Gen Z Video Hesitation

I've done a fair bit of Onboarding work these past few years. Specifically of the variety where there's been a drive to instil certain themes, mindsets and behaviours around a salesteam's video calling.

My general thrust is to ensure your video meetings are better than your competitors, prospects look forward to, enjoy and remember with relish, and you (and client) get what you want from them.

There's one cohort of workers that seems to be getting flack for being either video-shy or worse, video refuseniks. Generation Z - those born roughly between '97 and 2012 - issues include (from longform broadsheet piece I just read bemoaning their thinking) “that everything should just be done via email or text”. Not even by picking up the phone. So you can imagine their enthusiasm for video meetings.

Indeed, it seems 'many' feel such are for attending only with your webcam turned off.

The rap sheet has many entries.

Being sold the glamour of WFA. Social media suffocation placing text over voice. Async supplanting realtime. Unreliability baked in. Bigger picture lost. Negative language bias. Informality can suggest unprofessionalism. Unrealistic ambition. Unfounded entitlement.

Blimey. Yet I have encountered Gen Zedders. Admittedly only a handful. Hardly surprising given that today their eldest in the workplace would be max, 27. An age at which only a small slice of solution sellers have embarked on the Enterprise Sales journey.

Yes, there's the attitude issue. But I think the media misleads. As with any generation, there are those who want to lap up new ways of doing things. Keen to build on what they've taken on from previous roles, education or training.

With those in Sales, you do sense get up and go. So video reticence isn't expected. But a degree of daunting mystique removal helps.

You're not expected to stare at your screen throughout. You can have a relatively blank wall behind you. You needn't sit gun barrel straight to your webcam.

You can make notes. You can hold up drawings on a scrap of paper to the screen. You can motion with your hands.

Ask questions. Seek preferences. Confirm decisions.

I recalled once with such intake, I used a line dropped on me when I was a cubrep, by one of my then firm's tech heads.

"When you're in a meeting, say something."

Meaning contribute, gently challenge, make collaboration happen.

Sometimes all that's needed is to inspire a bit of confidence.