Why I’m Completely Zoomcrackered

Many years ago during my agency career I had a media opportunity which required me to speak on camera. I’m normally a very confident person and didn’t think I would have a problem freestyling on film, talking about marketing, a subject I love and felt very confident about.

The film crew turned up, a room in our office was set up as a makeshift studio, the cameras were switched on and the director waited for my performance.

Alas, I completely froze. I couldn’t get any words out of my mouth. It was as if I had forgotten everything about myself. This embarrassment continued as the director tried to encourage me. No amount of pep talking would help. I just couldn’t speak to the camera.

Eventually I went away to learn a few lines off by heart, and even then I wasn’t really able to communicate naturally. I just couldn’t be myself whilst the camera was rolling. Unfortunately all these bloopers were captured and shared around the office for people to laugh at. I felt ashamed and vowed to avoid being filmed at all costs.

Fast forward to March 2020. As our world changed dramatically, everyone who was lucky enough to stay employed and who worked in an office environment was required to work from home and be on camera throughout the working week. It became my 9 to 6 job to communicate, chat, strategize, ideate, collaborate, listen and challenge all through the gaze of the lens.

Whilst there’s quite a difference between being filmed for production purposes and communicating over Zoom, for those who don’t like being filmed, these psychological barriers still exist and overcoming them is not easy.

Seeing myself on camera is distracting

If you’re vain or self conscious about your appearance, seeing your face all day long isn’t necessarily a good thing. Being at work and on Zoom a lot is like being at the hairdressers for a never-ending trim.

If I was looking a bit disheveled after a bad night’s sleep in the office, I would be blissfully unaware of my ‘bad face day’. Not on Zoom, it’s all for you to see. Whilst I always keep my camera on, because I don’t want to be that weird person who speaks from beyond, I will often shrink the whole screen so I can’t see myself. And because you can’t look directly at someone during a 1 on 1 call, you’re often looking at someone who’s not looking at you, or you’re looking at yourself. Why that’s so distracting I don’t know, but in a meeting I just don’t want to meet me.

I always feel like I’m interrupting people

Ever been on a group Zoom chat only to feel it’s impossible to contribute because you feel like you’re just interrupting people the whole time. This doesn’t happen to me in real life, I catch the cues, I see into people’s eyes, I know when it’s appropriate to talk. Not on Zoom. In many meetings I find it difficult to interject, and in others I notice the opposite, others not wanting to interject me. Conversation isn’t free flowing on Zoom. The natural back and forth you get from in person communication cannot be replicated. And often when I do try and pipe in I think I’ve been rude to interrupt and then don’t say anything.

I can’t read the room

Who said silence is golden. Awkward silences in group Zoom meetings can be as deafening as a screaming baby. Which often leads me to try and fill the void by saying something trifling or making an awkward joke. Which is often followed by even more silence.

It’s not because people don’t want to ask questions, it’s often because they don’t feel comfortable to do so. Being on camera can make one feel under the spotlight, and not in a good way.

There’s no place for small talk

A lot of people say they miss the little chats they have with colleagues in the office kitchen. But for me it hits harder than this. With some colleagues, we work well communicating in formal regular meetings which are scheduled. With others I find more regular, shorter and impromptu conversations work better. However, Zoom life doesn’t accommodate the latter. If you have something small to chat through you’re more likely to use a messaging service like Slack. You wouldn’t schedule a Zoom meeting to start a conversation with ‘what do you think about…’ Whereas you would absolutely do this in person. But equally you cannot have a ‘what do you think about…’ conversation over Slack. So when do you do it? Some of my best thoughts come from these impromptu chats with people. As an extrovert I’m prone to speaking my thoughts (which is not always good over Zoom). I also get my energy from other people. I get very little of that sitting at home in a quiet empty room.

I get in my head too much

Why haven’t they responded to my message? Was my message clear enough? Was my last message too curt? This would be so much easier to explain in person.

Being on your own all day means that instead of talking to other people a lot, you’re talking to yourself all the time. And sometimes I’m not my best conversation partner. Extroverts aren’t best sat in on their own. Sometimes I spend ages thinking things through and just wish I could speed the process up by speaking out loud. But that would be weird.

I’ve recently started a work journal — where I can splurge my thoughts out every morning. I’ve found this to be an effective way to speak my thoughts without having a listening partner.

Zoom workshops are the worst

A great workshop involves lots of smart people coming together for a very organized brainstorm. You will often go off into little huddles to discuss ideas with your teams and come back to the group with your thinking. Replicating this over Zoom is a challenge, but it can be done. It just doesn’t lend itself to the back and forth nature of workshopping — the push and pull you experience when ideas are being pulled apart and then reformed into something different or better. You don’t experience the power of the crowd understanding, agreeing or challenging (because people often don’t on Zoom, see above). It’s official, workshops are best done in person.

Actually, Zoom socials are the worst

I’m not a natural when it comes to socializing. Sometimes awkward, sometimes shy and then weirdly sometimes very animated or confident. You might not know it because I’m good at putting on a front, but inside I often feel like it’s my first day at school. I love socializing with my colleagues in person. It’s always a good chance to quit the work chat and get to know people better. In a bar or restaurant situation you’ll chat to the people nearest to you and move from group to group throughout the course of the evening catching up. In a social situation on Zoom, one person talks and everybody else listens. You can’t move from group to group or get to know people better. So you end up doing things like chocolate tasting (which was actually quite educational), cocktail making (was drunk on my own at 6.30pm) or cheating your way out of a virtual escape room (these are terrible in person so a virtual one had me wanting to smash the laptop).

*****

Thinking about all these communication challenges that I’ve faced has made me wonder at times, especially in the early days of lockdown Zooming, if there was something wrong with me? Recent literature I’ve read has given me an indication that this isn’t the case.

‘The Hacking of The American Mind’ by Dr Robert H Lustig, addresses the things which really make us happy. Dr Lustig extols the value of connecting in real life.

“The facial emotions of the person you’re talking with activate a set of neurons in your brain called ‘mirror neurons,’ which are the drivers of empathy and specifically linked to serotonin to be able to generate a feeling of empathy, which ultimately turns into contentment/happiness, you actually have to connect. You can’t do it over the internet…It just doesn’t work.”

Who’d have thought it? We’re hard wired to connect with people in real life. This seems to be confirmed by many other authors including Cal Newport (see Digital Minimalism). Connecting over camera isn’t the same — and it’s backed by some strong scientific evidence.

As businesses move towards hybrid working models a key consideration must be to create more in-person interactions, for mental health reasons alone. We aren’t robots, we’re social animals who have evolved to be that way over millennia. I am excited for offices to start opening again and to experience regular in-person interactions. If only to ask people what they thought of my recent blog post about Zoom :)