78: The Do’s and Don’ts of Video Conferencing

At least 200 million of us nowadays are using Zoom to connect with co workers, clients and friends in video cocktail hours. That's up from 10 million users a few months ago. That 10 million user increase signals a shift in the acceptability of using technology for remote working for the foreseeable future. It also means 10 million more mistakes that can be made on video conferencing calls this week on the podcast the Do's and Don'ts for Video Conferencing how not to embarrass yourself in front of colleagues and clients. If you're anything like me, you've been on more video conference calls in the past few weeks than you've been on in your entire life. Others of you may have shifted to video conferencing to continue your business. My in person workshops have become now my online workshops.

And I don't know how you feel.

About online work products, but when people invest in me or in a program, I want them to see the value in it. So that means I need to bring my A game and my Z game. I need skills with a Z on Zoom or my X game for my workshop this week on WebEx. Well, you get the idea, you know what I'm saying? So if you're on Zoom and you want to Zooma Zooma Zooma Zoom, you can come on and give it a try. Or if you're using Google Hangouts or RingCentral Skype for Business GoToMeeting all the platforms that I'm talking about, any of them, if you're using them to conduct your business or to participate in a meeting, they then you want to listen to this episode. I sat in on a Zoom call with Lauren Sergi. She helps professionals, executives and teams become powerful communicators and persuasive presenters. And now with all these professionals working remotely, she's helping clients with the proper etiquette for participating in all of these video calls. How to bring Polish when you present on video, we talk about what you should and should not wear on camera. What's behind you in your shot, virtual background, yes or no. The angles, the equipment, we get into all of it.

So if you're participating in a video.

Call this week, then this is a must listen episode.

Lauren, thank you for joining me on Zoom to talk about video conferencing. I am recording this for the podcast. I mean typically I use a different audio system. I use Zencastr, where I just do audio only. But I thought since I'm speaking to you about about video conferencing, that we should do this on video.

Yes. Why not? Right. Because one of the things that is always helpful is to have backups.

Of course, we learned to have backups. Now, Lauren, I wanted to speak to you now. First I have to say welcome back to the podcast. You have been on the podcast twice and it seems like ages ago, like a different lifetime. When you spoke to me in December of November and November last year about navigating social dynamics at holiday parties in.

Person, that was in the before times.

The before times, it's like bc. Yes. So now it's BC before coronavirus.

Oh.

And AC after coronavirus. Well, here we are now in this day and age, wouldn't you say, of the video conference.

It's really for so many of us right now, it's the only option aside from obviously you can pick up the phone, you can talk over the phone, but if we want to lay eyeballs on each other, this is the only choice for many of us. And it's going to be that way for quite some time. At some point, the movement limitations will be relaxed. We'll be able to start going to our offices, we'll be able to start seeing each other locally, but travel is going to be restricted for a long time in many different countries. And I think too that this whole situation where companies who might have been resisting doing remote work and engaging via video conferences, now that they've been dragged kicking and screaming into it, they'll start to say, hey, you know, this ain't so bad. Once we got used to it, it's not so bad. So I think you'll see a shift in overall business communication towards this as a. As a standard way of working.

I am. What are we, four weeks now? I don't know. Based on where you are, your mountain time zone. Edmonton, Alberta. Okay. I had to say, like a typical American, we have to think about our Canadian towns and where.

Oh, no, that's what, that's what we do too. Because God forbid you mix up Alberta and Ontario.

So I would never.

We are always very clear.

Well, but one thing I've noticed. So I'm four weeks into this Covid environment that I'm in and like you, you and I have very similar businesses. My business completely shifted in 48 hours, 72 hours, and I have to pat myself on the back, if I could about recognizing that there was going to be. It was going to be tumultuous. It was going to be a complete shift in how we do. And I think this was just my FEMA antenna that went off and knowing my client base, which was very in person.

Right.

Like, and I had just come from an annual meeting in New Orleans that face to face, the training where I stand up in front of a room all day and in industries that count on the face to face, I predicted that this shift was definitely going to happen. And sure enough, I mean, I'm four weeks into it and I've done. In terms of workshops, I feel like I've done seven or so, seven or eight, like formal workshops that I would not have done two months earlier.

Yep.

I feel like we're here and businesses.

Right.

Are already doing that. Are you noticing that with your clients?

Well, absolutely. You know, like you were saying, we. The industry that we often work in is very face to face. Now, I do have. Excuse me. I do work with a number of clients virtually and online and have for some time. But for so many others, it's face to face or bust. And when they're dealing with their clients, it's either the phone or in person. There's no video, there's no remote going on. And once again, like you, in the space of 48 hours, every face to face engagement just went up in smoke. And it was more a, okay, the world has now come to an end. It wasn't that. It was, okay, we're still going to need to talk. It's going to happen online. That's what everyone will have to shift to. But there is going to be an adjustment period for people who aren't used to it. And that's what we're seeing right now is this big adjustment period where everyone is saying, at first it was. Everyone was saying, what platform do we use? That conversation is still happening because there's different security issues with different platforms. There's quality, there's big differences in quality between the different platforms. But at first the conversation was very, very tech heavy. Now the conversation is becoming more aware of, oh, hey, wait a minute. There's also an etiquette to this. There's also different ways of doing it. And oh, my God, now that I'm on the platform, I realize I look like a walking corpse. Maybe that's a joke I shouldn't make right now. I apologize. Like, wow, I am pale. And why does my chin look like that? And, oh, I don't know if I like this or not.

Right. Well, full disclosure, I did an interview an hour prior to you, and I wanted to wear a different palette and I was wearing tan. And, you know, the coloring, everything looked good and I was looking at the optics, but Then when I played it back, it was a really unflattering blouse. I looked like I gained 80 pounds just from the blouse. Right. And I thought, okay, this is a blouse for standing up in front of a room, but not for sitting down. So this is why I wanted to bring you on. It's not. This is not a podcast episode about how to do a zoom call or how to video conference. There is. You can't. You can't turn on a computer and be on it for 30 seconds without hitting an article or a post about how to do a zoom call or how to do a video conference. But what you are offering to the listener right now is the polish.

Yes.

What you need to do that polish and etiquette to make you look like a pro. Now that we are changing this entire landscape of how we're communicating, and it's predominantly going to be video for quite some time, which I think, if you ask me, I think this is going to be around for good. Maybe not at the level, maybe the percentage time will change, but video conferencing now is going to be a part of almost every business and industry, wouldn't you agree?

It's going to be a huge part. Once people normalize to it, they won't go back. And, you know, there's a few reasons for that. An obvious reason for that is that the savings in terms of travel and time is massive. Huge time cost here. And it doesn't mean that we're never going to get together in person. In person will still exist. It will still be very strong. But you might start to see people saying, hey, maybe that quarterly meeting, three of them can happen, or two of them can happen online and we get together for one or two others, people across the country, because now we're saving all of this time and money. Or maybe that, you know, that half day session doesn't need to be in person. You know, we've done training online before and it actually worked out pretty well. So maybe we do more of those, but scaled to an online environment. And then there are also optics that businesses can really glom onto with this because they can use this transition to largely online and video conference engagement as a way to say, hey, look, we're greening up our business.

Mm, okay.

Yeah, we're greening up our business. So there's so many advantages to it. And once we normalize, once we get used to it, it's going to become second nature very quickly.

Okay. Okay, now here's our starting point. The listener. Right now, I can almost Guarantee has been forced into some video call at some point over the last four weeks. All right. Either kicking or screaming, whatever it is. I myself have been doing online workshops. I'm collaborating with a colle and we have done these online workshops. And I have a set of standards where I need it to be a very, very high level. And when we had one minor glitch that happened at the end of it, I was in a ball, crying on my office floor. I mean, I was like, the stress. There is so much stress involved, right?

So much stress.

So much stress. But let's talk about. Let's start here because I know this will be a universal question. What is the number one mistake that people make when it comes to video conferencing, or at least their approach to it? Let's just start here.

Number one mistake is not paying attention to your camera angle.

The camera angle.

Okay, camera angle. I know that that sounds like a really technical and fiddly thing to start off at, but it happens a ton. Now. This is a mistake that I see with people who have never really done much video conferencing, but also, oddly enough, people who are really accustomed to using video conferencing apps casually, like FaceTime and Facebook Messenger. You pop on for a chat with your mom or your friend or whatever, and all that you have to do is give access to your camera and microphone and off you go. But when you're used to using things casually or you've never paid attention to where the camera angle is, you put it in places where it doesn't exactly work for you. And I don't just mean where it doesn't make you look good. Yes, we want to look good on camera, but what we're trying to do with these video conferencing meetings and video conferencing in the workplace is recreate as close as possible an in person experience. That's what we're trying to do. When your camera angle is shooting upwards from your lap, or you're, you know, what I call the recluse? So hidden off in the corner because for some reason angled up towards the ceiling, or you're the close talker, so it's right in at your face. Those are angles that we never talk to each other from in person. Because if you were in person and it was shooting up your nose, it literally one of the people would be lying on the boardroom table staring up the other person's nose. It's weird. Yes, it's weird. And it throws you off. And that's why camera Angle is such a problem because it throws you off. So immediately it takes us away from that, as close to in person as possible experience, and becomes a whacking big distraction. It's distracting for the people listening, and it's distracting for the person speaking because we all know that we're checking ourselves out on camera.

Right? But, okay, so you bring up a good point. Again, these distinctions as a moderator of these online workshops. Just this past week, for instance, I gave one, and when I'm on, I was using zoom at the time. So we had 30 people on the call. It's 30 faces. Because I had a co moderator, I had time to look at who the participants were and what they were doing. And every single one, with the exception of maybe one or two who were in an office, it was the uplook where people are looking down, which is unflattering for everyone. Right. And their resting face either looks bored out of their minds or they're just not paying attention. But that's just the appearance that it gives. They could be 100% tuned into it. But when people have that resting face, I think be mindful that your moderator, too, is looking at that face.

We're staring at each other. And cameras are relentless and unforgiving, and they don't pick up on nuances like muscle tension, other cues that in person we would be able to consciously or subconsciously pick up on and use to determine whether or not someone was engaged. All of that is dampened on camera. We get a little, but not as much as we do in person. So it's almost like you want to put on a bit of a show of attentiveness. So, you know, your attention face. And I'm making big air quotes knowing that no one can actually see them. Your attention face might be a little more attentive, just a tiny bit. You know that the person on the other end of the screen can see that.

So that's the participant face. I'm just a participant.

You know what? That's a great expression. There's resting face and there's participant face. You want participant face, and you want that camera angle to be from an angle where someone can clearly see that you are physically and mentally engaged. So basically, it needs to be in the same line as if that camera is a person sitting on the other side of the table from you.

Okay.

So the camera that your laptop or your desktop have. So you and I obviously. I'm looking at you. You obviously have a desktop. I have a desktop, and it's lifted. So I'M mindful of it. But I would say most of the participants that I have been online with are using a laptop or an iPad or a tablet. And they're looking down, so we're looking down. So what can someone do in terms of a participant and they have a laptop. Like, where should they be putting the laptop? Propping it up.

Yeah, you want to prop that sucker up. And this goes for laptops, smartphones, tablets. Whatever device it is you're using to connect, you want to raise it up until that little camera aperture is basically, if you are sitting upright, you want that aperture of the camera to be in line with your eyeballs.

Okay, eye level, Matter what? Eye level. Okay, eye level.

So find every dusty old textbook that you have in your house, get your kids game boxes, make your rickety tower and prop your device on it. No one can see the rickety tower that your device is propped up. Yes, it does not matter. But you want to raise it up to your eye level.

Okay, great advice. Now let's continue on the optics. In a room, lighting is critical. Now, you have a lot of light on you. Is it natural or artificial?

My office is in the basement, so it is dungeon dark down here. And what I have in my room is. And this is something that, by the way, listeners, you do not need to get this. There's other ways around it. I have a big ring light. So this is a photography light. Works beautifully. It was like 100 bucks on Amazon. And I love it. It makes things easy. But you don't need big professional light. You just need a lot of it. So run around your home and grab every lamp you can find. Flashlights work really well. You know, rubber band them to a post. Flashlight flashlights.

Oh, interesting.

And they're directional. So if you have a tripod at home or a selfie stick or something that you can stand on your desk, you can strap the flashlight to that and direct it at your face.

Oh, fascinating. A couple of them, yes.

But it's volume of light, and you want the light to be coming at your face, not behind you.

Yes. Okay. Which another critical point is you don't want to have your computer, you don't want the window behind you. Yeah, that always looks bad. Too many. Yeah, common error. Too many people do that. Windows in front or on the side are nice, like a nice light. And I'll admit, I still, I have the same. I bring lights just like you because I have a windowless office. But I'm missing half my room, doesn't have the light. And I Need to bring more light into it. So the flashlight is a great idea. Okay. Now what else in terms of optics? What should people be mindful of in terms of the background? Like what people are looking at?

Neat and tidy. Simple rule. Make it neat, make it tidy. It doesn't need to be a really fancy wall. It doesn't need to be, you know, logo, your, your, your company's branded banners. Right. Doesn't need to be anything like that. It just needs to look presentable. So I go by the judgmental sister in law rule you've set up in your house.

I'm laughing. I don't even know what it is and I love it already. Okay.

If your judgy sister in law was coming over, which wall in your house would probably impress her the most? That becomes your video conference.

Oh, I love it. Okay. The judgiest person. You know, it's funny. Yeah. Okay, now I. So I will show that my, you know, where I get a little judgy. This just came up in a conversation yesterday when I was talking about the background of a co moderator and there is just a lot of stuff going on, you know, like lanyards from, you know, from all the conferences that he had been to. And there's a mirror and there's like all these things. And I'm just gently trying to, you know, tell him like, maybe we could just work on the optics. And he loved to make fun of, you know, my one plant. And I know I only have one plant here and I know I probably need some other prop, but I just have this white shiplap because I don't want to compete against what is behind me. But people are, for the most part, I'd say most people are competing with their background.

They're competing with their background. And now everyone has their own personal aesthetic. I know people who think that anything other than, than white shiplap or a blank wall or something like that is just. It's terrible, it's atrocious, it's unprofessional, it shouldn't happen. That's their aesthetic behind me right now, which is what I normally have behind me is one of my bookcases. And it has, you know, a couple of, a couple of little items and a few books on it. I like the bookcase look.

I do too.

And a lot of people go for that. It's not to everyone's taste, but it's still neat and professional. You're allowed to have personal effects behind you. That's okay, but it shouldn't look like they're taking over. I think that a couple personal items is really nice because it kind of makes us feel like we know each other a bit better now we've gotten a glimpse into someone's personal space so it can actually humanize you a little bit. But you don't want a million pictures of the kids. You don't necessarily want all of your degrees and your diplomas. It does need to be some sense of order and calm behind you.

Calm.

Oh, I like that. I like that. And in some cases people might feel, or they'll set up their video conferencing call in almost a two calm place, like it's their bedroom and there'll be clothes on the bed. And I get it, like you're a participant, you're not presenting. You don't need to be in an office with all these lights. But as a presenter, I can't. I'm sitting and staring at that person's bed saying, just pick up your clothes.

Just pick up your clothes. Make your bed. That's along with neat and tidy. My other rule for backgrounds is no beds, no bathrooms, no kitchens.

Yes.

No beds, no bathrooms, no kitchens. Now the bathroom thing is obvious.

I like it.

The bed thing is just, it's simply too personal. Like there's certain areas that you let your judgy sister in law see or your co workers, and that's probably one of them. And the same thing with kitchens. Even if it's a really beautiful kitchen, even if it's very tidy and neat, it's not a work, it's not a space where you would ever do work. So there's a little bit of cognitive dissonance going on there when people see that. And it's just better to turn it towards a blank wall. If you have no blank walls, pin some curtains up, get a tension rod, stick that in a doorway and video against the tension rod with a curtain hung on it.

Now you bring up a good point of the do's and the don'ts, certainly. But I'm thinking of. Now we're in this BCAC before coronavirus, after coronavirus environment and so many people are working from home and sometimes they may not have one an office, they may not have a room that is aptly decluttered. They may be forced to go into an area that may not be ideal. But let's talk about this grace period, so to speak. My judgment, even though I'm secretly judging people, of course, but people are coming to this coronavirus environment in different phases and they're coming around slowly. So I feel personally I'm less judgy than I typically would be when it comes to backgrounds and so on and so forth. But I think coming out of month one and going into month two now, people need to tighten the ship just a little because we are going to be here for a while, especially these video conferencing scenarios. So what do you think about this grace period of people using video conferencing?

We are getting rapidly past it.

Okay, explain that.

Here's the difficulty. Now, it's hard to compare because the response and the measures that have been taken really do vary from obviously from country to country. Certainly, I know in the US there's a lot of variation from state to state. So for some people this might be just week one or two. For us it's week four. But at some point we have to say, okay, how am I going to make this work? And I think that the faster you figure out how to make it work, how to give off the image that you want to give off, keep the professionalism, dial that up, the faster this will become one less area of stress, one less source of stress. So we're still expected to be working. Obviously our businesses, as much as possible need to continue, as does life. But after that first week of flailing, at that point it's time to start figuring things out. Because what we shouldn't be wasting our very limited and very precious emotional and mental energy on is wondering whether or not we look like an ass on the video conference. To me, it's an area of work that we can so quickly remove the stress from and so easily remove the stress from that, knowing we're going to be spending a ton of time on video conferencing. Take 30 minutes to go around your house and say, okay, what is the one wall that will work? Where is the one area where the lighting is decent, Where I can make this look like. Where I can, when I see myself on camera, feel like the professional I am? Let me find that area, let me figure out how to set it up. And now whenever you have a video conference, you don't need to think about it anymore and you won't turn on the camera and have that jarring moment where you're like, but does my chin look like that?

Right, right.

Completely washed out. You won't have that moment anymore. So the video conferencing itself becomes less of a stress based activity.

Right? I think you're right in terms of the timing too. Even though you and I are both at four weeks, other people are one to two weeks. In more rural areas it might be one to two weeks. But I would say by, let's say Easter, you know, the day after Easter, you know, Monday, everyone should be have up leveled their video conferencing skills by this mid April point.

Yep.

Yeah.

And here's the deal with what we're discussing today. None of this is related to the technology. You don't need equipment to get this effect. You need a bit of lighting and you need to figure out what people can see and what your camera angle is like. Well, it's, you know, it's not the platform, it's your awareness of how to make yourself look the way you want on camera.

Right. Okay, so now let's go to the tech. Let's go to the techie thing. And again, like just hearkening back a bit to the grace period. I don't even like having zoom interviews on my podcast because the quality isn't that good. And I, and I always put myself in the, I guess in the headspace of my listener. I want them to hear crisp, clear audio. And even our interview is not going to be at that same level because we're on a zoom call. So there is that grace period that I give and I also. And there's some of that give. You know that I understand that there's techie issues even as you and I speak. You know, I know we're going in and out because I know I have kids that are supposed to be doing their homework right now, but I can see PS4 through the window, so.

Oh yeah, my four year old's plugged into the tablet.

Yes, I'm fighting WI fi issues, but let's talk about the tech. What about sound quality? What is the best. What should the average person be investing in for audio and sound? So sound for a mic, but also headphones. Like how are they navigating that?

Yeah, you know that you say that. What should the average person be doing? I think that's really important. One thing I don't want anyone to feel pressure to do is feel like they have to set up their own Pro quality home YouTube studio or podcast studio in order to make the most of this. That's not what we're going for. And no one expects that of a leader or a manager or an employee coming from their home office if that's the quality that they're doing. Unless that is their business. And for you and I, this is our business, so we step it up for the average person. One thing I recommend not doing is Using those gigantic beats by Dre style, like sound isolating headphones.

Yes.

That look like personal protective equipment.

Are you gonna tell me it's optics only or is it optics and there's sound?

It's optics only. This is optics only related to optics.

Okay.

Because you are either going to look like you're getting prepared to be shot out of a cannon or that you are a, you know, mid age teenager who's still living in their mom's basement. It is the fastest route to looking unpolished on camera.

Okay. All right. So just optically. Okay.

Optically. Try to avoid the giant headphones in terms of sounding good and making your audio work. Plugging in with the headset that came with your cell phone will work just fine. Doesn't need to be a fancy mic. What you do want it to be is a mic that is close to your mouth because that's going to make a big difference in terms of how well you're picked up. And, you know, a lot of these cell phone mics are unidirectional, so they focus in on only one area of noise, which cuts down the background noise. So if your kids are rampaging around, which mine are right now, the microphone won't pick it up, and that's a good thing. But the other thing that plugging in with a, you know, just basic earbud microphone headset will do is it means that your speakers won't pick up, or rather your microphone won't pick up the sound that's coming from your speakers, which can be really important. Many laptop mics are the integrated mics that are in your laptop or your or your cell phone are a little overly sensitive and they pick up what's coming out of the speakers, which creates noise and interference and people cutting in and out and everyone getting really annoyed because now you can't understand each other. So jacking in with a headset like that, where the sound is going into your ears makes a huge difference.

Does it matter? I'm using now my Apple I AirPods. Yeah, the cool jacked up ones. And it's Bluetooth. Is there any difference between quality if I were to do the cord and typical one that comes with the phone?

Compared to Bluetooth, I find the corded ones are more reliable. Oh, sure. Okay. That's the only difference. And I will admit I do not have the jacked up Apple AirPod ones, which I hear are fabulous. And I see a lot of people who do this professionally and regularly using them, so they must be good. But my luddite analog knee jerk reactions be like, no, no cords. Cords always.

Yes.

I think it's just that my devices. The Bluetooth on them sucks.

Oh, okay.

So I go with cords, but if you want a really good, reliable device, go for it.

Okay. And for me. So I use the AirPod Pro for listening, but my mic is a shotgun mic that I normally use for my podcast. So I kind of have it set, and it's aimed towards my sternum because it's, you know, it's a directional mic right there. But I see people using cords all the time with the mic, and it's absolutely fine, and it works out well. Okay, now what about. Is. What about the background? The virtual background? I know a lot of people are using it. Like, I'm on calls where someone will be in San Francisco. Okay, you're already making a face. So what do you, you know, like virtual backgrounds?

No, like virtual background.

What are your thoughts about them? Tell me why.

Okay. If you're connecting with your team, these are people, you know, people you hopefully like and trust, and you just want to lighten the mood. You know what, for a little joke. Sure. Pop on the virtual background of the. Of being shot into space or the. Or the palm trees blowing in the breeze. Sure, that's fine. That's fun. But the problem with virtual backgrounds is that what they have to do in order to make that background show up means that any movement you do will be clipped. So you get these. These halos going around where all of a sudden you move back and forth a little bit, you fidget, as we all do, you wave your hand, and then there's these weird tracers that appear where some. It's like peeking through a curtain where we can see what's behind you. It's not glowing palm trees, but that creates huge visual distractions. Huge visual distraction. And to me, it's not the virtual background itself that's the distraction. It's that clipping that happens around the person's body.

Okay.

Yes.

And it drives me absolutely bonkers.

Yeah. You become fixated on it. I know exactly what you're talking about. Yeah.

It's, you know, you might as well be waving a shiny wand in front of my eyes and say, ignore this. Ignore this movement. Ignore the sparkles. I can't, because my eyeballs, my little lizard brain is saying, oh, that's weird. And it's distracting, so don't try to hide a crummy background. A crummy backdrop with a virtual background.

Yeah. So the only time I feel it can be Deployed is one if you're a true techie, which on my workshops I have a third person who is my techie. He has a green screen behind him and he has a branded virtual background. It's nice and subtle. It's no distraction whatsoever. And then there was a case a friend of mine shared with me that she was on a conference call at work and this was a few weeks ago when one of the participants was at a hotel in Florida and had to take a work call outside wearing a bikini and a swimsuit. Right. And the boss very gently had to say, next time perhaps you could put a cover up on or put on the virtual background.

You know what would have been the easiest solution? Yes. Audio only.

Audio only.

Audio only.

Yes, Great point.

Yeah. I think that it is perfectly acceptable if you are taking an unexpected work call. I think it's perfectly acceptable to say, you know what, I'm not quite set up for this right now, so let's just take it to audio.

Great. And also that's a great point. Also audio. If you are having WI fi issues and you don't want to pull so much on broadband, just do audio only. Just take the video off. Okay? Yes. Oh, Lauren, these are such good tips. And again, it's not just, it's. Well, a lot of it is common sense video conferencing. But I like the approach that you're taking is the polish. What's the etiquette? How can you just add a little bit of polish to it to up level your presentation there? Now I also think part of my kind of toolkit, my response kit mindset in terms of public relations. I like the idea of leaders becoming comfortable with this idea of using video conferencing. I from this point on. Now a part of my like PR marketing response kit mindset for my leaders is video conferencing and how to add that polish. Especially now I think we're going to boomerang that a lot of our employees are going to be itching to work from home. We're going to get this remote work mindset and leaders are going to have to be comfortable giving meetings and directions online. So wouldn't you agree that maybe if you're running a business or you're a leader of a business that you should have your video skills up to a little different level?

Correct.

You absolutely want that to be up leveled. If you're a leader in your business, you know, maybe you are right at the top of the chain. Maybe you're somewhere around there. You want to have those Skills really propped up at this point. And part of that is, again, video conferencing is a visual medium. We are a visual species first. So all humans, if we can see, if we have sight, that's the first place that we take in and interpret information. So what people are seeing of you on the camera during video conference is going to affect how they interpret everything you say. And it affects it at an emotional, very often subconscious level. So if you are a leader, you need to be presenting calm control that you've got the situation, maybe not the situation underhand, what the situation might be, but that you are poised to deal with things. And that poise gets reflected by what people see of you on camera during the video conference. Hence, having a good appearance, having good lighting, having a good backdrop. It's to reinforce your suitability and your ability to steer the ship.

Oh, well said. Well said. It reminded me of one more question. This was going to be my transition at the end, but I think this is important because it's something that I think about. You said appearance. We talked about lighting. Let's talk about clothing, hair, makeup. What are some tips that you can offer around that?

The clothing is fairly simple. Usually it's whatever you would wear in your normal work environment. That is what you want to be showing up to on video conference. There are a few caveats. Sometimes what looks good in person, and you mentioned this, Molly, Sometimes what looks really good in person does not look so good sitting down.

Right.

Kind of funny, because I am wearing a black turtleneck right now. If I roll the collar up so that it's where I would wear it in person, I get this weird floating head effect and I'm on camera. So the collar right now is actually rolled quite a ways down. You want to kind of test out your different clothing options on camera and adjust as you go along. Something that I've realized about my space and my camera and my lighting in my office is that brightly colored lips. Basically, not even brightly colored lipstick, any kind of lipstick. The color on my camera gets dramatically amplified. I have to go fairly neutral on it. Otherwise it looks like I'm wearing clown makeup. But I have to wear more blush than I normally would because the lighting washes me out. Yes, Tweaks and these adjustments. Just pay attention to how you look on camera and say, okay, this is the look that I'm going for. This is the impression that I want to give. Here are a couple tweaks that make it work in this medium. But aside from that, it's what you would Wear to the office.

Okay, Lauren, share with the listeners what you have, what you're offering now for people to help them in this new video conferencing environment.

Well, of course, a lot of my clients have been reaching out and saying, hey, you know, my staff is a hot mess, can you please help out? So I've really ramped up the offerings that I'm giving in terms of polishing up your overall appearance, your overall presentation skills on camera, on video conferencing, adapting your in person presentations for online delivery. There's a lot of different skills there. And what I will have coming up fairly shortly, within the next couple of weeks is online training that anyone is able to sign up for on basically an extension of what we've spoken about today. So we're going to dig a little more in depth into creating a nice setup, how you can use what you've got around the house to give the impression that you want how to speak so that the audio constraints are less of a problem online as there are different speech patterns that are useful to adopt when you're video conferencing. So this is training that will not require you to invest in any kind of heavy technology, but will help you ramp up that professionalism overall. And if that is something that you're listening to today's podcast and you're saying, hey, I need in on that, or hey, this other person needs in on that, head to my website, laurensergi.com and just sign up for the newsletter because that's when I'll be, that's where. Where rather I will be releasing the information on how to get in on this training.

Oh, that's wonderful. And I think it's going to be so valuable. We are in that place. So even if you are not someone running business online, you don't necessarily have a virtual business. Even if it's brick and mortar, you're still going to be doing a lot of your business operations and interactions are going to be on video now. And there are things that you probably never think about and that's why we have professionals like you who can help people up level their video conferencing skills.

Amen.

Lauren, thank you so much. Thank you so much. And I appreciate you speaking with me and sharing all of your wisdom on this. I feel that you have found a niche Canadian A you found a niche of that polishing your presentation on video. It's going to be critical for a lot of people. So I'm so happy that I had a chance to speak with you kind of early in this environment. I'll probably touch base with you again and find out what's changed, if there's anything that's changed down the road.

Absolutely. And I'm sure it will change. And you know what? That's kind of exciting. I'm curious to see where this is going to take us in terms of a new, widely accepted form of connection and form of communication style.

All right, thank you so much, Lauren.

Thanks, Molly. It's been a pleasure.

I want to thank Lauren for joining me on the podcast. You can find more information about Lauren on our website@lurensurgey.com and remember, you can.

Find more resources for communicating with your.

Audiences and stakeholders in my Response kit.

I know many of you are overwhelmed.

With the abrupt changes in your work, how to communicate with your audiences, your key stakeholders. I'm offering workshops for CEOs and communicators, but I also have tip sheets and templates for free to help you with your organization's response to the pandemic. For more information, it can be found on my website, mollymcpherson.com or responsekit.org.

Sam.