Face-to-face mode v Conference call mode

People on a conference call behave differently to those on who are face-to-face in a meeting room. We all know this to be true.

• We are more likely to interrupt someone who we can look at.
• We are more likely to have side conversations in Instant Messaging when we are on a conference call. It’s rude to do it in a face-to-face meeting.
• We are more forgiving of people losing attention in a conference call. No I don’t know why, but we are.
• We are more likely to make decisions in a face-to-face meeting.

But what about the situation where there is a mix, which behaviour dominates.

I’m speculating here about where the line is, I think the line probably moves depending on the personalities. What I’m not speculating about is that there is a line, there is a point where the practices change from one mode to the other.

Where the flip gets interesting is that the flip from “conference call mode” to “face-to-face mode” is an exclusive one. “Conference call mode” includes everyone, “face-to-face mode” excludes people on the phone. You have to be a very strong character to dominate a face-to-face meeting if you are on the phone. Even if you are able to dominate, you actually remove some of the value from the face-to-face members of the meeting. All of the people who are face-to-face will have to work the way a conference call works. If you are face-to-face and working in “conference call mode”, what’s the point of being face-to-face?

I’ve witnessed these effects a few times. On one occasion I had to give a regular briefing to a large team. Half the team were in the same location I was, the other half were on the phone. I used to have to close my eyes to make sure that I wasn’t communicating by gesture to those people around me and excluding the people on the phone.

On another occasion I was in a face-to-face meeting and there was only one person on the phone. This meeting had a few sessions. It the start of each session we would acknowledge the existence of the person on the phone and then completely ignore them for the next hour.

I suppose that what I am saying is this:

• If some of the people in the meeting are going to be on the phone, and they are going to be included, there is little point in the rest of the people meeting face-to-face.
• If there is only going to be one person on the phone, they may as well not bother, they aren’t going to add any value.
• Face-to-face mode will win, it’s a very powerful force.

I’ve drawn the line as progressively changing, and I’m not sure that is correct. I think it may just be a straight flip – “conference call mode” to “face-to-face mode”. I’m not sure what the middle ground looks like. I certainly don’t think that it’s the best of both worlds, it’s more likely to be the lowest common denominator. It’s probably going to be very frustrating for the people meeting face-to-face. When it comes to the time for making decisions, for instance, the people meeting face-to-face will be able to make an agreement between themselves far more easily than the people on the conference call.

I’d prefer it that we didn’t call both of these things “meetings” because they are different types of event. I’d also like there to be more research on behaviours in the two modes and training for people. We train people as meeting facilitators, so why not train people to be conference call members?