The Rise of the Zoombies

20 May 2021

The Behavioural Architects, sponsored by Lilly Pharmaceutical, have created a FREE Behavioural Science guide to understanding and combatting the potential issues that can emerge in virtual meetings which lead to sub-optimal outcomes and decision making.

Video team calls are the new norm for many of us, and likely to remain so. There is growing evidence that these meeting platforms can lead to potentially sub-optimal outcomes and decision-making. In particular, when meetings require any sort of collective participation, such as brainstorming, problem-solving, decision-making or team building, the behavioural needs of the meeting become more challenging for these platforms to support.

Our Behavioural Science toolkit aims to help multi-disciplinary teams identify, understand and overcome the behavioural issues that can arise along the behavioural journey of the video meeting.

Some of the potential behavioural issues identified include:

1. The lack of time spent pre-priming participants before meetings

2. The increased difficulty attendees can experience settling in and creating the optimal group flow

3. How the technology can fuel team disconnection on a number of levels: sound is disjointed and has an unnatural flow, video team visuals mean many of the cues that aid effective communication are absent and it is much easier to be open to distractions

4. The medium can make challenging and critical thinking less likely

5. The medium does not favour blue sky innovative thinking

6. The medium tends to favour certain types of work and communication styles - easy for voices not to be heard

7. The power of post-meeting times where ideas can develop; watercooler moments for instance and overnight reflection are gone.

For each potential issue identified, we dissect supporting scientific research and explore behavioural solutions; from the simple more conscious awareness of a potential issue, to direct behavioural interventions to help combat the likelihood of a potential issue arising.

Start optimising how you manage multi-disciplinary meetings today by downloading our FREE toolkit here.

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