Have you noticed that meetings have changed in the past decade? Increasingly meetings occur virtually, via teleconference, on desktop video conferences, and in mixed environments where people meet in a room and “conference in” attendees. The biggest change might be the attention people give during meetings. With mobile phones and portable technologies, people can be physically present in a meeting, yet electronically whisper to others.
When people participate in virtual meetings, it is quite easy to whisper: People simultaneously email, send instant messages, or even put the meeting on mute and make another call. This are also called multicommunicating. But what are people really doing when they send these messages during meetings? Some of my recent work has uncovered five different types of communicative behaviors that occur when people multicommunicate. They:
- seek and receive information for understanding,
- provide encouraging social support to others,
- influence others and build coalitions,
- participate in parallel meetings by using jokes or venting emotions, and
- remain or be available to others.
The results produced a 22-question survey that can help organizations understand what people actually do when they multicommunicate.
People always ask me if meeting multicommunication is good or bad, and quite often that is a loaded question because people have strong opinions of their own. Some people argue that we need to leave all our mobile devices closed during meetings because that will keep attendees focused. Others argue that mobile devices are the actual tools that allow them to attend meetings that they otherwise have to miss. I am truly neutral on the topic. I have observed meetings where all attendees, except the presenter, were typing away on their mobile phones and laptops and not paying any attention. But I have also seen people text others in a meeting, gather information online, and have conversations that allow decisions to be made much more quickly. The answers are not easy and this opens the door for considerably more research in this area.
While there was substantial research on meetings in the 1980s and early 1990s, today we have more meetings than ever before; and concerns about productivity and time have increased. There seem to be new expectations about responsiveness, and with mobile devices, these expectations do not necessarily allow people to unplug and focus. One person explained that her boss expected immediate responses to his emails and her smartphone kept her out of trouble. She has responded to him during large meetings, small meetings, and even during a massage. She admits that texting while trying to relax defeats the purpose of the massage, but it keeps her boss off her back.
I would love to hear what you think about this. Where do you stand? Is multicommunicating allowed in your organization? Do you think it should be? Do you do it yourself? Why?
Dr. Keri Stephens is on faculty at the University of Texas at Austin and has published more than 30 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters. She co-authored a book, Information and Communication Technology in Action: Linking Theory and Narratives of Practice. Her research focuses on technology use in organizations, and, in addition to multicommunicating, she has applied her interest to examine types of multitasking, new employee orientation, social media use in crisis and health communication, classroom use of new technologies, technology use in school shooting emergency response, and communication overload.
To learn more about Dr. Stephens' research, check out these links:
http://blogs.utexas.edu/ks8004
http://commstudies.utexas.edu/faculty/organizational-communication/keri-stephens