Body Language 87 Zoom Boom 4 Administration

May 30, 2020

This is the last of four short articles highlighting the differences from in-person body language and body language when using a virtual platform.

There are lots of administrative considerations that can add to the quality of your virtual meeting.

First of all, if you are the host or co-host of the meeting, recognize that your view is different from the participants.

It is a good idea to have a second computer within eyesight where you are logged in as a participant (mute the mic and disable the live video so you show up as a gray rectangle.)

Having a second computer allows you to see the screen experience that all participants see. Often when doing screen share, breakouts, or polling, you can know if something is not working for the participants and fix it quickly.

It is a good idea to have someone serve as the co-host, but make sure this person is familiar with all of the controls. The co-host allows you, as the facilitator of the meeting, to pay full attention to the individuals on the screen and not be tied up mentally trying to follow the chat or question areas.

Also, the co-host can accept people who are waiting in the waiting room.

I picked up a neat trick a couple weeks ago that really works well. As facilitator of the meeting, I would always play the role of “host,” and I would let someone else be the co-host. I found that it is better to reverse roles and let the second in command be the “host” while I was designated the co-host.

The reason reversing roles works to my advantage is that only the host can assign people to the specific breakout room for them. All other functions can be handled equally well by the co-host.

If I, as facilitator of the meeting, am also the host, then I have to scramble around after people enter the meeting assigning them to the breakout rooms. Having my second in command take care of that task while I pay full attention to the participants works much better for me.

There is a method of preassigning people to breakout rooms, but I found that to be difficult because you never know how many no-shows there are going to be. When I use breakout rooms, it is often for role play exercises where each individual has a different set of instructions.

If the participants for your meeting are spread out geographically, you need to deal with the issue of time zones. Try to balance the timing of meetings so that certain members of the group are not always forced to participate at an inconvenient time.

Sharing your screen helps the quality of meetings greatly, but do take the time to practice and get used to this feature. I find it best to not allow all participants to share their screen because it can get a bit frantic going from one person to the next.

I avoid that problem by disallowing all participants from sharing their screens, at least while the meeting is getting started. You can always enable screen share later in the session if that would be helpful.

One detail to remember in screen share is that when you go to share a screen, you need to check the button labeled “Share Computer Sound” if you will be showing a video. Failing to so this will mean that the participants will not be able to hear the sound track.

The annotate button at the top is helpful to let people be engaged in the presentation. It allows participants to type messages on the screen or put little icons, like hearts or X’s. Play around with the annotate feature before using it live with a group. Familiarize yourself with how things work.

One precaution with annotation is that you need to clear all notations before advancing to another slide or the current annotation will be superimposed on the new slide.

It is best to have someone other than the facilitator of the meeting monitoring the chat room and the questions function. Dialog can become a big distraction if you are simultaneously trying to provide the content.

For larger events you may want to have two helpers: a moderator to handle the questions and chat and a technical expert to handle any possible glitches.

I hope these tips have been helpful to you. I have only been doing this work for about 5 weeks, so there are probably a lot more tricks I need to learn in the future.

Zoom is quite helpful with training, and there are a number of YouTube videos to explain the various features of this tool. I believe the new “normal” for how we work will include a lot more remote meetings, so it is best to invest some energy in learning how to do it well.


This is a part in a series of articles on “Body Language” by Bob Whipple “The Trust Ambassador.”


Do Not Over Prepare

December 8, 2012

Stock PhotoSpeaking in front of a large audience can be a terrifying experience. Studies have shown that fear of speaking in public is stronger than the fear of death for many people.

Why do we put so much pressure on ourselves to appear perfect? I will offer some insight into the dilemma and share an alternate path that leads to lower stress and better performance. I will use public speaking as an example and then generalize the concept to cover many other areas of our lives.

When we think about why people get nervous in front of a large crowd, it seems pretty obvious. We are afraid we are going to goof up, so we practice our part over and over, attempting to perfect and polish our delivery so we do not look stupid in front of others. The irony is that, after a certain point, the more we attempt to perfect our speech, the more likely we are to actually flounder with our delivery.

I witnessed a professional speaker who was giving a presentation to over 1000 other professional speakers. Talk about pressure! She had practiced her speech so many times she was assured that she would not make a mistake. But when she faced the stage lights, all of her preparation and build up actually made her goof up. Reason: when she got flustered and messed up a word or two, then she forgot her place in the memorized text and stumbled badly.

Finally, in desperation, she pulled out a typed paper with the words. After reading a few lines, she put the paper away and tried to go back to the memorized material. The same thing happened again; she totally blanked out at the first misstep and had to resort to her printed text again. It happened a third time as well. I expect that day will live in her mind as an example of a disastrous day. The audience was uncomfortable as well, although we all supported her and had great empathy for her pain.

Think about the alternative, where she would know her content cold because it came from her heart, not her rote memory. All she needed were a few key points to recall the topic areas, and she could wax eloquent with no miscues. It was her desire to be perfect that led to her being embarrassingly imperfect.

Here is a stark contrast to the speaker described above. At that same speaker’s conference, Brian Tracy, the great author, speaker, and philosopher, was presented with a lifetime achievement award by the National Speakers Association. The award is the highest honor a speaker can receive, and Brian proceeded to demonstrate why he was worthy of the award.

He got up to give a 10-minute acceptance speech: one of the most important speeches of his life, out of thousands of speeches. As he started the speech, he had no idea what was about to happen to him. His lavaliere microphone started to die, and the audience could only hear every other word. Horrified, the sound technician rushed on stage with another lavaliere mic, and Brian carried right on as if nothing had happened. Two minutes later the replacement mic also died in the same way. Brian just stood there smiling at the audience until the technician came out with a hand held mic, and Brian was able to finish his speech.

He did not get flustered, or angry, or sad, he just stood there smiling until the situation had cleared. Doing that in front of 1000 professional speakers took real poise. Brian was even gracious to the bumbling technician, who was undoubtedly dying a thousand deaths over the incident. Brian was sincerely grateful for the honor and was not about to let a cantankerous sound system mess up his moment.

My method of rehearsing a program is to mock up the platform and go over a program from my prepared key points a few times, but I make no attempt to memorize any part of the actual wording except for the very first sentence and the very end of the program. Brian Tracy taught me that the first sentence should be memorized verbatim. His reasoning was that “well begun is half done.” After the first sentence rings out, then it is as if I am having a natural conversation with the assembled group like I was talking with a friend over the kitchen table. This method allows me to be more authentic and relaxed. If I make a mistake and stumble, it is not the end of the world at all, I just look for ways to make it humorous.

Seth Godin had a blog entry I read recently about the same concept. He wrote, “Perfecting your talk, refining your essay, and polishing your service until all elements of you disappear might be obvious tactics, but they remove the thing we were looking for: you.” He even implied that some top performers inject some kind of faux imperfection in their routine because it tends to endear them to the audience. Personally, I don’t need to inject imperfections in my programs; they have enough of them naturally. I am okay with an occasional goof, because it makes me more human and credible to my audiences, and that is a very positive thing. Somehow having them join me in laughing at myself is a kind of bonding action with the audience.

The same kind of problem exists for all of us in many different areas of our lives. By trying to be perfect (which we are not) we put immense pressure on ourselves. We get uptight as we try to rehearse every possible situation and then lose our train of thought in the complexity of the moment. For example, the other day I was at a very formal dinner, and I was trying to put on my best manners. In my attempt to be perfect and charming, I was paying more attention to the conversation than to what my hands were doing, and I spilled a full gravy boat of salad dressing all over the table. Oops!

When we put too much pressure on ourselves to be perfect, we tend to cause the very thing we are trying to prevent. The antidote is to simply be yourself with all your warts and problems. Relax, so you can roll with the situation naturally, and you will come out ahead most of the time. People are going to forgive you, even though you feel totally embarrassed at the time. The trick is to think about the major issues, but not try to work out the fine detail in advance. Let your natural self take care of the fine grain actions. Know your material but avoid over preparation.

We need to understand that nobody goes through life without making some embarrassing gaffes. What makes the difference is how we react when an unexpected snafu occurs. If we are calm and make light of our foible, the incident will pass, and our long term credibility will be intact with the embarrassing moment nothing more than a humorous footnote: like my spilled salad dressing.

Try this big-picture method of preparing yourself for your next important meeting, speech, or social event. If you prepare and then relax to present naturally, you will usually come out just fine. If you are not good at coming up with a funny line after a mistake, then try taking some improvisation classes. They will help you become more spontaneous with humor. Another organization that has great techniques is Toastmasters. Get involved with your local chapter.