4 good reasons keep your webcam on

Why does Teams focus on the faces of the most vociferous and active participants in a meeting? Why does Adam Grant report studies of determining emotion from a full video or from voice alone as a valid argument for turning off video feeds (webcams) in a virtual meeting? And why do so many people think these things make sense?

Why do we have webcams? Why are they useful in a meeting?

For many, the default assumption seems to be: So we can see the speaker. But for good speakers, the greatest value of a webcam is so that they can see their audience.

In this, I support Adam Grant’s premise that we do not need to see the speaker in order to understand their message – they are, after all, communicating that message with words that they have carefully chosen and their tone reflects any intended emotion in how they feel about the message.

The speaker’s body language is incidental, and potentially distracting, and is only really helpful in recognising clues to deceptions – which is something most of us neither have the ability or the circumstances to apply – thankfully!

However, for the individual speakers delivering their carefully chosen words, and allowing their emotions to add colour to them, seeing the faces of their audience is the key feedback mechanism.

They can:

• instantly see who is getting the point, and who may be struggling.
• clarify or expand their point in response to seeing signals of confusion.
• spot when an illustration may be helpful.
• sense engagement and spot the opportunity for a question or a break.
• receive encouragement in the nods and smiles.
• time their delivery at a rate that is best for people to process. And
• personalise a point where that may be required.

Good speakers (whether speaking for 15 minutes or 15 seconds) are not people for whom the goal is to simply transmit a well-honed point. They are people for whom the goal is that people receive that point, and digest it, and appreciate its implications for them personally. And good speakers are people who recognise that they need data to help them to do that in the most efficient and effective way – the data reflected in the listeners body language and facial expressions – both subconscious and deliberate.

This is the data we have (hopefully) learned to respond to all our lives.

Adam Grant does make the point that seeing people’s faces is humanly essential to establishing trust. He then goes on to say that he turns off his webcam on the basis that ‘you trust me and you know what I look like’. But surely, if those people start to lose that trust in what he is saying, a good speaker will quickly recognise the warning signs in the subtle expressions of their audience, and be able to address it.

So my plea is this: Keep your webcam on, all the time. Not for people to see what you feel about what you are saying, but to give them a chance to see how you feel about what they are saying. Good speakers need that data to speak well, and pretty much all of us have to speak from time to time. The visual feedback helps us understand how our comments are being received, and this helps us to avoid misunderstanding, which in turn makes our meetings more effective and more efficient.

But what about points being made about the difficulty for introverts in constant eye-contact, and the fact that we don’t look at each other all the time?

These things can be addressed easily without having to switch off webcams. Just because you have a webcam, and can see a sea of faces, you do not have to stare at them!  You can easily look in a different area of your screen, or gaze into space, until something catches your attention to look back. And the meeting can include things like screen shares and this will give people other things to focus on. In all of these cases, your webcam will still pick up your reactions and your expressions without you having to focus on it.

But more than that, I would argue that our approach to virtual meetings is a core part of this problem. We have done what a colleague of mine described as: “Just putting the off-line on-line!”, and as a result we have an impoverished version of our in-person meeting experience, without the wealth of options that the ‘on-line’ has available for us.

If we were to make better uses of on-line tools such as whiteboards and templates to augment the video-conference elements, we would not be so focused on how we look, or on looking at other people, and we could make contributions in ways that make far better use of 21st century technology – ways that naturally suit introverts.

So rather than switching webcams off, simply avoid making them the focus of everyone’s attention. Include other things in your meeting to focus on. Engage people beyond their words and their looks. Find richer ways to contribute that better enable reflective types to play their part.

To get started on this, why not pick a template out from Toolchest.org as an element of your next on-line meeting?