(Part 4) Your Virtual Stage Presence with Roz Usheroff: How To Make Your Virtual Meetings Visually Entertaining

How many of you would bet that your audience will be multi-tasking as you host your typical Monday virtual meeting? Grabbing and holding their attention is not an easy task, but it can be done and, as usual, I have my perspectives.

To lead a successful virtual meeting, add facilitator to your role. You then become responsible for setting the stage by engaging them with thought provoking questions and entertaining them with visuals that capture and hold their attention. Sadly, virtual meetings can often appear to be a disorganized assortment of unprocessed ideas, boring delivery and overstuffed slides that leave participants frustrated and feeling that nothing much was accomplished.

If you invest your time and talent to capture your participants’ attention, you’ll brand your meetings as productive and entertaining. This eletter will provide you with visual tips to assist you.

Make your visuals as important as your agenda

Put yourself in the shoes of your participants. Will they understand your perspectives? Will they see the logical progression that must come together to achieve your desired outcome? Will they enjoy the delivery as much as the content? If the information is critical to seeking consensus or a decision, ask yourself if your visuals paint the picture you want to paint?

Studies by 3M/Wharton School demonstrated the positive effects of using visuals in presentations and witnessed improved group consensus by 79 percent. Another study determined that audiences retain 10 percent of audio heard and 20 percent of visuals seen, but retain 65 percent when audio and visuals are combined. If you really want to excel as a virtual presenter, your visuals must be purposeful and memorable.

Death by PowerPoint

PowerPoint does provide a visual element to what would often otherwise just be a conference call.
But one of the biggest mistake presenters make is to view their PowerPoint deck as their presentation. A successful virtual presenter knows PowerPoint is simply a vehicle for varied and creative visual images that support a powerful and well-constructed message.

The PowerPoint experts will tell you to plan one to two slides per minute and approximately six lines with six words per line. I suggest using photos, video, YouTube clips and even animations liberally along with 10 words or less per slide.

Three things you must never say during your virtual PowerPoint presentation:

• “I have a lot of slides here, so I am going to move through them quickly.”
• “I know this slide is a little hard to read.”
• “This chart is really too complicated to explain.”

It’s not your audience’s job to blink through too many slides. As a presenter, it’s your job to hone your presentation until every slide is clear, creative and absolutely necessary.

Four things you must never do while making a virtual PowerPoint presentation:

• Never read your slides. It sounds obvious, but this can insult your virtual colleagues.
• Never write your entire presentation in bullet points on a series of slides. This is called “Death by PowerPoint” because that’s what it feels like to your audience.
• Never present more than one idea per slide. Your audience will finish reading your third point before your first one leaves your lips; then good luck getting their attention to make a U turn.
• Never recycle a slide deck from another presentation just because it already exists.  If you start flipping through and skipping less-relevant slides, you are showing your audience they are not important enough to merit creating a presentation specific to them and their needs.

Interactive and personal

We have discussed in previous newsletters the challenge of engaging the virtual audience and making your presentation personally relevant to them. This is where PowerPoint can actually be your pal.

Let’s say you are planning a presentation to an international team, many of whom may not have met in person. You might solicit photos or trivia from your participants in advance that you could work into your PowerPoint slides. I did this recently in Mexico City and the participants were so appreciative.

Tips for a successful virtual PowerPoint presentation:

• Create at least one slide that calls your audience to action. For example, a simple quiz that asks them to write something down or choose between options or vote for their favorite idea. If you get them to pick up a pen or click on a polling question, they are engaged.
• Count your slide; count your minutes. Practice your presentation out loud and time it. Plan to take at least five minutes less than your allotted time.
• Think white space. When creating your slides, go long on photos, evocative quotes and symbolic images and short on words. A slide should be aesthetically attractive, simple and easy to digest. It should never be cluttered, crowded, or cause your audience to squint.
• Use simple charts and graphs. Each should illustrate a single point. If it takes you two minutes to explain a graphic, it’s a bad graphic. Toss it and start over.
• Use photos liberally. The cliché is correct: a picture is worth 1,000 words, especially to the substantial portion of your audience who are visual learners. A memorable photo appropriately paired with a core message will anchor that message in their brains.
•  Consider creating separate handouts that you can email your participants after your presentation to fill in details that are not fleshed out in your slides.

Remember, your PowerPoint is NOT your presentation. It is an entertaining visual vehicle to reinforce your core messages. So keep the momentum going and use your slides to animate your ideas, help your audience to visualize a key point or share a personal side of you. Never use slides as a substitute for not knowing your material. Remember: It is quality not quantity that counts.

Expand your creative talents and listen for the applause!

Powerfully yours,

(Part 3) Your Virtual Stage Presence with Roz Usheroff: Your Virtual Stage Presence

Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with deeper meaning.

Maya Angelou

This is the third of a series of newsletters to ensure that you’re ready for your close-up as in-person presentations give way to virtual ones, a transition that requires some adjustments on your part as a presenter.

For example, if you’re on a stage speaking to a large audience, exaggerated gestures are imperative to making an impact. However, if you’re speaking to just as many people via video link, those exact same gestures might make you appear frantic or too emotional. Regardless of live or virtual presentations, speak as if you’re having a personal conversation with every person.

In person, movement is a good choice, adding impact and energy to your presentation. In a virtual presentation, however, your movement is very limited, but similar impact can be achieved by moving between live shots of you speaking and selected slides that help illustrate the points you are making.

In the end, the goal is the same: to engage and connect with your audience, to clearly communicate your message and to help them remember your message (and you) long after your presentation.

Think newscaster

Studying newscasters in action is a good place to start. The best ones almost seem like they are sitting across the table, talking directly to you. Set up your video shot similarly. Sit up straight in a relaxed, yet alert, position.  A warm smile and a steady gaze can simultaneously convey authority, sincerity and accessibility. Diane Sawyer is a good example.

Start by introducing yourself. If your intention is to have viewers get to know you and form a bond with you while watching your video, they won’t bother to connect with you if you don’t first (metaphorically) offer your hand and say hello. Welcome your viewers and thank them for attending.

About those hands

While the camera can exaggerate your gestures, you still want to use gestures in a natural-looking way.

• Avoid frequent, fast hand movements that flash in and out of the frame. Make sure the video camera has a wide enough shot on you so that you have room to make natural gestures within the frame of the shot.
•  If your hands get too close to the camera, they appear larger than they are in proportion to the rest of your image, so not too close.
• Don’t fidget. A presenter is most likely to fidget during the question and answer period. If you do, you will look nervous. If your hands are empty, they have nothing to fidget with, so it’s best not to hold a pen.
• Use well defined gestures.  The more defined your hand gestures appear, the more defined your message will appear. Use your hands to reinforce your message.
• If you are talking in threes, count off with your index finger first.  People remember three points at a time, so this is a powerful technique and a good example of hand gestures that support your message.
• Always use palms open to gesture; avoid clenching your fist or pointing your finger.

Using your eyes

Eye contact is trickier on camera than in person, but even more important to connecting with your audience. It takes some practice to get used to looking into the camera, rather than staring at it.

• Try looking just beyond the camera and visualizing your audience.
• Mix it up. It’s not natural to stare directly into the camera continuously. Look down at notes or glance to the side as you direct your audience to a slide that is about to appear. This adds variety and visual interest.
• Don’t, however, continuously glance to the side or off camera – you’ll look nervous or even dishonest.
• If you’re simultaneously speaking to people in the room and those watching by camera, it’s perfectly fine to direct some eye contact to your live audience. In fact, it’ll look odd if you don’t.

Giving voice to your message

Using your voice correctly to enhance your message is one aspect of presenting that varies little between live and video delivery. In fact, all the good habits of using tone, volume and inflection to punctuate your message on a teleconference also apply in front of the camera.

• Get excited. Your audience is completely dependent on you here – they’ll never get more excited about your message than you are. Make sure you reconnect with your message before you deliver it, so you bring all that excitement with you.
• For conference calls, try walking around as you speak which will make you more energized and reflect in your voice.
• Speak loudly. Practice with someone listening to your presentation using the same technology your audience will be using so you’ll know how loudly to project to ensure their easy listening. You have no control over the volume setting on everyone else’s computers, but you can make sure they don’t have to turn the volume all the way up to hear you.
• Speak slowly. Use pauses frequently to delineate your thoughts and ideas.
• Repeat what’s important. Repetition is a critical part of any presentation and it’s a natural teaching tool. If you want them to remember it – make sure they’ve heard it at least three times.
• Listeners should feel that you’re speaking directly to them.  Use the singular “you” in your statements and questions.  Instead of saying, “I wonder if anyone out there can answer this question”, say “What are your thoughts about…?”
• Finally, never end a presentation with a Q & A session. Instead, use an inspirational finale and a call to action.

Most important: don’t forget to smile. It’s the quickest, surest way to connect with your audience and start to build a bridge over the miles and through the computer screens. Remember, no matter how diverse and geographically scattered your audience is; everyone smiles in the same language.

Stay tuned for more strategic virtual techniques next post.

(Part 2) Your Virtual Stage Presence with Roz Usheroff: Preparing for Your Virtual Presentation

Confidence is preparation.  Everything else is beyond your control.

Richard Kline

The number one reason virtual presentations fail is lack of planning.  Whether you’re the facilitator or attendee, you don’t have the luxury of not being prepared! With an invisible audience, you can’t know who is listening so the investment you make beforehand to feel confident will determine whether you capture your virtual audience’s attention or not.

Succeed and be heard

1. Plan as much for your audience’s experience as you do for your content and delivery.
2. Hook your audience with a “30 second” compelling WIIFM (what’s in it for me) message.
3. Build a reputation for delivering value in virtual meetings both as a presenter and a participant.

Rotate Team Meeting Times

A client on a global team complained that her boss insists she participate on weekly virtual calls scheduled at 4:30 a.m. her time. For global team members, time zones can become the enemy and impact everyone’s delivery and contribution. No single time slot is convenient for all members.

• Rotate the meeting time for each virtual team meeting.
• Explain to your team that while rotating meeting times is a scheduling challenge, it allows every member of the team to be at their best when on their time zone.

Technology Terror

While every generation is more tech savvy than the last, there are still those of us – including some of your virtual audience members – who are terrified of technology and can become easily derailed on their way to your virtual presentation. Take steps ahead of time to help diverse audience members share a positive experience.

• Choose your webcast provider wisely. There are many good vendors.   I suggest choosing one that offers hosted webinars, which means you’ll have a partner who is an expert at the software’s functionality to help you and your audience prepare and troubleshoot in real time if anything goes wrong.
• Send explicit directions ahead of time. Email participants multiple times before the presentation with sign-in instructions, software or hardware requirements and a resource they can contact with questions or for trouble shooting.
• Let them know there will be interaction. Let your participants know ahead of time there will be interactive elements to the presentation. This will serve as a wake-up call to those who were planning to dial-in, then nap. Provide a link to a resource that explains features like polling, document sharing and online chat functions for those who would be more comfortable doing a little research ahead of time.
• Think-through technical details. If you are speaking to a group using a speaker phone in a conference room, make sure you have a partner on the other end who is ensuring the speaker phone is centrally located and that participants move close enough to it when they speak.
• Invest in a headset. This will free up your hands, make your voice clearer and save your neck muscles.

Grab their attention – again and again

Virtual presentation experts suggest starting your presentation with an interactive element to pull your audience in quickly and focus their attention. Online professional development expert Dan Balzer uses an interactive map and asks participants to use drawing tools that come with most conference software to show where they are located.

• Polling – This is when you pre-load questions relevant to your topic and release them intermittently during your presentation, allowing participants to click to answer yes/no or multiple-choice questions.
• Text chat – This allows participants to type in questions or comments during the presentation.
• Video or audio interaction – Taking audio questions is a good interactive element. Your conference coordinator can instruct participants when to punch into the question queue. Live video two-way interaction is best used in small-group or one-on-one meetings when line speed, hardware and software are all sufficient to sync audio with video and prevent frame freezes.

Don’t go it alone

Last month, a client insisted that I listen in on his weekly conference calls, as he was concerned about the lack of audience participation.  Only five of his 30 direct reports asked questions. After observing, I shared the following ways to enlist support:

• Contact individuals personally who will be invited to contribute during the meeting or presentation. Share your perspectives, vision and any other information that will be important for them to know in advance.
• Plant questions with certain attendees in advance in case the conversation stops or goes in the wrong direction.
• Select a responsible recorder to distribute a meeting summary and action steps.

If you are a participant, distinguish yourself and support the speaker by listening carefully and asking thoughtful questions.

Know what evil lurks in the hearts of busy professionals

To ensure full engagement, invest time before the meeting/presentation:

• Send out an agenda that includes purpose, objectives, topics, relevance, situation and targeted end results.
• Include a list of participants with titles to build the sense of community and involvement that occurs naturally when everyone is in the same room.
• Outline your expectations for participants, including courtesy rules such as banning taking or making phone calls, emailing, texting or other distracting activities.

Preparing your presentation

Tomorrow we will dive into this topic in detail, including how to avoid “death by PowerPoint” Until then, I’ll leave you these questions to ponder as you start to map out your next virtual presentation:

• What are your critical topics?
• What order should they fall into?
• What depth of information needs to be shared?
• How much time should be allotted to each topic?
• How will you transition from one topic to the next?
• How and when will you build in audience participation?
• What is your desired end result?
• What is unique about this audience and how will you tailor your presentation specifically for them?

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Are you ready for your close-up? Virtually Speaking with Roz Usheroff

When economies stumble, so does corporate spending. As global markets react poorly to international financial uncertainty, you can almost hear the off-site conferences, training courses and team meetings fall off the budget. Even the cost of flying in a single consultant or manager to make a presentation or attend a meeting starts to seem expensive.

Add to that, increasingly far-flung teams, more professionals working from home and the dramatically improved capability and affordability of communications technologies, and it’s plain to see that virtual communication situations of all types are on the rise.

The implications for all of us are enormous. Those who do not immediately boost their virtual communication skills are going to find themselves and their careers going the way of rotary telephones and fax machines. Your personal brand already depends largely on your skill and savvy in this arena. And ladies and gentlemen, it is tricky business.

The virtual world is expanding

Most of us are familiar with webinars, video conference calls and podcasts, but increasingly you may be asked to participate in the following types of activities virtually: job interviews, negotiations, brainstorming sessions, client reviews, team presentations, networking events, convention booth presentations and even virtual lunches. I know an executive who holds regular “virtual coffee breaks” with global team members.

The advantages in cost savings, time savings and the chance to reach global audiences impossible to meet in person all offer a world of opportunities.

A daunting task

As a communicator, however, the disadvantages can appear daunting.

Studies indicate that over 93 percent of communication is non-verbal. To compensate for this inherent loss during virtual communication, you must deliver your message to a remote audience in multiple ways.

The techniques applied in talk shows and radio broadcasts are good models. Timothy Koegel, in his book, “The Exceptional Presenter Goes Virtual”, suggests studying your favorite news or talk shows and noting the ways they structure and order their presentations, use multiple presenters and even “tease” upcoming content to keep their audience tuned in.

Are you ready?

Virtual meetings are now competing for front stage.  Are you prepared? Can you compete with highly stressed colleagues and reports who feel compelled to multi-task, especially on virtual conference calls? Virtual presentations require you to elevate your level of detail and planning, to deliver your message in a more assertive style and execute a compelling call to action.

If you thought it was hard to hold the attention of an audience sitting in front of you glancing at their smart phones, try even getting their attention when you can’t see them, hear them, or tell for sure if they’re still there.

If only we could reach out through the wires and physically connect with a team member, then solidify that special bond with a warm handshake and eye-to-eye connectivity.  Unfortunately, you are shortchanged within a virtual environment. And there is no opportunity to reinforce messages and solidify relationships at those after-work bonding dinners where borders dissolve and friendships evolve.

The rules of engagement have changed

Some of the rules of good presentation skills transfer to the virtual environment, but many do not. Plus, news skills are critical to your success as a virtual communicator – from choosing the appropriate technology, to using it effectively, to making sure your audience is engaged and comfortable interacting in the virtual environment. Traditional ways of connecting with an audience in person – such as body language and eye contact – must be compensated for using new, virtual contact tools.

I feel so strongly about the urgency for all of us to accelerate our skill sets in this area that I am devoting this and the next few e-newsletters to this topic.  We will explore everything from choosing and leveraging virtual meeting technology to creating your virtual presentation, delivering it, engaging your audience during it and following up afterwards.

Four Principles of Remote Presenting

Never assume that your virtual attendees will be listening.  To become a master of virtual meetings, you must remember four key principles:

1.  MAKE YOUR MESSAGE RELEVANT:  Your virtual presentation opening must grab the immediate attention of your listeners and be clear, relevant and succinct.

2.  MAKE YOUR ATTENDEES IMPORTANT:  Participants need to feel that their participation is valued and important. Express your appreciation and explain why you asked them to join in.

3. MAKE YOUR MESSAGE EXCITING:  You must deliver your message with greater passion, inflection and conviction than in person.

4. MAKE YOUR MEETING INTERACTIVE:  Your virtual meeting must be interactive and quick paced. The sooner you involve your audience, the quicker you create a virtual community and inspire others to participate.

What kind of participant are you?

Equally important to your personal brand is how you approach virtual meetings as a participant. The way you attend a virtual meeting, how actively you participate and support the presenter, is a leadership opportunity that I believe few have even contemplated. I don’t want you to miss a single opportunity to leverage these new ways of communicating to build your personal brand.

Tips for having a stronger virtual voice:

• Stand for projection when you are speaking
• Walk to keep your energy up
• Smile when you speak
• Vary your intonations (including pitch, volume and inflection)
• Sound animated and excited about your material
• Use pauses frequently to separate important points and when delivering complex information
• Gesture as if you have a live audience

Tomorrow we’ll look at how you plan a virtual presentation and the technologies and support tools that can help you become an engaging and successful virtual communicator.

For now, become a student of virtual communication. Next time you’re a participant, jot down what worked well and what didn’t. What would you have done differently as the presenter? Don’t forget to take notes next time you watch the news. Watch how the professionals come across screen to screen and start thinking about how you can emulate their best practices.

Making a connection with your audience . . . virtually speaking

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