The circumstances in which so many companies found themselves soon is quite different from what we were all used to. When dealing with your audience at an online meeting, it is very essential to establish a personal connection with each listener.
Interacting with them is crucial to natural ways to make people happy, relaxed, and fully engaged in the content you provide. This is why it feels tense and awkward to create this kind of atmosphere in a virtual environment. You may pursue the same goals in both an individual and a virtual background. However, you need different tools to achieve them.
Make it personal
Virtual environments can feel quite impersonal because of the physical and psychological distance, so you need to be creative.
You can try to arrive at an online conference early so you can greet people as they pop up on the screen and engage in a bit of friendly small talk before the main meeting. It also helps people to turn on their video functionality, if possible, to enhance their connection.
Also, you can try to imagine the reactions of the people you’re interacting with. Especially if you are performing to a large group. Since you don’t necessarily see these reactions as you would in real-time.
For example, when gazing at the camera on the top of your screen, retain to show a warm, engaging smile. Also, insert an occasional laugh, and convey a friendly, engaging tone.
Finally, you can also try to use people’s names when pointing to them, and invite them to take the floor and participate, if they feel comfortable doing so.
And with a chat function that indicates who said what beside video images with people’s names, it makes personalized facilitation easier.
Convey warmth and presence
Typically, when we look at a screen, we do so quietly, sinking into the couch to watch our favorite TV show or listen to a webinar or how-to video.
But when you’re facilitating an online meeting, you have to adopt an active persona in an environment that doesn’t necessarily lend itself to that.
There are many little things you can do to create warmth virtually. For starters, make “eye contact” with your members by looking directly into the camera as often as possible. This can be hard to remember to do, particularly when the image of your participants may be away from where the camera is on your computer.
You can also try to make sure that your image and the angle of the camera on your face is at a comfortable level for others to see you.
Get used to delayed feedback
Offering virtually inevitably means learning to become comfortable — or comfortable enough — with a different mode of receiving feedback.
In an online meeting, you can deliver an entire 30-40 minute talk and by the end have no idea at all about how well the message was received.
At first, you can find this disconcerting and even distracting. But, over time, you can learn to anticipate these feelings. Also, remind yourself that your talks are usually quite useful online. Even if you receive no confirmation until well after the fact.
Make it interactive
If you make your presentations engaging and interactive with the right tools, you can also make the virtual world just as engaging, if not more so.
For example, you can actively use the chat function. This enables people to comment in real-time as you are talking. Then you can involve these participants in a discussion.
We are all getting used to operating in new ways — and moving to online platforms will push many of us out of our comfort zones.
It’s important to acknowledge that while this form of delivery is different. Also, challenging in some ways, it has advantages. Perhaps the biggest is that it allows us to stay connected and engaged in what’s a trying time for all.