Zoom etiquette: Yes, it’s OK to mute your face
Turn off your camera sometimes — it’s fine
Face-muting is ok
Communicating remotelyisn’t new. For ages, we corresponded by mail. Then we added telegraphs, which increased the speed of communication. Then came telephones, which allowed us to communicate beyond cables. Fax, email, instant message—the communication options continued to grow.
We didn’t see each other’s faces, yet business still thrived.
Video calls are great for a lot of things, likescreen sharingand picking up on non-verbal cues. But it doesn’t mean we always have to stare each other in the face. Because, let’s be honest, it’s exhausting.
We all knowit’s ok to mute. But I want to make it clear that it’s just as ok to face-mute—to turn your camera off—especially in certain situations.
When you don’t have your game face on. We’re not camera-ready 100% of the time. While time-shifting to accommodate time zones, I’ve popped into 5 a.m. meetings. I’m not getting up at 4:45 a.m. to get my game face on, and believe me, you don’t want to see my face at that hour.
And there’s one more big one: face-mute whenever you feel like it.
How to encourage people not to face-mute
Yes, it’s ok—and sometimes important—to keep your camera off during a video call. But it’s also nice to see people’s faces sometimes, and the visual aspect of synchronous communication has obvious benefits.
Instead of issuing a hard edict, you can encourage attendees to show their faces by implementing a few strategies.
I concede that meetings are sometimes (I repeat—sometimes!) necessary, but you can decrease the burden of being camera-on all the time. It may not be a full zoom anymore, but see if you can at least turn that plod into an amble.
This article by Michelle S. was first published on the Zapier blog. Find the original posthere.
Story byZapier
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