your top half doesn’t guarantee that you won’t have to get up at some point and be seen head to toe.

The angle of your computer’s camera is also important. Usually located right above your screen, the camera should be eye-level and 1-2 feet away to place you as the dominant figure in the frame. If it’s about a foot (12 inches) away, your head and face will dominate, but the slight wide angle of the lens will distort you, making your nose more prominent relative to the rest of your face. At two feet away, your upper body and head will properly dominate and be in the correct proportion. Once your computer’s camera is positioned three feet or more away and higher than eye-level, you minimize yourself too much and are swallowed up by your background. If the camera is too close and low because your laptop computer is literally on your lap or on a low desktop, on the other hand, the view up your nostrils will be unflattering.

Your background could include a general office scene or neighbouring cubicle if you’re in the office, a bookcase if you’re in the home, or a wall with tasteful art. If these are unavailable, a blank wall is an appropriate option. If your background is a window, ensure that it isn’t so bright that you’re backlit to the point of being a dark shadowy figure. A light positioned near your camera and shining directly in your face will make you look like you’re being interrogated, and a dim or unlit background will make you look like you’re in a dungeon. A diffuse light from overhead lighting throughout the room or side lighting is best.

For the acoustics, choose an appropriately-sized room that doesn’t echo strangely. A room with high ceilings and wood floors might echo too much. On the other hand, a room that’s too small might make you sound like you’re in a closet. A carpeted and furnished 16’x16’ room will soak up the sound well enough to make your voice resonate normally.

Also, control your environment to ensure that no background interruptions will embarrass you. If you’re interviewing from home, talk to your cohabitants about not entering the room or making loud noises until you give the all-clear signal that you’re done. If children or pets are around, ensure that you can lock the door to dampen or silence noise and avoid intrusions like the one that embarrassed Prof. Robert Kelly during a live BBC News interview about South Korea.

Kelly looked like he had properly prepared for the interview as he had several times before. You can see a world map on the wall behind him, a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf, and some books on the table. With the camera properly framing him in his nice suit, everything was set up to make him look like the professional expert he is—except this time he forgot to lock the door. Suddenly, a toddler in a bright yellow jumper burst in and marched in with a swagger behind him, forcing him to pause, push her back, and apologize repeatedly to the interviewer on air. Matters got worse for him—but even more hilarious for viewers—when his infant son followed, rolling into the room in a walker, as well as his panicked wife chasing them down, dragging them back out of the room while knocking books off the table in the kerfuffle, and, from a crawl on the floor, slamming the door behind them. Though the video immediately went viral and amused the world in the days following the March 2017 incident. A less cute and slapstick intrusion may have ruined his career as a TV talking head in the way he thought it would just after it happened (Usborne, 2017).

Finally, test the connection with someone else to ensure that it works if you’re not used to communicating in this way. Check that the framing, lighting, your appearance, and the background are all in order. Test the volume so that you can be properly heard and hear your audience in turn.

During the interview or meeting, ensure your professionalism by doing the following:

• Look directly into the camera when speaking so that your audience sees you maintaining good eye contact with them. You may be tempted instead to look at your audience on the screen or, worse, at yourself in the corner inset view of what your audience sees, perhaps checking to make sure you look good. (You can see Prof. Kelly check this view and notice his children enter in the BBC interview mentioned above, though you can also see him try to maintain professionalism by looking back to the camera directly as much as possible.) It will be off-putting to your audience to see you looking away constantly.
• Pause longer than you normally would after speaking to give your audience time to respond. If you pause after speaking and don’t hear a reply during an in-person meeting, you may feel compelled to speak again, perhaps asking to confirm that they understood you. With web conferencing, however, anticipate a slight delay of about a second or more as the signal bounces around the communications network. Be patient so that you don’t end up awkwardly speaking over each other.
• Mute your microphone if you’re not talking to avoid background noise intruding, especially if it’s beyond your control. When you’re about to talk again, ensure that the microphone volume is back up so that you don’t confuse everyone by speaking while on mute.
• Avoid doing other work, emailing, or browsing the internet during the conference call. Your audience will be able to tell that you’re engaged with something other than their conversation. They will probably feel the same way if you ignored them to look at your phone during an in-person meeting (Lovgren, 2017).

Bearing these differences in mind, a web conference meeting should otherwise proceed much like an in-person meeting.