One of the concerns about virtual meetings is our propensity to drift off onto other tasks, which can mean that they aren’t as productive as they might be. For instance, recent research from Iowa State University examines where our attention tends to focus during a video meeting.
The study shows that while participants were generally paying attention to the speaker, they would often drift, especially during small group meetings.
The data revealed that during the small group session, people spent around a third of the time looking somewhere other than the screen. This compares to just 11% of the time doing likewise during the larger group recording. As expected, the participants were distracted by the various distractions introduced by the researchers, albeit only for a few seconds before returning to the focus of the session.
Good distractions
Ordinarily this multitasking, or multi-focusing, during a Zoom call is viewed negatively, but research from Binghamton University suggests that it may actually have some benefits. The key, the researchers argue, is that such multicommunication needs to be deployed properly.
While this may seem a somewhat fuzzy concept, the researchers believe that it most occurs when we’re able to split our attention evenly and manage the expectations of the people we’re talking to.
“On the surface, it’s easy to place a negative connotation on multicommunicating. But we need to focus on how people manage their multicommunicating rather than the behavior itself,” the researchers explain. “Not everyone can be a ‘Superman’ at this, but if you’re messaging with a colleague to get some information that could be useful while you’re in the middle of a meeting, that could make your contribution to the meeting more effective.”
Managing the inevitable
As the Iowa research demonstrated, focusing on multiple things at once during video calls is something of an inevitability, so the key is not to wish for an impossible scenario whereby we all focus solely on the task at hand, and more on managing the reality of a multifocusing audience.
After all, it’s well documented that multitasking tends to diminish our performance in the task at hand. This is especially so when we’re communicating to multiple people at once, with not only our performance harmed but also the opinion of us in the eyes of those we’re talking to.
Spreading our attention and focus across multiple people can be beneficial, however, when this multi-communication is directly linked to the primary task we’re trying to achieve. When done in this way it can allow us to utilize the additional information we gain from the additional conversations to boost our performance in our primary task. This can be in terms of both the quality of our contributions and also the reduction in delays in securing additional insights.
Conversing effectively
This kind of multi-communication can be especially effective when the media we use complements each other. For instance, we might be listening to some video content on one screen while reading related information on another.
“Let’s say you’re listening to your teachers and looking at some materials on the side, even if it’s social media. That can work as long as those materials have some content related to what’s being taught in the class,” the researchers explain. “In my own classes, I’ll talk about how websites like Amazon work, so the students will naturally want to look at the website’s design themselves during the lecture. They’re listening and learning something using their own perspective.”
It’s also important to consider who we’re talking to, especially in terms of the information we’re likely to glean from the conversation with them. The researchers highlight that the most effective multi-communication clearly establishes expectations so that the other party is aware that your attention is split and is comfortable with it being so.
In most workplaces, it helps to set clear rules and explain why we’re doing multicommunication. It works best when everyone is on the same page and has realistic expectations.
When managing a meeting, good leaders know when to step in and guide multicommunication. They can do this by making it clear when it’s not okay and giving examples of when it’s helpful or allowed.
“Properly managing this behavior at the individual and team levels makes the difference between multicommunication as a distraction and multicommunication as an asset,” the researchers conclude.
