How do you turn your video off on zoom?
For whatever reason, you might want to make your camera disappear. In this video, I’m going to share a really easy, basic way to be able to do that. I’m also going to share 2 techniques that you can actually use the video on, video off feature to create more impactful more meaningful more engaging zoom meetings. My job is helping some of the top companies and universities on the planet make virtual engagement and connection easier. In that sometimes there’s an element of tech tutorial.
Let’s pop, teleport me over to a zoom meeting. This is what it looks like. It depends on what device you’re on. But no matter what device you’re on, there is always an option somewhere in this case down right here in the bottom corner, boop. Right there. Stop video. All of a sudden, boom. I get to change into a suit. Then if I want to start my video… That’s it. That’s how you disable your video.
On an iPhone, it might look slightly different. You might need to tap the screen once to find the video off button. But there’s always a turn video off button. Now, you can go and look for and get like a little blinder and try to find a physical way to block your camera. You can get a sticky note and put it over your webcam and that can disable your video in that way. That’s the basic way. The end. If that’s what you came for, you got it.
Two techniques and ideas to use the video on, video off feature
This is to increase engagement in your own virtual and remote meetings collaboration, etc. The phrase that I’m going to give you or the technology or the tool that I’ve created in order to do this is called the termite technique.
The Termite Technique
Very simply, it’s the ability to turn off your video and go into the woodwork like a termite. What I just did in that moment was fall into the background. Now, my audio is still coming through just fine. You could also kind of call this podcast mode. It’s really, really useful for virtual meetings because I find that the best way to avoid awkward silence on zoom is to create productive silence. One of the things that can be really useful is taking silent time while somebody’s looking at you in zoom is not that useful. It’s not that helpful. But when you invite everybody to turn their videos off and essentially go into that podcast mode, it lets go of self-consciousness and you can give people just a minute to digest what you’ve said. Introverts especially will appreciate this idea. Very simply, termite technique. Now, termites can also come out of the woodwork.
One of the ways I’ve used this for a number of big companies who shall remain nameless. But you’ve all probably heard of them and potentially even use their products and services. I’ve been helping a couple companies create virtual recognition events. In person, We show up, we give awards, we invite people on a stage. We like put a little medal around them if they won the Olympics. We hand them a trophy. Some plaque, some sort of thank you. On zoom that just feels so… Using the video off feature, there’s a really cool hidden tool that when you turn video off and you click up in this settings button up here and you click video settings. It opens up all these other advance settings. One of them if you scroll down is hide all non-video participants. This means so if we had 40 people in the call and 30 of them didn’t have their video on, when I click this, they all disappear. Now, it’s just me and myself on the zoom call so you can’t see that happening.
But what it does is create this little fishbowl dynamic where all the people that were on… I guess i’ll just talk to you in this mode here. All the people that were on zoom and on video who turned their videos off fell back into the woodwork. Essentially, the people who had their have their videos on remain on stage. It creates this intimate little dynamic where and even if you’ve got 40 people on a call, it only shows who has their video on. Now, this is an individual setting that everybody needs to individually opt into and create so you might need to coach your group where that setting is in order to do that. But it’s a really useful tool to then give some affirmations and some thank you or create a little panel discussion or a little fishbowl style discussion where 5 people can talk and 30 can listen. But when somebody has something to say they can turn on their video and boom! They join that circle of 5. Really clever way there to create that engagement. Termite technique. That’s number 1.
Framing using a tool
The second thing. I want to share with you is framing and a tool to invite more people to turn on their videos. It stinks when you show up to a meeting and you’re the only one that has your video on where there’s like 2 of you and then 10 other people don’t have their video on. Can you imagine in person if we showed up to a meeting like that. Half the group showed up as is and half the group showed up with paper bags on their head. You would say something in the meeting. You’d be like, “Hey, Jess. Why paper bag? Can we take that off? What’s happening here?” But in zoom it’s become normal. Now there are lots of reasons why people want to turn their videos off. There might be lots of reasons why you want to turn your video off. You may not want to show your space to people. You may not have enough bandwidth and your internet’s slow and so it’s clogging things up. You may have just went on a 5 mile run and you’re not trying to sweat all over everybody. But the point is to increase engagement and connection and effective communication, we have to up the bandwidth.
What I mean by that is when we’re just on a phone call, all non-verbal context is missed. It’s a gift to your group to make it safe enough and set the expectation clear enough that people can and maybe even should have their videos on. Now, sometimes I share that paper bag analogy as like,”Hey it’s really weird. We’re in a meeting just like any other meeting” expectation. But that’s very like you centered as the leader of a meeting. I would invite you to frame that a little bit differently. I’d invite you to frame that in their benefit. If you’re going to do something that’s going to use their video. When everybody has their video on you can get non-verbal feedback. You can say, “Hey, on a scale of 10 out of 10 this meeting is amazing and I’m really loving it to this is terrible, I can’t wait till it’s end. This meeting should have been an email.” Where are you at? You can see that gauge real quick in gallery view on zoom which is a very very useful tool. To be able to respond and react to the group’s needs in that moment. Now, you can’t do that as simply over audio.
Now, I will say even if people are on audio only, you can use this little reaction button. People can give some non-verbal feedback that way and that’s useful to share with people and to kind of codify that in some way too. This might mean like, “Whoa! We need to explode that further and go down that rabbit hole rather than just celebrating.” A handful of tools, a little bit of a smattering.” If you came here only to learn how to press video off in the bottom left corner of your device and you’re still watching this,I hope you learned something that was really useful. Because you came for one thing and you got a few other techniques that hopefully make your virtual meetings suck less. We all are Facing zoom burnout and it’s really useful to build in strategies ideas and tools that help us make connection and engagement easy on zoom.
If you’re interested in that, I share a whole bunch of free resources, tools that you can download for zero dollars and zero cents to help make your virtual meetings come alive a little bit more. Hope you enjoy this. I’m Chad Littlefield. That was awesome spending some pixels with you and I’ll see you next time. Have an awesome day.