Inside JLC: Enhancing Your Virtual Meeting Presence

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Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us here at JLC Media. My name is Ray Jorgensen. It's a privilege to have my three friends together to talk about another important resolution. Everybody wants to talk about New Year's resolutions. I don't really think it matters when you make this resolution, but it's a good one. That's how to improve your virtual presence so that when you're in conversation on Team or Zoom or Google Meets or whatever it is you're doing that you are seen powerfully. Your presence is seen by thinking about a few little tips to do a good job with engaging those that you're visiting with on a platform that's really powered by the Internet. With that said, again, I'm Ray. Let me introduce my buddies here. Colleen, who are you?

Still trying to figure that one out. But generally speaking, Jay Helsey, associate and coo.

Yeah, she's the one that kind of keeps me focused, which is really a good thing. So, Julie, who are you?

I am Julie B. Wise, and I'm a JLC associate and executive coach.

Yeah, all of us on this call do executive coaching from time to time. So, Terry, who are you? I know you're a JLC associate. What else are you up to in the world?

Oh, yeah. Thanks, Ray. I'm a former naval officer, 37 years, and I ended my career as the Deputy Surgeon General of the Navy and did a lot of VTCs and virtual meetings.

Right. And they really matter. So we're going to hear from the proverbial horse's mouth what we can do to improve the quality of our virtual presence going forward. So rather than going through a long introduction, I'm going to let Terry tell a little story and have Colleen and Julie react to that. And every once in a while, I might add an idea. But it won't be not too much today because I think these three people have a wealth of practical. Notice my language, practical knowledge. There's lots of wonderful ideas in the world. Sometimes people struggle to turn them into practice. So, Terry, what got you on this road?

Yeah, I think a few years ago we were moving into the virtual and trying to communicate our out there. I was a regional commander at that point. And have you ever had a meeting where there was other people on the virtual meeting, but you can't even see them? That was us. We were having these meetings and rooms were dark. You couldn't see the faces of people, have a conversation with them because you really wanted to have that interaction with the facial expressions. So I thought we got to make some improvement here. I want to see the faces, right? And we had these things called the jabbers, which was a camera that was placed on the laptop so you could actually see better. Right. And so some people had them, some people used them, Some people, you could see their face all in the screen. Others were so far down at the other end of the table, you couldn't make out what was going on with them. So you really lost the value of the meeting in my take. So I asked my ea. I said, hey, what are some of the best practices out there? Go do a little research, and let's help the rest of the organization get on the same sheet of music and, you know, and we'll see what we can do to make improvements. So that was sort of what we did a few years ago. And it really is a valuable way to get to some consistency across the system.

There really is something about being able to see you and to notice your facial expressions on a virtual call. And I think we're going to enjoy these little pieces. So those of you that are listening, I urge you to keep pen and paper with you. Unless you're driving, don't. But if you are in someplace where you can write a few things down, I think you're going to really enjoy these few, very few significant tips. And I'll start with one. Like, right now, I'm moving around in my chair, so I am not like this, because that's very confrontive. So one of the things we're learning about virtual work now after a couple of years, over two years since the pandemic, and it continues, we're doing a lot of this work, and sometimes people, they don't understand how pushy it feels to shove yourself squared up and then go right into that makes people feel awkward. It's almost like, yeah, yelling at somebody in a meeting or in a hallway. So be thoughtful about how you arrange yourself in your room. And so with that said, Terry, give us at least one or two of those. I'll get Colleen and Julie to react.

Yeah, while you were talking, that reminded me, you know, we had about 20 people on the screen at any one time. And some of them that use that jabber, you know, would be like this. We ended up giving awards. It was called the Jabber Jockey Award because this is way too much. So you really want to be back. You want to have good lighting, you want to have a good stereo, or not stereo, but a good microphone so that it's not echoing. You know, even the mic, the ipods, they have great speakers in them. And so you see a lot of people wearing these. But it does produce a good sound. So I think you need to pay attention to the sound. I think you got to pay attention to the. I'm going a little bit more too much. But background noise. Right. We heard dogs barking in the background. We've now grown accustomed to the dog barking. Right. Is that a good thing or bad? Right. And so I think we need to watch for that. I think the distractions be. Minimize the distraction. I think, Julie, I think all of you have great background scenes there. Right. They're not too busy. And I think that people need to pay attention to that. And then with the etiquette in talking, we're placed very well in the screen. We don't over talk our other people. I think all those are very good for that. And then I think, as you can see this, all our sites are labeled. Right. When we first started this, you didn't know who was on the other screen. We'd have 20 cubes up on the screen. But you had to make out who was who if you could even see them. So I think we've come a long way, but those are some of the tips that would be important in the virtual world these days.

That is a wonderful start. So, Colleen, what are you hearing? And then of course, Julie, I'm going to ask you to add on to whatever Colleen says. Which of those are you hearing loud and clear. That need to be applied right away. And sometimes we have to remind ourselves to apply these things from time to time. Colleen?

Yeah. I think you guys have described some self imposed limiting factors of your presence. Right. And a few of those are really setting the stage for success. So being aware of your surroundings. Right. What's in your camera site? I love, Terry, when you mentioned the whole thing about. And the noises in the background noise. Right. So put yourself in a room where there's no echoes, where you're not going to hear a lot, and mute perhaps when you're not speaking. And another big one that you, you guys talked about was your camera angle. And I know there's been a lot of research on that recently. So we want to use our camera to connect with people and to engage with them. And so if that's your intention, then ensure that, that you know, to both you, Terry and Ray. And I think it was funny because you went right up into the camera. Right. So for those of you who are listening to the podcast, that's what they were doing. And I think it is sometimes it's offsetting if you're too close. So just to be mindful of how you are showing up in front of the camera and how you're interacting and engaging.

Yeah. Or if I get too loud, same thing. Right. I'm not pushing you around with my voice. So. Excellent. Thank you. Julie, what did you pick up in that first little piece in addition to what Colleen said?

From my experience, it's awkward to have put a question out there and then several people don't answer, and then we all answer at the same time and that sort of thing. I especially started to learn that with my family, our conversations in person were fine, but when we were trying to. During the pandemic and trying to, you know, know, talk to each other, we were all fumbling and mumbling. It was miserable. So two things that I would suggest with that. First of all, either have someone be sort of the facilitator of the conversation, even if it's casual, you know, so, like you see Ray doing. Ray says, Colleen, what do you think? Julie, what do you think? He calls on specific people. And when I started doing that with my family members, we were all able to relax much easier. Another thing I do when I'm teaching online courses is, is I ask the participants to call on someone else. So. And you've seen us do that as well. So from here, I may go back to Terry and not use Ray as the facilitator. Right. Put the responsibility on that way. So if you find in your virtual calls or meetings there's a lot of down air and everyone's just sort of waiting for someone to talk, that everybody talks all at once, you may want to try and think about those two possible strategies.

So you're going to give it to.

Terry and I'll give it to Terry.

Yeah. So picking up on that, I really like your idea of the facilitator and being able to pass one control the meeting, but also to pass it on to the next person, I think that's really good. You know, I think that the distraction of people talking over each other or the long silence, that diminishes the value of the meeting. So those are really great tips.

I think the facilitator can really help with that tremendously. Sometimes silence is fine because people are thinking, and I'm always careful not to fix that because sometimes I will try and fix that, you know, and, well, I'm not hearing anybody say anything. There's one other point. Those of you that are listening, I really want you to hold on to this is adult learning and leading adult learners. That's how we think of our work. An adult learner starts at puberty, by the way. So if you have young people at home, they're functioning like adult learners. If they're beyond puberty. And in an adult learning setting, it's fine, perfectly fine to pass. So if I say, Colleen, what are you thinking about what Terry said, it would be fine for her to say, I'd like to pass that right now, Ray, because I'm thinking about a lot of things simultaneously. I don't really have something useful at the moment. I'd like to pass. That has to be good. Okay. To do. Otherwise, people start feeling like I'm shoving a microphone in someone's face and they really don't want it, you know, And I'd really rather think about this a little bit more. I think that is very, very important. Versus virtual presence piece. And Julie and I are working on leadership presence right now with a client that has asked us to help with. What does that look like? So it's kind of like, what's my presence? What is my stance? Am I in learning? Am I curious? Right. That is definitely a stance. And then what's my focus? Like our focus today, I am absolutely in learning and curious about what everybody is thinking about this. This work. So my stance is in learning inquiry. Right. And that's certainly my focus. And my language is all about using questions to deepen the understanding of us. We want to get better at this. But also, those of you that are listening, what are you thinking about this right now, Julie?

I like this idea of internal and external. So I talked about a little bit about how to externally control. And we also need to internally control what we're thinking, what we're doing. I know when I first came on here, I was just sort of like, looking at my hair and had a serious face. And Terry was like, what's going on with you, Julie? Where's that smile? And so I think that leadership presence, you know, am I in learning? Am I interested? Am I asking questions? That definitely helps me be much more engaging. And I'll send it back to you, Ray.

Well, your whole body language changes when you do that. Shoulders go down. I'm really. This is interesting. Curiosity and wondering. And, you know, we actually use those two phrases as a leadership tool. I'm noticing X and wondering, what's up with that? Oh, my God. The Eng words, by the way, are relaxing words. They're not a. You know, I noticed you did this, Terry. What's up with that? Is different. Than saying, I'm noticing something and then wondering what's really going on with you. And you have all seen me do this many, many, many times over. And it does something useful in terms of leadership presence, because my stance is not in judgment. My stance is in learning. Very different. Terry, what are you thinking right now?

No, in learning. I like what we're talking about. I was thinking, when you're having a vtc, you need to be present, be in the meeting. Just like all meetings, you shouldn't be multitasking. And so how do you learn? If you're doing other things, you're not paying attention. So you owe it to the. The VTC to be engaged in it, to be attentive to it. So I think that's part of all how to do a virtual meeting properly.

I love that. Thank you. Those of you listening, that's one more great tip. Stay engaged. And you're breaking up slightly, Terry, so I might have walked over you. I apologize. But the ability to stay engaged has to do with listening and not waiting for Julie to pause so I can jump in and give my great idea. Right. My. My work is to acknowledge what each of you has said and then maybe ask a question or maybe make a point. Those of you that are really listening to this, you want to get great at virtual meetings. Practice listening, listening, listening, and then confirm you understood what the person said and respond respectfully. If we miss that, we end up. We're not in the room anymore. We're like, out here in my head. I'm not in the room with you. I've given. It's an opportunity to be truly present, to really have that leadership presence. My stance is engagement and being with you. Colleen, what are you thinking?

Yeah, I'm thinking we started the call. Terry had a great setup, really talking about, what do you do before the meeting? I really like how we pivoted now to. During the meeting. A few things that I'm hearing is this sense of curiosity and engagement, a practical application thing that I would like to say, because I love observing meetings and listening to meetings. I'm sure my colleagues would agree with me. One of the things you hear all the time is somebody pauses after they give a presentation and says, are there any questions? Many times. What do you hear?

Crickets. Crickets. Exactly.

And so to me, it is about engaging and asking quality questions. And Ray's given some examples. And my invitation to you is, instead of asking something where it's a yes or no, are there any questions? No. It's something such as What Ray has already been modeling. So we've been talking a lot about enhancing our virtual presence. What's resonated with you most, Julie, and why? What are your key takeaways, Terry, as you move forward? And what will you do differently as a result of those learnings? Any of these types of questions are very, very different. Notice it's not just this blanket. I'm being a little bit directive because to Julie's point, I want to make sure everybody's not answering at the same time and talking over each other. But they're more of a generative question. So people are really thinking about, what did I learn? What does it mean to me? How can I apply it to be more effective in my virtual meetings?

Yeah, so I just heard you tag three big things. You know, reflection produces new practical knowledge, and it enables change. So if I'm actually listening to this presentation as a podcast, as a YouTube video, my invitation is to do just what Colleen said. What am I noticing going on inside of me? What am I learning? Right. What does that mean to me? Meaning is critical. If I can't make meaning out of something, the chance of it sticking with me is really low. How many of you have been in a classroom where the professor or teacher jumps, talked for 40 minutes, and then at the end they say, okay, any questions about the first part? And you're like, I don't even remember what you said, you know, 35 minutes ago. So this constant stopping to check and make sure I understood. Like, now I'll say, colleen, did I get you right? Did I miss something?

No. Those were really some of the big key points. It's all about not just disseminating information, but internalizing it and making it personal, practical knowledge. Otherwise, it's just noise.

I love it. Thank you. Julie, something to add on this?

Yes. If we did the before the during Ivan. After that, I've started to add in my online courses. Dr. Bill Zigler was the one that suggested this. He's my facilitator, and he recommended that people put their reflections in the chat box. And I've done that before. That's no big deal, right? Write your questions in the chat box, or everybody writes their thoughts in the chat box or their one takeaway, like Colleen says. And then that's usually all I do. And then the meeting's over and I close it. His next level was to take all of that, copy it, put it in a Google Doc or some form of meeting minutes, and then send it to everyone. So that's wonderful, because now Everyone can. Before my next class, I send out the link and I say, please review the notes so that we can remember what we learned before. And then that way our new information will shift and connect to that, and we'll just continue to enhance our personal practical knowledge.

What a magnificent enhancement to what you're already doing and a way for people to stay connected between the last meeting and the next meeting, and then it becomes their deal, their responsibility to do that. Excellent, Julie. Thank you for that upgrade. That's really fantastic. Terry, final thoughts from you.

Well, I think what we've been talking about, I really like how we formatted it before the meeting. Preparation for the meeting, the bandwidth, the agenda, take a look at the surroundings of how you want to present things. Secondly is in the meeting, you know, be engaged in the meeting. I think those are all important. And then the third thing is the exit. Right. And summarizing what did you hear, or putting in the chat box. I think the chat box is an excellent way to just sort of summarize and get the points across, the committed actions by folks. I started using the chat box too, because I noticed that with all the people on the different VTCs that I have, you can't get a word in edgewise. So I just start typing in my thoughts or the points that I want to make, and then someone, eventually facilitator, will come back to the chat box and say, terry made this comment. Let's talk about it for just for a minute. So I think all these are very good tips for the virtual world as we go forward.

Yeah, I think they are, too. And I love that idea of actually inviting people to do it. And this feels weird when I do it. I watch these audiences when I work with them, because I stop and I said, we're going to take 60 seconds of quiet time for you to just sit there and reflect on what you've heard so far. And if you feel comfortable, put it in the chat box. And the silence is almost deafening. But, you know, people are actually thinking and reflecting and trying to figure out what's next. So this was just magnificent. I'm going to probably say we have exhausted our time and not the topic. The topic has lots more for us to talk about. But I think this, for me was just one of the better podcasts we've done because it was all about the practical application of living in this virtual leadership world. I'm going to tell you one thing that I watched Terry do, and I don't think I had anything to do with it, but it Matches the literature. Something was going wrong someplace. I mean, he had. I can't tell you how many people he was responsible for. Something was going wrong. And the person that was there was arguing with Terry, saying, this is a problem of somebody who needs to be blamed for this because it's an execution problem. And it was very heated. And at that moment in the room were Terry, two of his EAs, me, and another gentleman who was making this case about the execution problem. Here's what Terry said. First, he made sure he understood the problem. And then after the person said, yep, you understood. That's exactly what I'm facing right now. And I'm really concerned about the execution of this particular. It was about readiness, this piece of readiness. And Terry says to him, I'd like not to think about this as an execution problem. I'd like to think about this as a learning opportunity. Let's talk about what we have already learned and what we could learn to figure out how to take a good step forward to resolve the issue that you're facing before we close out. I'd like my gang to react to that. That is, in this work that we do in conversational leadership, that is a pivotal point rather than belaboring the execution problem, to treat it as a learning opportunity so we can make the best possible response. And, Terry, you go last on this one because you were there. So, Julie, what did you think about that setup?

I was okay until you just asked me what I thought about the setup.

How about the story I told?

Okay. So, yeah, I think. I think that we are always in learning. And hopefully this podcast has given you ways to enhance your ability to show up as a professional, lead others, and how to make your communication much more effective. This is the way the world is now and probably will continue for a lot of us to be virtual. And we can no longer say, I hate this or this is. It's only going to be this week. It's time to take responsibility. It's time to do things before, during, and after to ensure that you're engaged and that the. You're bringing your best thinking forward.

I'm going to take that as your checkout, if that's okay. That was magnificent. Yeah. The sensibility here of watching your self talk. If you keep telling yourself how much you hate virtual meetings, you'll always hate them, and they'll never be any good. They'll just keep going right down into the pit of misery, the pit of judgment, and you're going to just. You're going to die in the Judgment pit. Right. As opposed to shifting your self. Talk to. Okay. This is the real world. I love this opportunity because at least now I get to talk to the people that I am in charge of that are in my care. That was just really good, Julie. Thank you. Very funny. Start with that too, Colleen.

Yeah, I really like that story because it really brought to mind when we work with clients and you always hear these buzzwords in organizations, right? We want to be a high reliability organization. We want to optimize our effectiveness. We want to have high performing teams and ensure that we have all of us are customer centric. We want to have the highest surveys done. I could go on and on and on. At the end of the day, if you are modeling what Terry modeled, this sense of a learning opportunity versus judgment and blame, you can get those things done, you can optimize, you can focus on becoming high reliability and you can help and support those strategic initiatives to actually be achieved. However, I think the tendency is with leaders, there's a lot of pressure, right? He was in charge of billions of dollars, a ton of personnel, and the pressure to get people to produce results. Now, as an executive leader, it's so much easier for me to go, who did this? Who's responsible? What do they need to go and fix? So it's that almost that shifting that mental model from the blame piece to modeling and creating a space of psychological safety so people can talk and learn and reflect, and that's when you really will see those results come to fruition.

Yeah. Yeah. Are you out? I'm out, yeah. There's that piece. I mean, just as beautiful, Colleen, Suspension, suspension. Like I'm up my ladder thinking, okay, this person must be an asshole then. But they screwed this up. Okay, suspend, suspend, suspend. Wait a minute. I don't have all the data, I don't have all the information. And my attitudes and beliefs are getting in my way. Tell me more about this situation. And as soon as you say, you tell me more, you have shifted to curiosity and wondering rather than judgment. Well, hopefully, anyway, sometimes we can do both simultaneously and trickle. But really what we want to do is stay in. Learning to make the best possible response to anything that surfaces as a situation that needs to have some attention. So thank you, Colleen. That was beautiful. Terry, your turn. Talk to our listeners. What would you tell them here as we come to this checkout place? And you were the key point in that story, I know.

Uh, oh, well, thank you. I do think it's a great approach, right? It's. We're trying to Learn. And others will say, hey, we want to place blame, want to deflect. So I think it's a great opportunity for a leader to say, okay, well, we've gotten this far. What have we learned and what do we need to do differently? And then that helps set a new direction, right? Rather than just hammer somebody, you need to figure out what are we learning so that we can do something different. So I think that's very important. And on the virtual world meetings, I think it's a learning and process. Every VTC I go into, I try to. I watch the surroundings and the other people, players, what went right, what went wrong, what do we need to do differently? What do I need to do differently? The lighting, the sound, the distractions, all those things are things that we should pay attention to. So we as leaders ought to pay attention to the virtual world and practice some of the tips that we've shared today. So I'm out.

So I would say that the last thing I would give you and Terry's sense of offering you opportunity to reflect on the tips, please take them. Take some time to do that. Here's something that will occur after this, after we're not anymore. We're, I guess if you're not live, you're dead. I don't want to be dead. Anyway, we won't be live. And then we're going to actually do a very simple thing. What was our intention today? To share some tips and some ideas that can be turned into practice when you have a virtual meeting, that's our intention. And then we did certain things. So we will identify what we did. And to Terry's point, I will then say to one another, what did we learn? What do we do differently next time? We have been doing this practice, intention. What did we do? What did we learn? What are we going to do differently next time? We've been doing this practice since we started this whole podcasting adventure well over a year now that we've been after this. And we are learning so much from each other. And the biggest thing is for people to recognize how handsome I am. No, to recognize how intentional we are about each of the topics. Moving forward, listeners, thank you for being with us. This is JLC Media, and this is our continuing insider podcast structure. And we're talking about how we can make some changes if we have some resolutions which don't have to happen at the first of the year or the celebrated Chinese New Year from yesterday, don't have a particular time, you can do it whenever the spirit moves you. I need to make some changes in the way I am holding my virtual meetings. Thank you for listening. We all take care and wherever you are in the new year or resolution process, best of wish and wishes and luck to you. Thank you for being here.

Sincerest thanks for listening to this episode of the Everyday Leadership Conversations podcast. The Jorgensen Learning center offers a variety of programs for individuals and organizations to enhance their communication and leadership skills. To find out more about programs and upcoming webinars, check out our events page@gojlc.com.