i mean ok, if thats the culture at your workplace, thats what it is. However, if you cant see the extra human engagement, social/communication cues, and generally increased feeling of attentiveness and respect that watching a speaker's actual human face brings, vs audio only... then i dont know what more to say.
If you're just some passive listener in a large group call then yeah, whatever. But small groups, 1/1s, etc cameras on is absolutely adding value, even if you personally don't see it.
> However, if you cant see the extra human engagement, social/communication cues, and generally increased feeling of attentiveness and respect that watching a speaker's actual human face brings
I think his concern, along with several others, is that you are seeing a lot of things that aren't there. As I said in another thread, visual cues are a great source of misinterpretation and misunderstanding. Being aware that people can't see you can certainly improve your verbal communication skills.
Our company has offices in several countries, and long before the pandemic it was a given (part of new employee training) to not rely on these cues.
I guess the multi-cultural misunderstanding is an angle I hadn’t considered. However, if you’re not operating in that context (multinational with big cultural/ language differences) I’m not sure why you would pick the lowest common denominator and choose the lower bandwidth, less engaging, less human way of collaborating.
> However, if you’re not operating in that context (multinational with big cultural/ language differences)
If you're operating in the US, it is still multicultural. As a simple example, about 40% of the US is introverted, yet most strongly extroverted people have little understanding of the differences. And they very often misread the facial expressions of introverts.
> I’m not sure why you would pick the lowest common denominator and choose the lower bandwidth, less engaging, less human way of collaborating.
In all these threads, you've failed to understand the low signal to noise ratio that video brings. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but comes with a thousand more falsehoods than words do.
As an example, where I work, meetings are a heck of a lot better than when we used to have them in person at work. The few that insist otherwise are simply unwilling to accept that they have not adapted, and the problems lie with them, and not with the format.
