I was co-presenting a workshop this week about wellbeing and healthy performance at work, and one of the topics we covered was toxic behaviours.
When the delegates were asked for examples of toxic behaviours, one in particular stood out for me: abuse of the ‘mute all’ function on Zoom.
At a time where, more than ever, organisations need to be leveraging all of their people’s talents and creativity, and hearing all of their ideas and perspectives, even if they go against the grain, the decision to deploy the ‘mute all’ function in a Zoom meeting could be perceived as toxic.
And yes, I get that there are times where this is necessary, for example to ensure someone’s barking dog in the background isn’t drowning out a speaker’s important messaging.
But if the ‘mute all’ function is being abused, for example used as a way to silence people so that they can’t voice dissent, or to stifle debate, or as a way to protect the meeting chair’s opinion, then this is toxic behaviour.
It’s the equivalent of having everyone in a room, face to face, but sticking tape over their mouths so they can’t speak.
Would you do that? Or put up with that being done to you?
It got me thinking about some larger Zoom meetings I’ve been in in the past, where everyone was muted except certain senior speakers, there was no ‘chat’ facility, and any questions had to be submitted through Slido (which limits how many characters you can use in your question, which makes giving context to your question a little harder).
But that also meant that the speakers could be selective about which questions they answered, and which they ignored.
It often left me feeling somewhat disengaged and with a tinge of skepticism.
And I wasn’t alone.
So a better, more inclusive, practice, if you’re still holding a lot of meetings on Zoom (or Teams etc), is to make a clear request to all participants to mute themselves while others are speaking, but to leave everyone with the option to unmute themselves if they have something to say.
Which doesn’t mean free rein on disrespect – because that would also be toxic.
And of course, if the freedom to speak up is there, be prepared to use it when it counts. Even if it feels uncomfortable.
If you’re sharing ideas, concerns or complaints after the meeting with one or two people it means you’ve deprived the whole team of hearing what you had to say.
And deprived them of building on it.
Who knows what great idea or way forward could have been co-created?
We all have a voice.
Let’s use it together.
