Who loves conference calls?

  by Andy on Flickr

Even after many years of synchronous video meetings using free tools like Skype and Google Hangouts as well as more sophisticated e-meeting systems like Adobe Connect, Blackboard Collaborate and Webbex I'm constantly amazed that so many people still use the telephone conference call. The conference call lacks all the features available in even the free e-meeting tools on the net; you can't see who's in the meeting, you don't know who's speaking and you can't share any information. Often it's hard to tell who is speaking and when many participants are calling from their mobiles the speech quality can fluctuate greatly.

A recent article in the Atlantic, Study: Nobody Is Paying Attention on Your Conference Call, looks at conference call behaviour and reveals that the majority of participants are busy doing other things during a conference call. When no-one sees you you're free to carry on doing a host of other things and participants fade in and out of the meeting, only reacting when the subject directly affects them. Leading a conference call can be a very lonely job and sometimes it's hard to know if there's anyone out there at all. I'll admit that a well-chaired meeting with a clear agenda and committed participants can work but the conference call has few positive features to make it worth the effort.

The missing elements are presence and empathy; the feeling that you are part of a group with a common objective and the ability to see colleagues' reactions to what you say. E-meeting tools can go a long way to providing these. A participant list can at least indicate who is logged in, a chat function allows questions to be asked or useful links distributed and of course video makes everyone visible. Of course people tend to multitask and daydream even with these features but that has always been the case even in face-to-face meetings. However, the features of e-meeting tools can help to promote a higher level of participation and thereby combat the passivity of voice-only meetings.

Effective meetings, just like good courses, require focus, participation, presence and empathy. Without these elements participants' concentration wanders and they eventually switch off. Wherever we meet and interact we need stimulating and creative environments where all participants feel welcome and where the aims of the meeting are clear and meaningful to all. This applies equally to face-to-face as well as online meetings. People who feel involved in a discussion don't daydream or multitask. We all need to improve our ability to exploit the available tools and methods (digital and analogue) that facilitate greater participation.