Mute image via WoodleyWonderWorks on flickr.
What will you miss about running meetings virtually, when you are 'back in the room'? Some facilitators I was meeting with recently suggested that they will miss the 'mute all' button, and the ability to summon people back from virtual breakout groups instantaneously. But I disagree!
I understand the urge facilitators sometimes feel to control a group - I've been there too Clients often want to do more than is realistic in the time available, and facilitators try to be helpful through meticulous design and split-second timing. If only the group would stop talking, we might be able to stick to the plan. 🤔
Video conferencing tools like Zoom and Teams reinforce this appetite for control, with the 'mute all' button and the ability to end breakout conversations and get everyone back in the main room with no option to linger in the hallway.
But... isn't it exactly the lingering, the spontaneity and serendipitous mingling which we have really lost, with enforced virtual working? If I could find a way of adding the journey between breakout rooms and main room to video conferencing, I would.
The mute button, and the way tools like Zoom (and even multi-person video chat tools like Facetime) choose whose voice to carry and temporarily mute everyone else's, is also a double-edged sword. Remember back 'in the room' when you could pick up on the murmur, the ripple of laughter or gasps, the clamour to speak? These sounds help us, as facilitators, understand the mood of the group and give us things to enquire into. We have fewer audio signals in video calls: the desire to ensure whoever has the floor is heard clearly, while understandable, has led to the loss of background noise.
When I get back in the room, the extra noise will help me be a better facilitator.
As facilitators, we can only work with the consent of the group. Sometimes it's our role to draw particular conversations to a close in order to keep things moving along. But the 'mute all' button or the 'close breakouts' button give us too much blunt power and we should use them as little as possible.
Making the Path by Walking
This post was first published in my newsletter, July 2021. Scroll right down to subscribe.