Sensing Senselessness in Online Meetings

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Right now, you likely face the complex question of if, when, and how to start interacting face-to-face with peers, co-workers, and clients.

Online meetings kept us relatively connected during the COVID-19 pandemic. Love them or hate them, though, we know that interacting online has a number of drawbacks as well as significant benefits.

Now is the time to carefully assess when meeting online makes good sense and to make use of some of the valuable lessons learned during these last years.

Many of us feel drained after online meetings. Something is missing. Could that be because meaningful personal contact with co-workers or clients is key? In fact, multiple senses are needed to connect with people and understand them.

Using your senses to connect and create rapport

A big part of life is spent learning to connect with and understand others. One of the valuable lessons we learn is how to apply and integrate multiple senses to pick up cues about people’s attitudes. Research suggests that we actually give greater emphasis to non-verbal rather than verbal cues, even more so when we sense a contradiction between the non-verbal and the verbal. However, most of this happens without us noticing it.

Sight and hearing are our dominant senses and the most obvious when building rapport. What you might not be aware of is how much you listen for cues about attitudes and scan faces and bodies for “body language.”

You also use your sense of smell. Some years ago, I connected with a teenager living in a care home after having lived on the street. When he was admitted to the hospital, I offered to take some friends to visit him. A really large group of rowdy teenagers arrived at my car. I felt overwhelmed and a little afraid. One of the friends asked why I was afraid, saying she could smell my fear.

Rapport in online meetings is not quite the same.

The online environment changes how you build rapport with others. As a result, you might come away from online meetings feeling exhausted, dissatisfied, lonely, and misunderstood.

Smell definitely becomes obsolete. We’re able to use our sense of sight, but depending on tech quality, lighting, and screen size, it is changed. In face-to-face interaction, hands, arms, and legs express a lot about attitudes. Picking up on those expressions leads to a subtle dance of coordinated bodily communication. But in online meetings, you probably see only the face, neck, and shoulders, providing less than half the usual visual cues.

Picture clarity is also restricted. Even on a high-def screen, you may have limited access to facial expressions. Your sense of hearing might be challenged. For instance, the time lag from poor internet reception will influence the flow of conversation.

At first, we might consider ditching Zoom meetings because of these limitations. But online interactions are not going away. The benefits of reduced travel are great: the environment, families, and time pressures, to name a few. And besides, this rush to online meetings was sudden and unprepared. New skills take time and practice.

All is not lost

With the following tips, you can make sure to use the fullness of your senses to connect online.

• Recognize how your senses influence your ability to communicate.
• Don’t take connection for granted.
• Do something specific to connect and understand.
• Acknowledge that the mind and the body through which it is expressed are inseparable.
• Remember, understanding is a two-way thing.

How to send the message you want

Attitude counts as much as, if not more than, knowledge.

The mind is present in and through the body. Hence, attitudes experienced in your mind are expressed through gesture, posture, and tone of voice.