Why We Still Travel For Business
Photo by Skitterphoto for Pexels
This week I have been travelling on business. “Where are you off to?” a client asked me the morning I was travelling. “Hmm, just visiting a couple of airports” came my flippant reply.
On Thursday at 12.30pm I arrived at the airport for my 1.30pm flight. 5 hours later I arrived at my destination airport. Due to the 3 hour time difference, it was a quick Uber ride to the airport hotel, a light snack and off to bed. On Friday morning, after what seemed like a very short sleep, it was back in an Uber and back to the airport for a 3 hour meeting in the airline business meeting rooms. Later that afternoon, it was a switch of airline terminals, a 2 hour flight delay and finally, the 5 hour journey back home, arriving at 7pm Friday evening. Yes, technically, I’d travelled to another city, but it had really been an 18 and a half hour airport sojourn.
My travel story is not uncommon. It is certainly a journey I have made many times before and I know many others do it often.
I can’t help but wonder why, in 2019, so many of us are still catching planes for short business trips every day. Wasn’t technology — in particular, the easy to access and operate video calling options available today — going to save us all from travelling so much? If so, then why did all the parties in my meeting this week feel that it was a preferable option to meet face to face rather than Zoom in?
Some of the reasons put up in favour of an in-person meeting were definitely what I’d put in the change resistant objection bucket. “We’ve always held this meeting face to face”. “The technology never works properly for these kinds of meetings”. “It’s harder when there’s a group of us dialling in from different places”. “I quite like travelling” (which usually is synonymous with I need to keep my frequent traveller miles up, especially when the company is paying for it).
In my mind, all of these objections can be countered. The technology itself, internet availability and speed, and even our comfort with running multi-attendee meetings virtually have all become non-issues for anyone who is city based. In so many ways, using this technology for meetings has just been a natural extension in business communications from land line phones, to email, mobile phones and now video calls.
The one reason we could all agree on for our travel this week to hold this meeting was a human one. This was to be a long meeting, with a group of people where relationships (and particularly, trust) are fragile, there was the potential for tension and conflict, and it was critical that we reached an agreed outcome from the meeting. As much as we’ve become accustomed to holding meetings using the technology, the potential for miscommunication remains high.
We needed the opportunity for small talk as we made a cup of coffee before the meeting started. We needed to break the ice by sharing our individual travel woes. We needed to be seated around the same table, feeling the vibe of the room. Noticing the finer details of one person’s reaction to a statement made. We needed to be able to spot the quick look between two people at another point in the day. We needed to adjust our tone and our message when we felt the tension rise, even just a little. When decisions were made and outcomes agreed, we needed to have the opportunity to look each and every person in the eye and know that it was the truth and there was real agreement. At the end of it, we needed to eat a quick lunch together and take small steps in relationship building. In essence, we needed to be able to access all of the human elements of a group of people together.
It made me realise that it is always a balancing act as we introduce new ways of working. I absolutely love the freedom and opportunity that technology has provided us in our working lives. In any given week, I am on video calls with people the world over. I have developed strong, trusting relationships with people I have never met in person. There is no doubt we are all learning ways to work with the technology and still have a real, human interaction.
Yet, sometimes it is still necessary to spend 18+ hours of our lives to do business face to face. We need to use our judgement of when these times are truly needed. Whilst you may not feel as though you’ve seen outside of the constrains of an airport terminal, and of course, the plane itself, what you do gain is the opportunity that in-person human connection brings.
Whilst I am bound to spend the next day in a bit of a fog, I have been able to reflect on whether it was worth it. Did we achieve more in this face to face meeting than we could have via Zoom? It’s difficult to know. Invariably some of the details of the meeting could have been exchanged via video call or email, although reaching agreement would take longer in this case. What we did achieve is an ability to see, understand and empathise with the opposite view to our own. Being face to face forced us to remember that we were dealing with fellow humans who, despite their contrary ideas, are acting from an intent of what they believe is best. Just as my colleagues and I are. The technology — even when we can see each other across a video call — keeps us separate from those we are communicating with and it would be much easier to stand firm to our beliefs regardless of the consequences. We may yet to have reached a satisfactory outcome from this whirlwind business trip but I’m convinced we are further forward than if we’d not travelled. Importantly, we have opened the doors to using the technology in future communications to take us closer to agreement.
Next time you are debating the need to hop on a plane for a short meeting, it’s worth spending some time thinking about why you’re travelling. I believe every occasion is unique and there is no standard answer. Instead ask yourself: Can I achieve the same outcome by using the technology available to me? Or is there a need for a human connection that will make the travel worth it?