Hello and welcome to the Virtual Frontier, the Podcast about Virtual Teams created by a virtual Team. Disclaimer, all of our interviews are conducted virtually, I'm Daniel your host and I'm part of the team here at the Virtual Frontier. Today's topic of our Q&A session is how to avoid Zoom fatigue. Many of us have spent the last couple of months, a tremendous amount of time in Online video calls and this of very tiring. Even Eric Yuan, the CEO of Zoom, has confessed he feels sometimes fatigued after one year of extensive use of his own tool. So what could be done about it? What kind of meeting culture and setting we need to avoid this meeting fatigue and do we really need all this marathon meetings? Let's find out in our second Q&A session. If you like to show subscribe on YouTube, reviewed on our podcast, follow us on Spotify, Stitcher, Amazon music or any other platform you like for podcasting or links you can find below in the description. So without further ado, let's dive into the second sea or Q&A session at the Virtual Frontier. Enjoy the conversation.

Hello Manuel. Thank you very much for joining us today to our second Q&A round here on the Virtual Frontier. I'm very happy to have you agai. Today I want to talk to you about an interesting and urgent and increasing topic about the Zoom fatigue that so many people are confronting right now, getting just tired of a lot of video meetings and jumping from one meeting to the next. And I want to talk to you a little bit about how do you manage that and what are possible solutions to not be in video calls maybe all the time or how to manage those video calls and synchron meetings if you have them in the first place. So, first question, how many hours did you spend last week in video meetings, Manuel?

Yeah. Hi, good to have you here. Excited about this topic because I see that many people are concerned about increasing communication time and exhausting video calls. How much time did I spend last week in video calls. I would say two hours per day, so in total, 10 hours, yeah.

Did you did you feel tired after after ten hours?

No, I mean, two hours per day is totally fine. I come from the time when I was like eight to sometimes 12 hours per day in video calls. I'm absolutely happy and grateful that I only spend two hours per day in video calls. Because that doesn't make me tired. But if I had to spend more, yeah, definitely. I would sit at the dinner desk and my ears and cheeks become red. My wife will ask me, oh, what did you do today? And I typically have to say I have no idea. I just spent my whole time in video calls. I'm happy that it's not like this anymore.

I will ask you later on, how did you manage to reduce this such drastically, just talking about the amount of hours per day or per week. When we have, like those meetings, and I think this is already like a key to to reducing this amount of hours you spend per day in video meetings. What do you take care of before you start a meeting or before you enter a meeting in a video call, or probably how do you prepare in the first place or decide if you're going to do a video call or probably have a different solution for getting something solved?

Yeah, that's definitely a good question. When I look back, why I had so many video calls in the past is because, you know, when when people have a problem, the first intention is we need a we need a meeting. Instead of sitting down trying to understand what exactly the problem is and which questions they have related to the problem. Typically, people don't do that. They just ask for a meeting or they create an email with like 10 people in the in the carbon copy just to keep everyone informed. But that just creates noise. That creates noise, that creates stress, that creates more communication load. And if you look at most meetings, the result of a meeting is just another meeting because still things are not clear. So what I take care of when I join the meeting is that first I can really contribute something, some value to this meeting. To understand if I can do that, I need an agenda. If I don't have an agenda, I decline the meeting. And the agenda should be in a way that there are questions in the agenda. Because that's why we need a meeting. If somebody just writes in the calendar invitation and we need to talk about whatever. I don't do that because talking might be an intention in order to connect on a human level to people, then we can talk if you want to meet me. Let's do that in the evening, drink beer, socialize, just talk. That's totally fine. But just having a meeting in order to talk about something that's the wrong intention. You want to have a meeting with a clear purpose to solve a specific problem or to get specific questions answered. And in order to have this purpose, you need to prepare your questions. And then the good thing is and that's how to make this bridge how I reduced my meetings is when somebody writes the questions in the agenda, I can simply answer these questions. Either I send a video message or a voice message or I send the answer in Slack. This type of structured communication, combined with asynchronous communication that is supported by technology, makes the whole meeting culture much more efficient. And the good thing is that people get their answers faster. So having a good preparation before a meeting is crucial for me to join. And if it's just a status meeting where people report a status, you can do this with an asynchronous Check in. Simply providing either can be a Google Form , can be Microsoft from any kind of forum where you simply ask for the KPI's and the facts that matter. And then you can decide if you still want to have a meeting and have a conversation around these facts. What happens in most meetings is that people come totally unprepared. And that's a waste of time.

Yeah thats quite the worst. And I can remember that from our own past, like a couple of years ago, it was the same like, I want to have a meeting with you si I just booked a meeting in my calendar and requested you, and probably would say yes, if that was a free time for you. And what has changed over the time, I can see that right now, if I really want a meeting with you, I sit down and first think about the agenda, writing down the questions and probably before I go to the meeting, I have already answered my own questions before that, because I had taken the time to get clarity about what I want to talk with you about. And probably I don't need too, or we as just mentioned by you, we do it Asynchron by answering those questions quickly in in a Slack channel or wherever its suited, right.

Exactly. And just just imagine which effect this has on an entire organization, Because it's what you experience it's the reality. If you sit down and really try to get clarity about what is your question, your brain starts to find an answer. And very often you get the answer immediately when you write down your question. And that can reduce so many meetings if you simply force people to first think about their questions they have. And if they can't find the solution, totally OK to have a meeting. But it's not OK to have a meeting because you are too lazy to think about what's your problem. That's not respectful for for my time.

You know, I think the this is the key word, like having a respect for the time for each other, right. And when you meet getting things done the right way and not just sitting around in the same meeting room or in the same Zoom room and discussing about a topic X Y. Completely agree with that. How do you set your own limits when it comes to the length of a meeting or the duration of the meeting? Probably most often you can find meetings that are two hours, two and half hours, marathon meetings where people are in the same room, but how do you manage your own meetings and schedules?

I mean, last I think it was two months ago. And I mean, you are also part of a big virtual team. We have with over 130 or 150 freelancers in sixtyseven countries. And three or four months ago, it was I had a meeting that would occur to actually over four hours, but it was not related to work. It was just to come together. And then people started all of a sudden to like drink beer together, et cetera. I mean, that was a virtual party, right? That was a meeting that took, I think, four and a half hours. But business meetings, I try maximum an hour. I never join a meeting that is longer than an hour. I get invitations for meetings that are three hours and even worse, three hours with six people. What that shows is that nobody really takes ownership over the topic. Because if one person takes Ownership off the topic, this person can prepare something. This person can start to make suggestions and work on the topic and then get specifically to people that should provide input and contribute to the topic and then have just a 30 minute meeting so that everyone can see it and present it to everyone and they can get live feedback. But if everyone if a people are in a meeting for two hours, that just means nobody takes Ownership and will just be a blah, blah, blah meeting without an outcome. So, yeah, prepared meetings. Then have one person taking ownership over the subject, asking people that should contribute specific questions and then have like 30 to maximum 60 minute meeting just to finalize things. And I totally agree that when you have complex things where you need different experts with different expertise to contribute from different angles to a solution, then it's easier to do this in a live conversation because it's simply faster. But that doesn't mean that for any kind of work, you need a life meeting, for any kind of problem, you need a life meeting. That's definitely not necessary.

You know, and probably if you have those kind of complex issues that you need to talk in live, could be a solution that could get you split up those meetings and in smaller pieces and you don't have those marathon meetings with dozens of people in one room and not be an outcome. I think even even in the in the real physical world meetings, if you have like those meetings when 20 people are in one room, it's not that everyone is working and at the time really efficient and getting things done. It's more like I'm there and I'm watching what's happening. But this brings me to my next question, what kind of meetings you should attend and probably when it's time to leave a meeting.

Yeah, I just have like a comment from Elon Musk in mind that he says when there's a meeting here, he is in and he doesn't see any well, he just leaves the meeting. I don't know ho he handles that technically, but that's where I want to go.

Yeah. That makes total then. So which meetings I join. I already said, if I see the questions, the agenda and I feel I can contribute to it, I'm happy to join it. If I see a meeting where a people are invited and there is no agenda, I won't join it. But how long I would stay in the meeting, I definitely after 15 minutes, I ask if somebody needs me, if I never contribute anything and then I leave. I mean, it's even possible that you record the meeting so I can re-watch it later if it's online. But most meetings, what matters is just the outcome. So I think that not so many people need to join the meeting if those that really have to join the meeting work towards a specific outcome that can be handed over to other people that need this outcome. But that doesn't mean that everyone needs to participate in the meeting. It's just about structured and precise communication instead of long, blah, blah, blah, without any intention to create a solution for something.

I think this also goes to the issue that many leaders or owners are probably see those kind of meetings as some replacement to see what their employees or co-workers are doing, what you would respond to that? Like taking control from the real physical world into the virtual world.

That's something I never really thought about. But I heard it quite often. And I absolutely agree, because when everyone was working in an office, the typical Management by walking around was the style that most leaders applied. Just checking, OK, person is sitting on the desk typing in their computer must be productive. But that's bullshit. I mean, it doesn't mean that if somebody's sitting in front of a computer typing something that this person is doing the work and neither does it mean it's effective or efficient. So that's clearly not an indicator you should to measure progress and efficiency by outcomes, OK by the results the person creates. But I agree, yes, that most managers are used to control their stuff by management, by walking around. I think they have a feeling of lack of control when they started working remotely and that's why they were involved in many video calls. So yeah, that could be an intention to control what people are doing and to satisfy the need for control. Because a lot of control is is a really bad feeling, especially for managers, if you are responsible and accountable for for a team and now all of a sudden you are sitting at home wondering, OK, what's everyone doing? Are you doing something? I'm accountable for everything. If they are not doing the work, it's my head rolling. So, yeah, that's why I think they compensate for that. And I think now we see that. I think that many adapt to a different leadership style instead of leading by availability, that the world shifts to leading by results and then less meetings are necessary.

Right, and even if you're like the control type still, you really should consider that that those long meetings where you still try to get this attendance level measured by attendance rather than with outcomes, you really are stressing out your your co-workers or employers because this long meetings in an in an virtual meeting are really like for for physically for the eye and for the mind like stressful because it's something unnatural. So, you know, you really should try to keep it on the necessary level and getting things done rather than just sitting around and watching what your co-workers or employees or subordinates are doing.

Yeah, there is there is even a very interesting insight that the amount of meetings give you,. Because you can see the amount of meetings as an indicator for how much clarity is missing in your organization. And how inefficient everything works. Because if everything was clear, if everyone needs if everyone would know what they need to do or even more importantly, for which results they are working, no meetings would be necessary. So if you are sitting in meetings eight hours per day, I think it's a better invest to not attend a meeting, but analyze where all this clarity is left on the road where people miss this clarity and what you can do to provide more clarity. And typically it comes down to first important thing is. Get clear role description so that people know based on the outcomes they should work for, based on their accountability and responsibilities, and then provide clarity of the role. This is an important part of leadership. That's the core of your leadership system, that clear roles exist and that every role is aligned with the purpose of the team which is aligned with the purpose of the business. Once you provide this clarity, I think the whole organization can work more efficiently. And most importantly, the entire team and individual team members can work much more independent, self-determined, and that is the start to build self managing teams. But without clarity, there are no safe managing teams. You always need a manager that tells other people in the business what they should do. And that's most stressful for the manager because without the manager telling people what to do, nobody does anything. I think meetings are a good a good mirror of how efficient your organization works and where you can improve the efficiency with more clarity.

Yeah, I completely agree with that. I think we covered that topic for today, quite good on some very interesting insights, one about how we can be an organized better or online meeting structures and getting more out of those meetings when we meet in person and in the virtual environment. Thank you very much for taking the time. And I see you next week with a new topic and new questions.

Yeah, thank you very much. See you next time. Take care and have less meetings.

I want to thank Manuel for joining us today on this Q&A session and sharing his insights on this very present topic. I got some new ideas about how to avoid meeting fatigue. What are the reasons that can cause such fatigue and Online meetings and possible ways out of it. I really hope you could get also some new perspectives. If you want to learn more about how to scale your business at any time and make work better. Visit FlashHub.io/start to get free access to the business of training. Learn in this free training, how you can build, grow and scale your business with Virtual Teams and global freelancers. You can subscribe to the Virtual Frontier on Apple Podcast, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, YouTube or wherever podcast can be found. And while you're there, you can leave us a review. Please support us and Pateron so we can keep improving the show and your experience. On behalf of the team here at the Virtual Frontier, I want to thank you for listening. So until next episode, keep exploring new frontiers.