In an online meeting, where do you direct your eyes?

The title above is the first question posed to the guest on this episode of the JofA podcast. Byron Patrick, CPA/CITP, CGMA, vice president—Client Success at the B3 Method Institute, is a repeat guest on the show, and he’s spoken previously about best practices for virtual meetings.

The conversation topic was spurred by an article covering recent research about how our brains perceive interaction differently in virtual meetings than in-person meetings.

The first time Patrick appeared on the JofA podcast, in 2019, he discussed effective email rules.

Over the years, he’s shared PowerPoint rules to live by and advice for virtual meetings.

What you’ll learn from this episode:

• Why trying to look someone in the eye is difficult in virtual meetings.
• Patrick’s recall of memorable meeting gaffes.
• How headphones can be useful in online meetings.
• A cameo appearance from Patrick’s dog, Trinity.
• Why Patrick says that 10 minutes of consideration can make meeting attendees more effective and presentable.

Play the episode below or read the edited transcript:

To comment on this episode or to suggest an idea for another episode, contact Neil Amato at Neil.Amato@aicpa-cima.com.

Transcript

Neil Amato: Hey, listeners. Welcome back to the Journal of Accountancy podcast. This is Neil Amato. Glad to have you joining us for another episode. I’m also glad to say that our guest for this episode is a longtime friend of the program. Byron Patrick is his name. Byron, welcome back to the JofA podcast.

Byron Patrick: Thanks so much, Neil. I’m glad you didn’t say old friend of the podcast. I much prefer longtime friend.

Amato: Exactly. I chose my words carefully on that. We are glad to have you back. We won’t count how many years it’s been since maybe your first appearance. That’s for another conversation. But if you, the listener, are a longtime, dedicated listener, then you probably know Byron’s name. For those who don’t know him, he is a CPA. He is VP of client success at the B3 Method Institute.

Today we’re going to talk about a topic that certainly affects accountants, but also really anyone who has ever joined a virtual meeting. Byron, I’m going to ask you this question to start: When you are on a meeting that’s conducted online, where do you direct your eyes?

Patrick: That shouldn’t be such a complicated question, should it? But it really is. Honestly, I try to stare right at the camera to try to create a sense of making eye contact with the other participants. That being said, I have three monitors. Some of those monitors may or may not at times have other things on them that might catch my attention. I might be looking at an agenda, which means my eyes are going off at a different corner. I do try to have that eye contact feeling. I might actually be trying to look at you — which who knows what monitor your face may be on at this point in time. It is an ever-changing decision of where my eyes are going.

Amato: Because if you do “look the person in the eye,” you’re not actually able to truly see all their facial expressions because truly you’re staring, at least in my case, at a camera that’s slightly above your face, right? It’s tough.

Patrick: It is tough. In fact, the way I have my monitors set up, there’s a camera right in the middle. Sometimes I will try to put my video of you, for example, as close to that middle as possible. But it’s always off to a little bit left or right. It’s honestly very difficult to get any sense of real eye contact in a Zoom or Teams-style meeting.

Amato: Before we get into the current environment of Zoom, Teams, Google Meet, GoToMeeting — any of those products out there — I’m wondering: Do you have any early memories or horror stories of Skype video chats gone wrong when everyone was just getting into these things?

Patrick: Oh, do I, definitely. There has been more than one occasion where I’ve been on meetings where an attendee did not realize their camera was on, and I won’t say they were revealing in any inappropriate way, but they definitely might’ve been cleaning their nose out or doing some other thing on camera that probably they would not have done had they realized there was a camera right in their face. There’s definitely those.

I can also recall another meeting where somebody joined from their phone on a video meeting, and they laid their phone down on their bed while they were holding their laundry during this business meeting. We got their amazing insights and their boxers all in view.

Amato: That’s good. There was something I was going to say about that. I lost my train of thought on it. Do you think it matters any, the level of rapport you’re have you have with a person, how you treat that video call? If it’s someone new, are you more nervous than say, someone you regularly meet with in that format?

Patrick: That’s interesting. I think there is certainly a difference. Especially when you think about, you get used to seeing certain people, certain ways, whether their camera maybe is mostly focused on their forehead or whether or not their camera is at a strange angle. You get used to that person might look like they’re looking far away from me, but it just happens to be their setup.

When you first have a meeting with somebody new, you don’t really have a sense of their setup or their environment. You spend some time on that meeting, at least I do, trying to evaluate what is going on in that scene. Is their camera just in a strange spot? Is their microphone in a strange spot? Or are they really just watching Netflix while I’m talking? There’s a lot of trying to evaluate the level of engagement on the other side of that meeting, given all of the environmental factors that could be impacting it.

Amato: I remembered now what I was going to say. It was recall of a meeting. It wasn’t actually a video call, but it was a group conference call. One person was clearly walking and perhaps speed walking, perhaps even jogging on a treadmill during the meeting. You just got that clomp, clomp, clomp, clomp the whole time. They insisted on talking a lot.

If they had muted themselves and just listened, that’s probably OK. But they would start talking and suddenly it was, my gosh, here’s this clomp, clomp, clomp, clomp. We forget, I guess that was an old meeting etiquette thing. It’s one thing to mute yourself, but it’s also, you need to be cognizant of the noise that’s going on around you.

Patrick: No doubt. Actually, you did remind me of a brief conversation I had with my daughter just this week. She works for a civil engineering firm, and they were going over their annual benefits meeting where they’re sharing all of their health insurance benefits. Somebody apparently was not on mute and made the comment to somebody else in the room, in the physical room: “This benefits stuff is just incredibly boring and I don’t understand it.” It just came through the whole meeting. My daughter said she was so embarrassed for the person who said that knowingly to the whole company.

Amato: Obviously, if that meeting was to a group of people in person, that comment never comes out of that person’s mouth. But virtual meetings in this era of dispersed work, they are necessities. I guess as we’re thinking, there’s no substitute for the in-person — Hey, let’s get together and have a couple of slices of pizza or a cup of coffee or whatever — but if you can’t always do that, what are, I don’t know, maybe some thoughts on how to make the best of those virtual meetings that we’re doing?

Patrick: Absolutely. One of the things, this is probably the No. 1 recommendation I have consistently for other people is: Please wear headphones. People don’t realize the value of having headphones in during a meeting, and it’s not just so that you can better hear the other participants, but the way that noise canceling works in these meetings is if I am talking to you and I’m not using headphones, my speakers have to know not to play the sound back in order to avoid echo.

What happens, and I’m sure you see it probably daily – I do – is people don’t wear headphones and they’ll start talking and somebody will try to maybe interject or interrupt. Or there will be some really awkward collision, where people start talking at the same time and don’t even know that the other person is talking. Nine times out of 10, it’s because they don’t have ear buds in.

When you wear earbuds, that noise-canceling magic doesn’t need to happen because the sounds are isolated to the ear buds. I can still hear when you begin to talk, even if I am talking simultaneously. I think that’s one of the biggest efficiency gains you can get in a meeting is if everybody’s wearing headphones.

Amato: That’s great. I didn’t think about that for a group meeting, but it does make sense. I certainly do it for sound quality on podcasts and my own level of distraction on podcasts. But that’s a good point.

I’m going to go back, though, and be old school, I guess, as it relates to a two-person meeting or maybe a two- or three-person meeting. Given that we don’t really know where I should be, we haven’t even talked about the potential for distracting background screens or anything. But if you truly have a rapport with someone, would going without video and just talking like a phone call, but with the ability to share a screen and chat, be a better option?

Patrick: I mean …

(Dog barks.)

Amato: On cue. … We’re leaving that in!

Patrick: That’s Trinity’s opinion on the situation. Let’s see. I can tell you that some of the tools, for example, Slack, Discord, I think even Teams have created these voice channels for exactly what you’re discussing. If you just want to have a quick, casual conversation, maybe do a screen share with somebody, a colleague that you work with regularly, that is certainly an option.

I’ve done a bunch of that. I have to say, though, I do appreciate being able to see the face of friends. I work from home. I’m in my basement. There’s one other human being in this house. I do appreciate, even if it is a two-dimensional human interaction, where I get to see other people, there is something to that.

My preference is still to have that video, even if I just put it in the corner just so I can see you and get that smile every once in a while when you crack a joke. The informal voice channel, I think, is perfectly fine if you’re just trying to get something done and you have no real need to see each other.

Amato: You’re right. It is good to see people’s smiles when there is something funny. It’s way better than just being audio only. One of the things I want to go back to is the article, I guess, that spurred this idea, was one I found on a site called ScienceAlert. I shared it with Byron. It detailed some research by Yale University.

It went into, of course, sciencey things — brain activity, pupil dilation, all that stuff. But what I got from it overall is that we’re more engaged in an in-person meeting than a virtual meeting, and so there really is no substitute. Maybe you have other takeaways based on that, but that’s what I wanted to throw out.

Patrick: I thought the article was fascinating, and what fascinated me about it is we’ve had these conversations for so many years now about the distinction between in-person and virtual. A lot of it has just been this thing that we couldn’t define that made in-person better than virtual.

We knew there was something about it. We didn’t know if it was the fact that we can hug each other when we were there and get some sort of human connection. But that article really diagnosed some of the, as you said, the science, the chemistry that occurs when we are actually in a three-dimensional, face-to-face environment.

It actually had me recall a recent podcast I listened to where the participants were having a virtual meeting using Meta’s new 3D – this is inaccessible to us normal human beings – but it’s in Meta’s labs, and the participants were actually able to experience what seemed like an in-person meeting, even though they were on opposite sides of the country, using this 3D virtual reality.

Reading that article and hearing the science of it, remembering what the host of that podcast kept talking about, how it just felt so real and he couldn’t believe just how the facial expressions were so different in that virtual reality. It just really brought the science to life to me as I thought about it.

I’m excited about the idea. It’s a ways down the road, I think, because of the amount of technology it takes to accomplish something like that. But I think it’s cool to think about the fact that that could be in our future.

Amato: It is, because it’s not going to change that you might have a colleague five states away. But if your level of interaction and engagement with that colleague can change in the future, then all the better. Anything else you’d like to say on this topic?

Patrick: I would say the last thing is, we know it’s not great, but I do personally try to do my best to make it effective. I think there’s a lot of people who don’t necessarily put the effort into having a decent microphone, a camera that’s at least positioned as close to face level as possible.

I would just ask everybody out there to spend 10 minutes thinking about their setup and think about it in a way where you can make these types of virtual meetings as effective as possible and as presentable as possible for everybody.

Amato: That’s great. Byron Patrick, thanks very much.

Patrick: Thanks, Neil. Appreciate it.