Web conferencing, video conferencing or F2F meeting?

A few months ago, European cities were completely cut off from air travel by a spew of volcanic ash from an eruption in Iceland. As air travel came to a halt, a lot of business travels woke up to the importance of video conferencing solutions like the one offered by RHUB.

Unlike the usual telephone call or email, video conferencing is almost equal to talking face to face with an individual, with the slight difference being that the participants are not sitting next to each other and talking. Video conferencing solutions vary from each other in the degree of service, and not in their nature.

A lot of research has been conducted on the efficiency of video conferencing, and many of the studies conducted argue that video conferencing causes the minds to process information differently than they would during face to face meetings. An example of such case studies is the one done by Stephanie Watts and Carlos Ferran in ‘Management Science’ on September 2008.

Researchers on this subject feel that people who use the RHUB web conferencing appliance or any other video conferencing service end up using more of their cognitive abilities than those people who communicate face to face. This is because a greater cognitive load would be used for functions such as identification of the speaker, detection of movement, coordination of eye contact, conversation pacing and turn taking.

Moreover, cognitive attention would be greater because the participants of a video conference would be more self-aware. With a bigger cognitive load, the mind would cut back on its ability to evaluate the information being shared by the other participant. This may be done with heuristics, like the perception of that participant. As a result, the decision on whether to accept or adopt information would be made less on the quality of arguments being shared by the participant.

The study conducted by Watts and Ferran resulted in the report that talked about the difference between video conferencing and face to face communication. This field study was done on medical professionals, and it was found during the study that participants who attended a video seminar were influenced more by the speaker’s likeability and less by the quality of arguments presented by the speaker. In the case of a real conference attended in person, the opposite pattern was found. Even in this study, the researchers agreed that the difference in pattern was due to differences in the cognitive load of the participants.

As a result of these findings, the authors of the study argued that video conferencing is not simply a replacement for face to face meetings. These video conferencing solutions also change the way people attend and participate in meetings. Participants end up using less of their ability to systematically and rigorously analyze the arguments and information presented by the other party during a video conference. However, it must be noted here that Watts and Ferran’s study was based on video conferences where participants did not know each other before.

What does this study mean for business leaders? Likeable leaders who find it difficult to put forth a strong argument in favor of a proposal should use video conferencing services like that of RHUB instead of meeting with participants face to face. If required, a leader may also hire a likeable person for the purpose of presenting proposals or presentations through video conferences.

Additionally, if a virtual team participates in web based meeting and the leader has to make the team process information more systematic, he/she can reduce the cognitive load caused by video conferencing. This is possible by training the team properly about how to participate in video conferencing.

Some good video conferencing services like RHUB provide this training. In addition, participants can also be allowed to practice video conferencing with each other so that they become familiar with the way everyone performs in a video conference.

One more thing that virtual leaders can do to lower the cognitive load on participants is to make it easier for participants to concentrate on the logical and data-centric parts of the meeting. This can be done by opening another window along with the video of the presenter, where a slide show or a systematic list of arguments can be laid out.

So, you can see that video conferencing solutions like the one offered by RHUB 6-in-1 web conferencing and remote support appliance may not be comparable to face to face meetings, since video conference changes the way in which information is processed. As a result, it may not be possible to make video conferencing the same as face to face meetings just by improving the video streaming quality. However, service providers such as RHUB can help you reduce the cognitive burden on the participants of video conferences, and make your online meetings more effective.