Feature
In 2021, The Wall Street Journal published an article entitled, “Tech That Aims to Improve Meetings.” In it, technologists, management consultants and academics painted a futuristic vision of how new tools could one day transform how we meet in a hybrid workplace.
We’re now firmly in that future. Yes, meeting technologies include the usual suspects, like smart cameras, automatic note-taking and transcript generators. But newer tools, including many powered by generative AI, aim to track and improve our behaviors through conversation analytics, sentiment analysis and coaching.
Adoption might be at too early a stage to decide whether this is actually working, but leaders might want to keep it on their radar.
Where Is Meeting Tech in 2023?
One sign that meeting tech is changing comes from virtual meeting juggernaut Zoom, which is rolling out tools to improve virtual conversations. The company’s new AI companion touts “feedback on presentation skills” as a capability, which rolled out in early September.
Meanwhile, Microsoft offers a number of ways to improve meeting performance, including its Speaker Coach, first available in PowerPoint and released for Teams in July 2022. The tool offers private assistance in real-time and post-meeting by tracking pitch, pacing, informal speech, euphemisms, use of filler words, inclusive language and more.
Google’s Duet AI tool rolled out in August of this year and seems to focus more on time-saving features like note taking and summarization than performance tracking.
In addition to these additions, plenty of point solutions exist to tackle common problems. EqualTime aims to help companies run “inclusive, equitable and efficient meetings” through features such as real-time feedback, speaking time visualizations, and inclusion scores. Tools such as Fellow and Avoma offer similar coaching tools in addition to productivity features.
Related Article: Video Meetings Are Here to Stay, Despite Return to Office
Meeting Tech in Action
Kate Lister, president of consulting firm Global Workplace Analytics, arrived to our video interview with a third participant –- a meeting assistant from Read AI. Although it was largely forgettable during our discussion, the post-meeting report Lister sent me was revelatory.
In addition to recording the meeting and creating a transcript, the tool also offered a summary, key topics and action items, which were mostly accurate. More notably, a deep dive into the recording offered an overall participant score and individual ratings on sentiment and engagement. Other trackable metrics include charisma, bias and camera and microphone usage, all of which are intended to judge the quality of the meeting.
While not available to me as an attendee, a coaching tab allows users to see where performance could be improved and how to do so, and identifies trends over time.
Despite her own use of the technology, Lister said it has yet to take hold in the workplace, which suggests that our practices haven’t evolved as fast as technology has.
“People are a little leery of new technologies,” she said. “I'm actually finding it difficult to decide which ones to use, so I'm sort of bouncing back from one to the other. What does this do? What does that do? How are they different?”
Related Article: Can AI Nudging Help Keep Workers on Track?
Potential Pitfalls
Despite the promise of these technologies, they still run the risk of turning off employees and organizations who feel their privacy or sensitive data might be compromised. Zoom learned this lesson in August when confusion over its AI data collection policies created an uproar.
Having this technology enabled during meetings may also concern other participants who haven’t consented to it, said Deb Mashek, a social psychologist, business advisor and collaboration expert.
“It might help me, but it can also be really off putting to others because suddenly they're going to be recorded in a way that they didn't have a heads up about,” she said. “You have to think about the way it could undermine the relationships that are ultimately at the core of collaborative meetings.”
Furthermore, Mashek noted that not all meetings are built alike. For example, my interview with Lister tracked me as only speaking for 30% of the time, which might be low for a collaborative meeting, but makes sense in a journalistic interview.
Use of these technologies might also toe the line between personal improvement and employee surveillance.
“This idea that somehow there's a metric on you and that you're falling short of expectations if you're not contributing equally could be dangerous,” Mashek said, adding that feeling surveilled may also impact behaviors in unintended and unwanted ways.
Lister said she was reminded of Microsoft 365’s Productivity Score feature, which debuted to criticism from employees that it allowed managers to see individual data without giving employees access to that same information (the feature is now available as part of Microsoft Viva with more of a focus on self-improvement).
“I think what we'll find is that when people start to see that there's something in it for them, then they’ll use it,” Lister said. “A lot of what we've worked with so far hasn't done that. It's perceived to be used as something punitive or invasive.”
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Related Article: Is Responsible Employee Surveillance Possible?
Avoiding a Surveillance Culture
Establishing the “What’s In It For Me” when introducing these kinds of meeting analysis and coaching tools can help dispel skepticism, but you need to have a culture of trust to do so.
“When there's trust in a company and you're launching something new, people feel like you’re doing something for them,” Lister said. “ When there's no trust, people feel like you’re doing something to them.”
Transparency is also important, she noted, so companies should establish norms as to when and how employees and managers will and should use these tools.
Mashek echoed the idea of transparency, and noted that leaders looking to introduce these tools should come at it with a mindset of curiosity, trying them out in a limited, risk-free way in smaller meetings.
Lister said she sees real possibility in these tools. “Some of these tools can make us much, much more aware of how we’re acting, and even the playing field for people that are too shy to speak up, don't feel like they have anything to say,” she said.
According to Mashek, their success depends on us.
“We can't necessarily rely on it to change our personalities,” Mashek said. “It's feedback, but making use of feedback is its own interpersonal process. Being able to change behaviors like that takes real effort.”
