The sudden shift to remote work over the last year was a difficult transition for many advisory firms, but now most firms are embracing the change. With that, many firms are deciding to remain virtual even after the COVID restrictions are lifted.
Even with the embrace of virtual, though, it can be difficult to manage emotions and communicate well if you don't know how virtual requires different behavior than a traditional office environment.
Recently I wrote about the three ways to be a great remote manager, but here we'll focus on ways to be effective in a virtual world. This is from the perspective of managing a virtual firm myself for the last six years. Two changes made the biggest difference for my team:
Turn Off Your Camera
It might sound counterintuitive, but you and your team will be more productive if you limit your time on camera each day.
We discovered that when we attended more than three hours of virtual, camera "on" meetings a day, our team's productivity decreased significantly, and exhaustion increased. We decided to limit ourselves to less than three hours of camera time each day, and our culture switched dramatically to the positive.
In normal human interactions, we share energy with each other. But with video meetings, the monitor and camera act as a barrier. We see each other, but we're unable to effectively pass energy back and forth.
In-person meetings include natural movements, like standing up, getting water and the ability to see the space a person is occupying.
A camera, though, dramatically limits our scope and field of vision. Instead of experiencing the fullness of each other's existence, we see each other in a small box that confines our natural movement.
As we know, those limitations create mental exhaustion — and we haven't even talked about how unnatural it is to stare at your own reflection for hours a day. It's not how humans are wired to behave.
The irony is that as a society we talk endlessly about the benefits of limiting screen time for children, and then we ignore those same arguments for ourselves in the name of productivity.
If you think that your clients will think less of you, don't. We have clients and prospects all over the world, and all it takes is a short explanation to help them understand why our cameras are off for the remainder of the day. Being present in a conversation, even if it's voice only, is more important than being seen on camera.
