Dr. Jim Sellner, PhD. DipC. answers questions leadership, motivation, accountability, manager connection, or working on a remote team. Send your questions to: askdrjim@vivoteam.com
Feeling Fatigued
Dear Dr. Jim,
What is Zoom fatigue, because I think I may have it. What can I do about it? -Barb*
Hi Barb,
So called Zoom fatigue from my perspective, is a result of all the things that already weren't working working well in face-to-face meetings, but people were so used to that they became numb to it. When we move inefficient in-person meetings to Zoom or Microsoft Team, what happened is people didn't adjust to the new format. Some people were against being on camera and refused to do that (which I think is a huge mistake). It also revealed that many meetings are not very well run. So here are some tips:
In your Zoom meetings, it's important that everybody start off the meeting by saying something like What's going on with you? or How are you coming to this meeting? so you are making contact with each other.
For the person who has called the meeting, it is absolutely crucial that an agenda has been made and sent out to everybody 24 hours before. Ensure that you move through the agenda and that everybody helps to move it along.
Some people like to talk a lot, and it's everyone's responsibility in that meeting to curtail that. On the other side, some people don't ever speak up, but again it's every persons responsibility to speak up. The organizer can call on people and just say, What's going on with you, I haven't heard from you in awhile, in order to keep a balanced forum.
Make sure you do a check in every once in a while. Ask What's going well? and What needs improvement? to make sure your team is focused and staying on target with their goals.
Those are some tips, but there's a lot more to it. There's the whole technical part of running a meeting so that people aren't distracted by bad camera angles or lighting. Fixing those elements will help, too. It is a difficult thing to get used to, you might even want to take some training on how to run online meetings well.
