The intricacies of our human design… or simply put, why virtual meetings cannot replace face-to-face meetings
As an investor relations professional our responsibility lies in managing communication between the company and its investors. Even when working remotely, or while on business trips, this has always been a part of our jobs. Communication is an essential key in delivering the message, of course. Throughout 2020, we not only have seen a tremendous update to the video conferencing platforms, but we also decided to do everything over video calls (VC), to stay in close contact. So, we are fed up with being cooped up at home, feeling an inner weariness, helpless and sad, maybe even worried, frustrated and easier irritated than usual… welcome to the pandemic fatigue.
While at the beginning you were watching your diet and your fitness routine, now a year later you may eat or sleep more and you are still tired, you have trouble focusing and feel edgy and you really lack motivation. Guess what, if you let that continue, then it may turn into depression and anxiety and you may be one of many to experience burnout-the pandemic burnout. Interesting huh? As if that is not enough, videoconferencing also causes a different kind of fatigue… So, the brain fog, or rather the inability to concentrate or stay focused is because your brain is overworked… Now, video conferencing is causing for the brain to work harder, which is why we are so tired after calls now.
Look at it this way, communication is taught to be a two-way street. You have a listener and a speaker. Obviously, the listener must be an active listener, while the speaker has to pay attention to what is said and how it is said. At some point we have also learned that communication is 10% words and 90% body language… While this bridge between two parties is created there are a few things that happen in the background, we are unaware of.
What is the background process… When we talk, we emote certain cues pertaining to what we are saying and how we are thinking about them internally. If we don’t believe in the story, then we reflect this in how we are saying it. This in turn, lets the listener know, how we feel about the topic. So, our head is slightly nudged in disagreement, we pause because of a slight confusion or distraction or we may grasp for air, as we want to interrupt. The brain picks up on these cues. We may not be actively reading people’s faces, but when in communication we may sense their emotions, social cues and the ambience. Our intuition may even tell us how our communication partner feels about what is being talked about. Trust me, in pretty much all of my meetings I tune into whether the person is following along, whether I need to repeat or wait a few seconds before proceeding… Hence, the contact I have while being in the same room with the investor or analyst basically gives me the opportunity to guide the meeting according to the listener’s needs.
As it turns out… There is a few things, that we humans use without realizing. The concept of the social brain, which mentalizes and mirrors emotions helps with the social interaction we have with other people. Further, there is the emotional contagion aspect, which basically lets us copy feelings. Another biggie is the cost - rewards pathway. Every little decision we make is in accordance with maximizing the reward. So there is a lot of things that happen when we meet face-to-face, which we miss out on in a two dimensional world, where we cannot react to social cues.
Looking into that little black box the brain basically has to work harder. It has to fill in the gaps when the video continuously breaks up and half of the conversation gets lost. On top of that, it sees little boxes of multiple heads, including itself. So, instead of concentrating on one person and its clues, it sees a multitude of heads without being able to decipher or decode them. Further, you see yourself and when realizing how we look like on camera, we start fidgeting, we start striking poses and we are more inclined “to look good on camera”, so we lose focus on what is being sad.
As it turns out our social brain plays an important role in the emotional contagion part of human interaction. Accordingly, “Italian neuroscientist Giacomo Rizzolatti (and colleagues) developed the idea of “mirror neurons”—when you see a person take some action, your brain fires up the neurons associated with the same action. When your conversation partner smiles, a part of your brain smiles too.”[1] So, if I want to share my company’s story I can simply do that over the phone or on VC, yet if I want to share my excitement, I should convey the message face-to-face, as this would carry over my excitement to the listener(s) as well. This simply tells us that we humans are wired to communicate person to person and that our brains need this to attune itself and create positive connections.
As investor relations professionals we need to read the room, whether you are in it with just one person or with several managers. How else can you tell how the meeting is going? And if you have, like I had in this past year, several investment professionals who have just left off their camera, then you have no idea whether they are listening to you, whether they are writing emails, how involved they are with your story. Obviously, months later when you meet again, you can tell how well the information has stuck. But then again, it is in our business’s nature to repeat. Yet, if you never intended on opening your camera, then why send out a VC invite and not just simply do a call? It definitely would be worth much more… especially since you can walk around and focus better on the conversation. Trust me, I get extreme brain drain after talking on VC, especially because I am good at reading the room. In real life settings, I know when to pause longer, just so the things I said get settled and may spur additional questions, I know when to repeat or let go of the topic as well. But virtually, when you do have people with their cameras on; you see them fidgeting (because they are on camera, and just realized how they look like), they constantly move their camera, mute themselves often and typically the audio quality fluctuates. On top of everything else, you will never get eye to eye contact, which is needed in building up trust. I would have look into the camera directly, just so that the person listening in can build up the trust necessary, but my timing in receiving an acknowledging answer to this will be off. Hence, the communication is getting limited to portraying just what is being said, but you have no idea, whether the fund manager gets you, whether your analyst understood the importance of the topic to you.
In Conclusion…While I do believe that VCs are an important part of the future and our job, and while I am sure that relations won’t be kept virtual like this, I do believe that for simple announcements and getting messages across it is a valuable tool, but it cannot be a future for the IR professional and the financial community. Which is why VC can only be a limited part of our lives.
[1] https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/the-science-of-when-you-need-in-person-communication.html
Müge Yücel is the head of IR at Doğuş Otomotiv, the auto importer and distributor for VW Group brands in Turkey. She is experienced in governance, risk and compliance, skilled in crisis communication and shareholder engagement & outreach. Further, Yücel has been quite actively sharing her experiences in various panels and workshops across Europe and she is a member of the Board at the Turkish IR Society. She also collects impressions from her extensive travels and shares these on social platforms. According to Institutional Investor's "2019 Emerging EMEA Executive Team", Yücel was awarded with 2nd Best IR professional Title in the automotive industry.