Have you noticed that every meeting needs to be on video now? Of course, that’s a rhetorical question. It’s one of the first and most constant things that is brought up in the pandemic-influenced tech community of today. Meetings that used to be telephone-only or even wordy emails are now video chats that take half an hour or more. People complain that they are spending time and money to spruce up their office to look presentable at 720p to people that likely aren’t paying attention anyway. It’s a common complaint. But have you ever thought about why?

Listening and Looking to Learn

There are three major styles of learning that get brought up in academic courses.

• Physical, or kinesthetic, learners learn best from touching things. They want to manipulate and feel things as they learn. They like to gesture when they talk. They also get bored quickly when things are taking too long or they have to sit still too much.
• Visual learners learn best from seeing things. They like to look around and tend to think in pictures. They would rather see something instead of hearing someone speak.
• Auditory learners like to hear things being spoken. They want to talk through everything and hear the words being spoken out loud. These are the kinds of people that tend to do things like repeat lists back to themselves over and over again to memorize them.

Now, if you found yourself agreeing with some of each of those things you aren’t crazy. There are some aspects of each of these that we all learn with. As much as I like getting the big picture, I often enjoy dialogue and telling stories as well as touching something to learn more about it. But at the end of the day I would consider myself a visual learner. I learn best when I can see things. I tend to get distracted when I have to listen to things a lot. You can probably figure out which learning style suits you best quickly.

Adjusting to Virtual Learning

That was the pre-pandemic world. With the advent of sheltering in place, we’re going to have to look at the way we do things now. Physical learning is out. We can’t just meet with people and invade their bubble to talk and touch and interact. So a third of learning styles are going to be severely impacted. What does that leave us with?

Well, auditory learners are going to be okay with phone calls. They learn best when they can recite information. But remember how it’s not so much about them learning best from hearing as it is from them engaging in dialogue? That’s where the auditory learning style seems to break down for people. It’s not that auditory learners get the best absorption of material from hearing it. They need to talk. They need to hear their voice and interact with the voices of others to process things. It’s not enough to just hear it spoken. Even if all they do is rephrase something you’ve told them they still have to speak.

Makes sense, right? But why video? Shouldn’t video meetings be the space of visual learners? In short, no. Because video isn’t about visual learning as a medium. Visual learning is about reading text and emails and seeing diagrams and drawing your own pictures to absorb ideas. Visual learning is about drawing out your network routing plan, not describing it to your peers. Visual learners gain little from video.

On the other hand, auditory learners gain a ton from video chats. Why? Because they can see their dialog partner and gain interaction. Video calls like Webex and Zoom aren’t for people that want to see the other side. They are for people to see and interact with their conversation. They want to be seen as much as anything else. Visual learners would get more out of the meeting notes along with some creative skills like Sketchnotes.

Learning Up The Ladder

Make sense so far? Good. Now, as yourself another critical question: who has more video meetings? Is it your team and peers? Or is it managers and executives? Here’s another thing to ponder: Who makes a better manager or executive? Someone who prefers to read or someone that prefers to talk?

I think you’ll find as you explore this idea that most people who are considered “management material” are known as people-oriented. They like to talk. They like to meet and discuss. They feel at their best when there is dialog and discussion. And who do you think feels the most left out in a world where everyone is isolated at home and can’t interact? Also, who has the power and desire to change the way meetings are held?

Managers and executives want to hear from their teams. They want to interact with them. Maybe they’re even fully auditory learners that want to dialog with people and hear them talk about status updates. That all makes sense. But because they’re not getting the interactivity part of the equation from being isolated they need to have the visual component of video chat to figure out what’s going on. I’d wager that the increase in video meetings isn’t among your team or for happy hour. Instead, I’m pretty sure it’s your manager and the executives above them that are in need of that face-to-video screen time with you.

Tom’s Take

I’m on the fence about video meetings. I don’t mind them. I don’t even really mind having a few of them. But I’m really curious as to why existing meetings that weren’t video had to be on video all of the sudden. I get that people are more in tune with interaction and auditory learning styles. I’m still more visual than anything else and the call summaries after meetings are more impactful for me than the video aspect of things. I don’t see the trend changing any time soon though. Which means I’m just going to have to spend more time in my unicorn mask!