Facing the camera – have you got your Zoom face on?

Get your zoom face on!

From our Managing Director, Andi Catt

I thought it would be good to talk about communicating over virtual meeting platforms.

Unlike face2face meetings where there are well-established norms for how we should behave, people who are not used to using Zoom or Teams or Skype may not feel comfortable. And the reality is that many people sit expressionlessly as if their screen is frozen, and you may find yourself faced with 5, 10 or 20 people that look like this. It is off-putting at best and can undermine your confidence if you are presenting or leading the meeting.

So to keep things in context, it’s good to remember that individuals have different communication styles and different ways of responding to comms and that these styles can be amplified by the stress of participating in virtual meetings.

Visual Communicators

These are the people who learn and listen from what they can see and what they are looking at. This is often reflected in their animated body language. They will shake their heads in agreement or disagreement, wave hi to others, use emojis, and are likely to have interesting virtual backgrounds and good lighting. They will be watching you, looking closely at your screenshare and paying attention to other people in the call too.

Kinesthetic Communicators

These are people who always like to immerse themselves in the feeling of what is being said. They will be relaxed, wearing comfortable clothing, leaning back and taking it all in. When you ask them a question it will take time for them to answer because they can be so immersed in what is being talked about. They will be careful to consider their thoughts on the matter and how they feel before responding.

Auditory Communicators

Auditory Communicators rely heavily on what they hear. They are busy listening to what is being said and may not even be looking at the camera at all.  They don't need to see the message if they are hearing it. They often don't take notes. They may not necessarily want their camera on - thinking why would you want to see them if they don’t need to see you? So long as they can hear what is going on they will be involved.

Digital communicators

The most logical of the communicators, the auditory digital communicators like to think and make sense of what you are telling them. They will focus on process, clear steps and sequence of events. It can look as if they are giving you nothing but that is because they are processing what is being said and the information they are being given. It's the same as in face2face meetings. Like kinesthetic communicators they pause before answering, often to collect their thoughts and think through their answer fully before replying.

Managing all four communication styles in a meeting

What is interesting is delays on phone or conferencing systems shape our views of people negatively: even delays of 1-2 seconds can make people perceive the responder as less friendly or less focused.

If you can understand a little about the different ways people are taking in information, this should make video calls less stressful for you, and allow you to focus on delivering your message confidently.

When you are preparing for a video call, even more than for a face2face meeting, it is good to consider all communication styles and ensure that the attendees can see, hear, feel and make sense of what you are communicating. So if you have some visuals, have them ready to share on screen. If there is a document which relates to the subject matter, have it available to share. Whilst you obviously need to avoid ‘Death by PowerPoint’, if the call is important, it’s worthwhile investing a bit of extra time ahead of the meeting to put together a presentation that includes visuals, facts, flow charts and sharing that on screen while you talk through it. And, of course, share the presentation with the team afterwards.

Another tactic is to use a free version of an app like Loom, which allows you to record a video from your desktop, which can include your face or your screen or both. Build your presentation with facts, visuals, flow charts etc and then talk through it, recording as you go. You can listen back and re-record if you are not happy. Then you can run the video in the meeting for your team and share the whole recording with the team afterwards – so they can refer back to not only the PowerPoint but the video recording. This level of preparation is time-consuming but for crucial issues it does help to ensure that all participants are fully engaged.