As workplaces across the country have gone virtual, people are feeling the strain of wading through endless video meetings and email chains. Maybe the connection is glitchy, your colleague doesn’t understand the power of the mute button, or you’re caught in a “reply all” rabbit hole. But even when the tech and etiquette are operating perfectly, there’s a much more fundamental problem at play: Humans simply weren’t designed for a 15-person Zoom meeting.
There’s a basic tenet among those of us who study management that big teams are bad teams. Effective communication and coordination begin to break down in groups larger than five. This has always been true, it’s simply more obvious in the virtual world because the non-verbal cues that help us slide by in large face-to-face meetings have been snatched away.
You can make your organization’s virtual communication less painful by understanding and working within our human cognitive limits. This requires being disciplined about who is included in every meeting and team, implementing clear leadership roles, and having explicit guidelines for how communication should operate in the virtual world…
Read the full article at Business Insider.
This article was produced by Footnote in partnership with Michigan State University’s Broad College of Business.
