Telephone Conversations or Video Conferencing?

When working with global companies the new technology trend is video conferencing. Many smaller companies also use Skype. For brief conversations or talking to family Skype is fine, but for business? The downside is that the usually sub-standard camera is ‘only on the face’. We know a Director of a major IT company who uses video conferencing all the time, and hates it.

The only advantage he sees is that he knows for certain that the people he needs to speak to are definitely ‘in the room’. Of course it saves a fortune in expenses as you no longer need to meet face to face, it allows full meetings to take place when individuals are in different locations, people without the technology can still dial in like a conference call, and also many of the calls are free over the Internet.

This year we have done two sessions via video conference and each time there were small issues. Firstly the difficulty of not having a person in front of you means they are naturally harder to ‘read’, despite the better cameras, and for Jeremy and I who love having an audience this is vital.  Secondly,what makes it worse is the slight time delay in movement – not in sound, bizarrely, but if there is a movement you get it a full second later which is disconcerting.  Also there is the problem of language, either colloquial expressions, or struggling to understand different languages and dialects. Sometimes you find yourself, like an inexperienced tourist in a strange country, speaking very loudly and doing extraordinary mimes with your hands.

You can’t stop progress, but what tends to happen is that we become reliant on new technologies very quickly. So when email became popular we all stopped telephoning people and sending letters. This is still the era of ‘living in your Inbox’. Now people trying to sell to customers via Skype and video conferencing instead of making the effort to go and see them. Well, here are some interesting facts developed by Professor Albert Melhabrian of the Neuroscience Dept of UCLA, when it comes to communication:

• 7% of meaning is in the words that are spoken.
• 38% of meaning is in the paralinguistics (the way that the words are said).
• 55% of meaning is in facial expression.

So you would think that video conferencing and skype would be brilliant for business! All that facial expression. But what happens is that these meetings ‘formalise’ conversations. You prepare for them. You watch what you say, and how you come across. In our opinion the telephone wins hands down over video. The telephone forces you to listen, you are dealing far more in tone, clear language, pronunciation and intention, there are fewer distractions, and it is much more private. Video conferencing makes the world smaller, no doubt, but to get your message across when sitting, staring into a camera, under a certain amount of pressure,  is challenging.

If you must do a video conference, make more preparation in advance so that you are clear that your international contacts can all communicate easily, otherwise you will find yourself miming away like a fool.