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With millions forced to stay indoors due to the Coronavirus pandemic, the concept of Work from Home (WFH) has gone mainstream. Working from home has its benefits: Reduced commutes, added convenience, increased family time, and has made it far more acceptable to wear sweatpants to "work".
At the same time, this new working dynamic has created complexities in how we communicate, especially as we add more people to the virtual space. Conducting meetings, delivering presentations, and teaching classes virtually can be challenging, and often requires new tactics and communication tools to make the best of this new communication dynamic. Eric Janssen welcomes back Eric Silverberg and Eli Gladstone of Speaker Labs to share their wisdom on how to be better communicators in the new WFH world.
The Ivey Entrepreneur Podcast is sponsored by Connie Clerici, QS ’08, and Closing the Gap Healthcare Group, Inc.
Transcript
You're listening to the Ivey Entrepreneur Podcast from the Pierre L. Morrissette Institute for entrepreneurship at the Ivey Business School. In this series Ivey entrepreneur, and Ivey faculty member, Eric Johnson will anchor the session.
Eric Johnson
Why don't you guys introduce yourselves for the audience that may not know you yet. Go ahead.
Eric Silverberg
I'm Eric, hope you can recognize me by my voice because you can actually see us. So hopefully I sound a little bit different. But I am Eric. And I was one of the co founders of Speaker Labs. And I get to with my friend, Eli, I teach people how to become amazing public speakers best job in the world.
Eli Gladstone
And I'm Eli, the other co founder. And we've been at this for a little over three years now. And it has predominantly just been us in a room with a group of people talking about public speaking, demonstrating public speaking, watching public speaking. And since all this stuff with COVID-19 has hit, that's definitely changed the game for us. And it's exciting to try to think about how that impacts communication, which is a big part of what we talk about every day.
Eric Johnson
Great. Well, thank you guys for the reintroduction. So, to kick things off, I'm seeing a lot of content on how to transition to digital, and how to manage a remote team in this new reality. But, I'm actually hearing two different sides of the story. So on one hand, I actually did do a little bit of homework before we're speaking today. And there are companies that having gone more remote than they normally would, team feedback is great because the teams are enjoying more flexibility. Clients are seeming to like it more, because the default is to go video versus go over the phone. So they feel like they're actually getting more face time, even if it's digital. The data supports that Net Promoter scores for some of those companies are actually higher now. And so there are some positives. On the negative side, however, having run the last two weeks of my classes digitally, it's it's actually very challenging. Digital communications is not in person communications. And so I thought I'd start with while there are some positives, maybe you guys can walk us through what's different about digital communications versus in person communications. And this is a prelude to why it's actually in my opinion, more challenging. So what's different about in person versus digital?
Eli Gladstone
I mean, there's a lot different. I think one thing I would just quickly comment on when you said, it seems like NPS is up and people are feeling good with more flexibility, that talks a lot about the positive experiences, but it doesn't necessarily talk about the positivity of outcomes. And I think part of what makes some of this type of communication is digital, remote communication challenging is that it's harder to get depth of communication, it's harder to get real meaningful connection around ideas. And ultimately, when people feel good, that contributes to more productivity and better outcomes. But ultimately, it's the quality of ideas and the quality of communication that people are able to share that contributes to the quality of outcomes. And so I'd be curious to see a more longitudinal study on how are businesses performing? Not just how are people rating their quality of their experience getting to take phone calls, maybe in sweatpants?
Eric Silverberg
Yeah, the other thing I'll say, too, is that I think maybe part of the reason that there's some positivity around us all being forced to go to digital communication, is because one on one, digital communication isn't actually that bad. I think that when you're having a conversation with only one other person, it's really easy to digitally or virtually bounce ideas off each other and to have a conversation. I mean, we've all been speaking on the phone for our whole lives. And when you're speaking only one other person that works, but Eli and I, because of what we do for a living, we always look at communication through the lens of public speaking. And I think that specifically public speaking or speaking, one to many, virtually, is where things start to break down and start to suck a little bit. So it's not all communication, that that isn't as good virtually, I think it's mainly the one to many communication, making a presentation, leading your team discussion, those sorts of things, I think have probably suffered as a result of this.
Eric Johnson
Because this is this is better than a phone call. Our listeners probably won't be able to see us but we're recording this remotely. I can see you guys right now. So we're doing this recording over some Zoom technology so I can see you and I'd argue that this is better than us doing this over a phone call. I can see when you want to say something or when you don't, you can sort of lean back and I can I can read your body language. You're nodding right now you're smiling so you're agreeing with what I'm saying. So this is better than a phone call. But it's not better than an person. So last time we did this, we were in the same room together. And there's just a different energy when you can literally reach across the table and touch someone. So better than phone call this is worse than real life. I think.
Eli Gladstone
I Yeah, I would agree. I think there's really, there's two like categories and things that compromise the quality of communication. One is scale, the more people you have in a communication, the more diffusion of responsibility there is by people to speak. If you have 50 people listening to a speaker, then each person themselves doesn't feel the same responsibility to engage and respond. So scale can dilute the quality of communication. And distance can dilute the quality of communication. And distance via phone, like distance can be created by speaking over the telephone, it can be created by speaking through a camera, and even though we're seeing each other, there's a distance here. And when you're in person, there's this palpable energy that is available to you. Even though you're it doesn't feel like it's that different from us looking at each other through a camera, I can sense a movement about to happen, not just watch it happening. And so I think when you are dealing with remote communication, you're dealing with a distance that is hard to navigate sometimes. And if you add more people to the communication, and that's the public speaking element, you're now diluting the quality of communication by having more scale. And that's the challenging thing too.
Eric Johnson
Mm hmm. So let's try to divide this up, then what are what are the different types of public speaking or digital communications? Eric, you alluded to this, the one too many sort of kills off the feedback loop. So I know you you talk about this in some of your sessions. So what are the different types of communications? And are they the same digitally? Do they? Do they translate differently, break that down for us?
Eric Silverberg
I think they definitely translate differently digitally. On that note, a feedback loop though people always ask us in our courses, why public speaking is hard. And you mentioned feedback loop. And Eli mentioned diffusion of responsibility. And that's part of why public speaking is hard because you can't have a conversation. It's not iterative, or dialogical. Like it is when you're having normal conversations that aren't one tot many. And so the fact that the feedback loop suffers when you're public speaking in person, it's even worse when you're communicating digitally, because at least when I'm public speaking in person, I can at least read your facial expressions, I can ask for a show of hands. I can pick on someone in particular look at them and start, you know, asking them to contribute or or to discuss or to ask me a question. When you're public speaking virtually, I don't even know if anyone's paying attention. I don't know if they're actually listening. I can't tell if they have questions. If they do, they're probably not asking them. So it's getting the involvement from the audience that just seems to be impossible from or through a screen.
Eric Johnson
Yeah, we're laughing at you right now. Because your internet, your connection cut out, and it's just cut out for two seconds. And Eli and I are laughing because this is why it sucks.
Eric Silverberg
Yeah, that is why it suck. That's another reason why it sucks is because technology sometimes doesn't work. So what did you miss? Did everything I had to say?
Eric Johnson
Yeah, I heard I heard we heard most things you cut out for literally just enough two seconds, just enough to be laughable. Making fun of digital communication. So.
Eric Silverberg
All right, well Don't, don't edit that out, Leave, leave that leave that in the podcast. So people can can actually get a live view of why digital communication, sometimes sex will give it to that?
Eli Gladstone
Well, so I mean, we're talking about the different kinds of communication. When it comes to remote communication, you can have a conversation. And you can do that with one person, you can do that with three people, there's a certain number that when you cross that threshold, you've entered into, let's say, maybe a meeting, where you maybe have one person facilitating a conversation amongst a group of people, but it's not just free flowing open, everybody can contribute. And then the next layer to that is a presentation remotely, where there's one speaker and lots of listeners. And what happened here with three of us is Eric's thing cuts out a little bit, and we chuckle and we can comment on it. And if we wanted to, if we didn't get the gist of what he's saying, we could say, hey, Eric, you cut out for a second, try that again. But if it's a digital presentation, and it's let's say one speaker, with a room of 50 people, maybe it's a company kickoff meeting, or maybe it's a classroom and there's a teacher trying to teach a class to 50 students. If you cut out for a moment, if there's latency or lags or any tech glitch whatsoever, you don't really have the luxury of one person quickly saying, hey, wait, you cut out for a second. Can you try that again? And that's one of the things that makes digital presentations uniquely hard, which are different than maybe a digital conversation or a digital meeting.
Eric Johnson
Yeah. And you'd hoped that I guess I'm usually the guy on call if we have a team call and I'm not presenting or someone else is speaking, I'm not afraid to immediately say that something's not working. Like, stop, right? I can't, I can't hear you. something's not working. Usually, though, especially if you're, if you're not with a team, if it's one too many one 275 people like mine was, I can be going for 30 seconds, a minute, two minutes until someone types in the chat. Hey, you just so you know, we haven't heard you for the last three minutes like that ruins your flow.
Eric Johnson
Yeah, and it almost never happens there. You're in the minority of people who would right away say stop, stop, something's not working. No one does that only you do that. So you ended up probably not even even knowing that something was broken? Yeah.
Eric Johnson
So let's, let's keep going. Because I'm overloaded in my LinkedIn feed and news feeds with how to do this right, and all of the things that are great, and we'll get to some of the things in our opinion, that can make the suck less suck. But let's I wanted to get into why it sucks so bad. It's something that I wanted to start with, just based on digital, I think that being present in a conversation is going to be a competitive differentiator for at least the age group of students that I'm teaching. So I'm teaching right now primarily fourth year university students, you know, to call it 22 to 25 year olds, an ability for somebody to be present in a conversation and not be distracted, I think will be a competitive differentiator for that age demographic. But if you stick someone in front of a computer, in a classroom of someone pulls out their phone, I'm gonna call them on it right away. That's just the way that I am. Those are the norms of the class. On a computer, though, there's endless distractions that people can look up or type or messages pop up, or whatever. So I think one of the first things that makes it suck for me is that I can tell that I just don't have people as I would normally have them in a room. So that's, that's one for me why it sucks. But why does it suck for you guys?
Eric Silverberg
I just want to touch on that for one second, that exists in person too. But there's more you can do about it. Right? Well, if I see a student in one of our classes yawning or checking their phone, all I have to do is take three steps closer to them, and they put it down, they just sort of get it. There's nothing you can do when you're live in the room with people that makes them less distracted if you're noticing a distracted audience. But like you said, digitally you can. There's nothing you can do. The distractions are endless. So I agree with you on that.
Eli Gladstone
I also think it's the distracted audience element. It reminds me and sort of myself when I'm sitting down to watch a YouTube video. If I'm just watching YouTube video, I want to learn about something. So I look it up on YouTube, and I'm watching the video. I'm never just watching the video, I'm making a sandwich, I'm letting my dogs out. I'm buying something on Amazon while texting and responding to emails and watching the video. And obviously, I'm making a shittier sandwich, excuse my french, my dogs are getting let out maybe a little too late and peeing on the floor once in a while buying something on Amazon that's overpriced instead of searching for the right one, my text responses are less high quality, my emails are less effective. And my interpretation and understanding of the video is diluted. So the distracted audience thing is, I think a huge element not just for live digital presentations, or even digital conversations, but also for pre recorded digital presentations, which is an element that I think some people try to some people try to pre record a presentation and then share it digitally. So people can watch it on their own time, they don't have to worry as much about the time lag or latency. But then you run into that distracted audience times 10 because there's no immediate pressure of maybe they see me making the sandwich and therefore I shouldn't do it. So I think you've hit on a big one there. That's a huge one. I think another one that I struggle with when it comes to digital presentations is the best public speakers are people who prepare great content, and then share it meaningfully with their audience. But it's not that simple. Because sometimes what you've prepared isn't exactly what your audience wants. And so the real best public speakers prepare good content, share meaningfully with their audience and adapt to the best of their abilities. Given a limited understanding of their audience, the adaptation potential in a digital presentation is so much weaker. It's because you get less feedback. It's because there's less influence on the audience to get them off their phones or undistracted. And your ability to adapt and move on the fly to increase the quality of your idea transfer. It's so limited. And I think that sucks. Because ultimately the goal of communication at scale is to get ideas across meaningfully to more people.
Eric Johnson
Yeah, that's a great one. I feel like I can walk out of a class when I'm in person, and I can know whether it went well or poorly. You know, I can walk out and say something was off today. You know, I really tried to bring it but I just feel like it didn't resonate. I've walked out of the last four classes that I've done digitally. I don't really know. It's like, I feel like I'm bringing it and I sort of walk away and go I don't know I have no idea whether they actually got it or not, so I have a hard time reading, whether or not the crowd, whether I did well or not whether they actually got it.
Eli Gladstone
Yeah, I think that's a big one too. And a big, a big element of getting a sense of what people are perceiving whether they're getting it or not getting it is eye contact. And one of the funny things about digital communication, whether it's a conversation, a meeting or a presentation, is even though we can see each other right now, I'm looking at a picture of you, I'm not looking at you. If I stare into my camera right now, now it looks like I'm looking at you. But now I'm looking at my camera, and I'm not seeing you. And so there's this element of broken eye contact, you can see the person but you're not seeing them the same way, as when you're in person. And that's a eye contact is like that's the window to the soul, they say. So it's a, it's a big element of strong connection through communication that you lose digitally, just by the placement of the camera and the video that you're seeing.
Eric Silverberg
Yeah. While we're bashing digital conversations, yeah. Let's keep it up. Let's keep it going. One of the things that Eli and I believe makes for good presentations, or lessons or meetings, whatever you have, is making them entertaining. Because if they're not entertaining, if they're not fun, if they're not engaging, then it doesn't matter how valuable they are, because no one was really listening because they weren't engaged. But what you were saying, and I find it here, here's how I like to think of it. I mean, he, when I watch a funny movie by myself in my bedroom, I don't laugh, even if I think it's funny. But when I watched that exact same movie with a group of 10 friends, everyone lives. And that's a really good I think illustration of humans get their energy from each other presentations are more fun meetings are more fun when everyone's in the same room. And there's this, like, the emotions or the engagement in the room, it becomes contagious. Contagious is a dirty word these days, I shouldn't use that one. But that's sort of that's what it's like, everyone laughs together, everyone claps louder, everyone gets sad when something touching happens. And those feelings that naughty and shares, that's part of what makes a presentation memorable, meaningful and makes you want to listen. And when people were all sitting by themselves in their own rooms, that magic doesn't happen. And that sucks.
Eric Johnson
Yeah, or on mute, right? Maybe it is happening. Maybe some people are laughing, but most people are on mute. And you only catch it on video. If they're on mute and they go like that you can see them moving as if they're laughing. But it's not the same. You don't get that same energy.
Eric Silverberg
Right? That's the other thing. Not only do audiences get energy from each other, but the present answer gets energy from the audience. And it's so much harder when you can't read their energy for me, the public speaker or you, the teacher, whatever, or whatever it is. So that's something that makes it a whole lot less fun. And fun is part of what makes awesome communication. Awesome.
Eric Johnson
Yeah,trying to think about what I do, what I do for my normal classes, that I don't do for digital, and trying to see if that has something to do with why it sucks. So I think about in my sales classes, I talk about having the importance of having a pregame routine. And guess what everybody, it's my job to teach. And there are days that I get up, and I don't want to teach, and I love this job. This is the best job in the world, I would there's nothing on earth that I would rather be doing. There are days just like everybody else where I get up and I don't feel like it. But I have to. And so I've developed my own routines that get me in the place that I need to be so that by the time I'm on, I want to be there. And so those are things like I I dress a certain way. So I dress a certain way because to me that signals that it's go time, I typically caffeinate before I stand a certain way I breathe a certain way, if it's a big presentation, I have a certain playlist that I've listened to. I do that even for some of my normal classes. And I have to say that when even when I've done some live classes here in lecture, I'm not dressed a certain way. I haven't followed my same pregame routine. So I think there are things that I'm not doing for digital that I actually probably should be doing that seemed to work for me in real life.
Eric Silverberg
Yeah, that's a good point. I think that probably the best presenters or the best teachers do have rituals like that to get them in the mood. And it's really easy to let those things slip when you're sitting by yourself getting ready in your home office or your bedroom or whatever it might be. Yeah, well, another thing that I find I do a lot when I'm in person, whether it's one on one, one on five, or a full large group of people, is I leverage whiteboards. And I leveraged flip charts, and I write a lot because I myself, I'm a visual person, so it helps me express ideas, but a lot of people are visual in the way that they learn. And there's something about sharing visuals when it comes to remote communication. Remote presentations that's a little bit limited. When you're giving a remote digital presentation, having a whiteboard behind you and trying to whiteboard on the fly. That's, that's really messy. Some people might be watching on a smaller screen, some people might be sitting further from their screen, there's, there's a real big difficulty, but the clarity of the visual. And if you share your screen, a little white slide and you're in like Microsoft Paint from 1995, and you're trying to draw, it's not going to be clean, it's not going to be legible. And while people will forgive messy writing on a whiteboard, they're less forgiving, or at least I'll speak for myself, I'm less forgiving to really squiggly messy lines on a white screen share digitally. And then on top of that, one of the things that both Eric and I do a lot when we're giving presentations live is we use PowerPoint, some of these Google Slides, a keynote, whatever, but we use a visual aid. When you're giving a digital presentation, and you give the visual aid, the visual aid becomes the predominant visual, when you're in person. Even if you have a massive screen behind you, you are still the focal point. As long as you're making effective slides, you're still the focal point. But when you're giving a digital presentation, and you go to share your screen so people can see your slides, the slides are taking up 80-90% of the actual screen that your audience is looking at, and you're some you're in a tiny little box in the bottom right or top right corner. And that's a that's a difficult thing to deal with.
Eric Johnson
That's a really good one. So you're talking a little bit about physical environment. So let's let's stay on that for a second. Because physical versus digital environment very different. I think for me, if you've, if you've done your homework, set up the physical environment properly, when you're presenting in real life, it sort of just works. I don't need to monitor the door, I don't need to monitor a chat queue. I don't need to like help someone else out with their audio or unmute them if they want to talk, they just talk. And I I find myself when I'm, even when I'm at my best doing this digitally, I still find myself doing a bunch of other things. People are coming in late and I've got to let them in someone tells me something's not working. And someone's trying to talk. So I'm presenting. And then I'll jump back to administrative and close my full screen share that I'm presenting. And then go back to share it again, I just find it's like almost for the full hour start stop, start stop and wearing two different hats. So it's a ton of momentum killer, totally.
Eric Silverberg
And a flow killer. Who knows if you're going to find your way back to the exact right point or forget what you were going to say or where you were at. It doesn't work as well for the flow of your content or for the momentum of your delivery.
Eric Johnson
Yeah. Anything else? Any other reasons why it's not preferable? Why it sucks? I
Eric Silverberg
I think that's a pretty good list.
Eric Johnson
We've been riffing pretty hard on why it sucks.
Eric Silverberg
Yeah. And and let me be clear, I think it does suck. There's one last final thing, I guess, is Eli and I, one of our core beliefs is that the difference between amazing public speakers and aspiring public speakers is their relationship to nervousness, fear, the psychological constraints that come along with communicating. And those fears are different for everyone. Some people are afraid of large audiences, others are more afraid of intimacy. Some people are more afraid in front of strangers, others love strangers, but they're really nervous speaking in front of family and friends, so so the psychological element of public speaking varies from person to person. But I can tell you that my biggest fear is not being good enough. It's not about not getting my content, right. It's about well, no one enjoyed that. That wasn't fun. Everyone felt kind of that. And I have a really big fear around, I cannot create the same type of awesome environment digitally, like I can when I'm live in the room controlling the experience. And so quite frankly, I'm kind of afraid of digital communication. And when you're afraid the best version of you just doesn't show up. That's just how it works. So my fear of not making this awesome, because I feel like it's basically impossible. That impedes my ability to be good. It's really as simple as that.
Eric Johnson
That's a really interesting one. It's like, there's a like physical space, mental, there's preparation, there's a bunch of different buckets here. So people sounds like better than phone calls. So maybe this is why right now with a lot of remote work going on, people are like no, this is actually good, because they're getting more at least digital face time. But presentations and teaching, I would say is not as good digitally as it is in person. How can we make it even a little bit better? Do you guys have any recommendations for how we can take some of the big things that maybe make it suck the most, and try to make it a little bit better?
Eric Silverberg
I'll start with something really, really simple. And we talk about this a lot in our live communication program too, which is your ability to become really comfortable not getting the feedback and comfortable in the silences before people start getting involved. So I mean, you can picture being in an audience and the presenter says, are there any questions, and then crickets, right, and that moment of crickets, because no one's raising their hand is really awkward. Well, now multiply that by 100, when you're speaking digitally, because the diffusion of responsibility for everyone on their own end hoping that someone else is going to chime in. And because some people write their questions in, let's say, the chat of the the Google Hangout, or the Zoom meeting, or the or whatever it is that you're using. And so you need to become really, really comfortable not getting the feedback and really comfortable taking some time to just wait for it. Because it just takes longer. So the more comfortable you can get in silence and waiting a little bit, I think the better off your presentation is going to be because the the the contribution that you want to get from your other team members, or your students or your audience, they're going to come on the other end of that silence, so you need to be really comfortable waiting for it.
Eric Johnson
So wait even longer than you would for the person when you're digital.
Eric Silverberg
Yeah, you're gonna have to because it takes people a second to get over the diffusion of responsibility, have time to type out their question, if that's the way they're going to do it. And so the fact that it's going to take longer means you need to wait longer, you can do some creative things like saying, whenever I ask for questions, I know that it's going to take a little while for you to write your questions in the chat. So I'm going to be silent, I'm going to count to 60. In my head, we're going to wait for a full minute and see how many questions come in. So you can play with it and set some expectations to make it a little bit less scary to just sit there. But at the end of the day, sometimes you're gonna have to just sit there, especially in presentations where you're hoping for discussion or hoping for Q&A.
Eric Johnson
Yeah, that's a great one. Give it a little bit of extra time.
Eli Gladstone
I think on that on that discussion piece. In live public speaking, even really large audiences, you can create a feedback loop, you can ask questions to the audience, and you can get them to respond and you can create dialogue. Eric and I were at a conference in the States one time and we were giving a presentation to an audience of about 300 people. And we ended up having a conversation about sushi just calling on random people in the crowd talking about their favorite things to eat when they go for sushi. And it's sort of it was just fun, it was playful. And that's available to you think when you're trying to create a bit of a feedback loop or get some form of discussion, it needs to be a bit more pre planned when you're doing it in a remote presentation. So maybe you actually have a slide where you put up a question with four multiple choice answers. And you say I'm going to show the question here. And I want to know which of these answers you think is right. And on the next screen, we're going to share what the right answer is. There are some tools I believe that you can do to actually create a real interaction where people can submit their answers. And you can see what percentage of people The point is the feedback needs to be a little bit more planned, and a little bit less ad hoc. It's not to say you can't like Eric said, if you're going to do ad hoc pose your question set the expectation that you're going to sit in silence for a little bit to welcome those questions and giving them time to come in. But in the scenario where you want to really optimize the discussion with a group of people at scale digitally, I think it needs to be a bit more pre planned and a bit more structured.
Eric Johnson
That's good. That's good.
Eric Silverberg
There's one more thing that came to mind. For me, Eric, you were talking about how when you're communicating, virtually, it seems like you're both the presenter and the administrator. And that's no fun, because ruins are flow both in your content and in your momentum of your delivery. So if you had the luxury of you know, if you're a teacher, put one of the students in charge of the admin, you know, give them admin rights, make sure they're the ones taking the questions, they're the one getting people back into the virtual room, if they got kicked out because of poor internet or whatever, make sure that they're the ones reading all the questions that have accumulated in the chat to you. So if you can, or if you're on a team, and you're not teaching, assign someone else on your team, you know, I'm going to be the presenter, but I hope you can help facilitate the admin or or getting all the questions in from the chat or whatever it might be. If someone else can take that those admin tasks off your plate, you might be a little bit more free. And you might get interrupted a little bit less, because you can only focus on the message that you're trying to convey.
Eric Johnson
It's a good idea, almost having the person that's doing the content, almost have them just show like they just have to show up and deliver. You know, like the environment is such that and you're at you can assign this to a student as part of contribution, you could say, like, make them the co host. And they just make sure that people can get in that you can call me if you can't leave. No, you be the one that tells me that you can't hear me if you can't hear me. You can always just assign a lot of those admin duties to somebody else. That's a great idea. That's a good one.
Eli Gladstone
I think that's a good idea in live presentations too eventually people are able to do them. Eric and I will always co present and sometimes you don't have the luxury of doing this but if you can. One of us is always sitting at the back and the other person is presenting. And if for some reason the slides go down to the tech stops working, the non speaker goes up to fix while the speaker continues. It's a similar thing live as it would be digitally. I think it's even more important digitally, though, because there's a lot more tasks that are that need to be handled. Another thing is a very little tactic. But most people are probably listening to this auditorily. And so they can't see this visual. But for both of you, when I stare into my camera lens right now, I'm speaking to you very differently than when I'm looking at your videos. And that change, I'm now talking to you, because I'm looking at my camera versus now I'm looking at your little pictures, and it doesn't feel the same.
Eric Silverberg
Well, yeah, for everyone listening, it makes it feel different feel really different. Yeah, really. Yeah.
Eli Gladstone
And so I mean, Eric mentioned fears a big, a big inhibitor of showing up and being effective in your communication, a lot of people are afraid of not looking at the people on the other end of the camera. But if you focus on your communication is about how they are able to receive your ideas and look at the camera when you're communicating them. And there's a higher likelihood that they're going to receive your ideas more meaningfully, stay more engaged, not check out and check Amazon because you're speaking to them. But you lose being able to see their reactions a little bit. We've already talked about the fact that digital communication has a weaker feedback loop. So you might need to accept that and swallow that pill a little bit and then focus on some direct eye contact.
Eric Johnson
That's good. That's really powerful. I don't know that anybody's ever looked into looking into my eyes like that on a webcam. So I like that. Something that is worked for me. And maybe this doesn't work when you maybe it does, I'll ask your opinion on it afterwards. I actually am not a big cold caller in my classes. But I am when I was when I was doing these virtually this week. So I prepped in advance, there was a little mini assignment due. I went through them before the class. And I specifically wrote down some people that I wanted to call on for individual parts, probably ended up calling on maybe eight people in a in a one hour class. But I started doing it early. And I think because they knew that they had the like, there was a chance they were going to call it on when I called on everybody. They were on it. They had great answers. And there was nobody that was if they were doing something else, they did a good job of hiding it because they were really quickly able to unmute and give me an answer and didn't have to react what the question was, they were really on it.
Eric Silverberg
Yeah, I think that that one is something that it definitely would work, people will be less distracted, which was one of the reasons that that virtual communication sucks, right? People will be less distracted, if they know that they could be cold call at any moment. The problem with that, I think is there's a bit of a stigma for teachers or presenters or facilitators or leaders who cold call on the people in their audience, the audience members kind of thin, you're just trying to bust me for not paying attention, or you're just trying to be a bit of an ass trying to catch me, you know, when I'm when I'm not on my toes when I'm not thinking right. So one of the things that I'd probably recommend doing, if you are going to cold call, which I do think is really important when you're presenting virtually, is let your audience know that, you know, that's not me, I'm not trying to catch you off guard, what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to make the best of this really limiting environment. So I hope you'll bear with me until we can be live again in person, I'm gonna have to use cold calling is something that's gonna keep us all engaged all together for the hour that we have together today. So that they don't think you're doing it for for the wrong reasons. But as long as you cover something like that, man that will make everyone pay attention so much better.
Eric Johnson
Have you guys ever given a presentation in one of your sessions sitting down the whole time?
Eli Gladstone
Yes, actually, once. I really had to do that we both had to do that. We both been forced into that because of physical ailments, I broke my toe. And we happen to have to be out of town the very next day. And so we ended up driving, I didn't even have a chance to go to the hospital that night. And the very next morning, we had to deliver our presentation. And so I just sat down the whole time because I couldn't really walk. And it was interesting. There was a couple moments where I like endured the pain and stood up and took two or three steps just because I felt like I needed to switch it up a little bit. I mean, granted, we're speaking for a long time. Our workshops are lengthy, but it certainly felt different for me as the speaker I believe it probably felt a little bit different for the audience, but it was definitely manageable.
Eric Silverberg
A similar thing happened to me I threw out my neck one day and so not only did I have to sit the whole time, but I couldn't even turn you picked like Zoolander he can't turn left like for one day I coudn't turn. I couldn't move anything but but I still stuck with it and decided to do the presentation. The interesting thing that happened though at the end for both Eli and I when Eli broke his toe when I throw out my neck was I came up to Eli at the end of my presentation what I had to sit down and not move around the room and I said Man, that was so much worse, I really suck today. And Eli said, "What the hell were you talking about? That was still great." And the same thing happened with him, he came up to me afterward. And he said, I wish I could have been walking around the room, I could tell they were just so much less engaged. And I said, that's totally made up in your head, you were equally good sitting down. And that's back to the psychological element is, you're going to have to be okay, not knowing what your audience thought, beating yourself up about how it went. Because often those those those critiques that you have of yourself, they're more delusion than anything else. So I mean, obviously, I do agree that if it was binary presenters that walk around the room are better than ones that stand still the whole time or that sit down the whole time. But you can still be awesome in spite of that, as long as you have the right mindset.
Eric Johnson
Yeah, that's good point. So something that you guys talk about is variance, right? If you and I find that in person, I will roam up and down the aisles, I'll get really close to somebody and get quiet, I'll get fire away and get loud and you can like, you can vary a lot more. And maybe this is just my own psychological limitation. But I, I limit myself more for sure. When I'm doing digital, I try to bring, I'm like, okay, I really got to get fired up, I got to be louder than I'd normally be loud. And I have to be quieter and softer. You almost have to like do it more extreme. But physically, I find it hard. You know, we're used to, I guess I'm used to doing these podcasts, interview styles, typically do them sitting down. But when I'm presenting, I want to use the space, I want to move around. And when I you could you could feel it, I think you can hear people in their energy when they start to like sit back and relax and lean over a little bit when they're presenting. So I think there's probably a smaller box that you stay within, but still using this using the variance has to be a part of it, I think.
Eric Silverberg
Yeah, I mean, this just sort of came to me right now. But maybe the best thing you can do, it's not necessarily that sitting down is bad. It's that you are bringing a different type of energy when you are sitting down. But I mean, I think of one of my friends, his name is Jesse, he's on air sometimes on Sports Net, and he's on a desk. I've never seen him stand up on TV, but he's awesome. Think about the energy that Stephen A Smith brings when he's ranting about basketball sitting down, right. So it's so it's less about sitting sucks. And more about you better just bring the energy, pretend pretend you're a sports reporter for the afternoon. And bring that type of energy when you're sitting down when you're making your next virtual presentation.
Eli Gladstone
Yeah, I mean, I just decided to stand up and, and move around a little bit. And I do feel a little bit different. Yeah, it totally feels different. I'm now standing right now. And I feel like there's there's a little bit of a kick of energy. And so I think there's something to be said for I'm further away from the camera right now. So even if I were looking at the lens, at the actual camera, I don't know how the eye contact is I don't know how the facial expressions come across with the video. But I think whether or not it adds value to the audience, from a visual perspective, with me standing up and being further away from the camera, if it adds value to me as a speaker and I feel good walking around the room, then tap into that a little bit. But just make sure that you're also including the sitting down looking at the camera because there's a lot of emotion and and meaning that's conveyed through facial expressions. And that's one of the things that's important about digital communication is being able to see a person's face and actually getting to engage with their expressions. So I think Feel free to walk around and certainly if that energizes you just make sure that you also bring in the variation to the sitting which is a core part of this, and lovers of facial expression and sort of small, more minutia variation.
Eric Johnson
Cool, I feel like I've got a better playlist or hitlist for next time I do digital lecture style. One last thing that I want to finish with, is there anything that you think when you present to a ton of different audiences all over the place? Different walks of life, different titles and roles? What makes a really good audience member? Like what can people do to be a really good audience member in person? And is there any lessons from that, that you can in order to be a really good audience members digitally?
Eric Silverberg
There's two things that come to mind for me. The first is try to hold yourself accountable to not being distracted. I think it's, it's basically an impossible task, your notification is going to pop up that you just got a new text message. And and you're going to get you know, you're going to get reminded that crap, I really need to buy those concert tickets because they went on sale at 10 o'clock, but the presentations going on, things are gonna pop up. So be forgiving with yourself but also be a little bit hard on yourself and try to stay engaged, gauging an audience virtually is so hard. So try to eliminate the distractions. And then the second thing and this applies to audiences, both in person and even more so virtually is give the presenter a break and when they ask for involvement or discussion, try not to fall for that diffusion of responsible ability to type something into the chat, ask a question live, make an objection or even be hard on the presenter and and poke the holes in what they're saying. The presenter is dying for the feedback and the involvement. So whether it's positive, negative, or just curiosity, make it happen, and try to get it a little bit more interactive. And I think everyone will be better off for it.
Eli Gladstone
Yeah, I think one other thing is, in a live audience, there's every so often that one person in the audience who's sitting on the edge of their seats, smiling ear to ear nodding like crazy when everything just to say that they're with you, they're laughing at a joke, even if it's completely missing any humor whatsoever, they are just like, so there to make the presenter feel good. And while everyone in every audience was like that, then I think the speaker loses a little bit of accuracy and how their audience is receiving their communication. So I'm not suggesting that every single person go and smile ear to ear and nod your head up and down incessantly and laugh at every single unfunny joke. But when it's a digital conversation, you can get a sense that the speaker might not have a clear understanding of whether or not people are internalizing ideas, throw a couple extra head nods in there, toss a little pity laugh once or twice, give a nice little grant or even a full smile. And I think you're probably going to instill a little bit more comfort and confidence in your speaker, which then will culminate in them being able to share their ideas better for you, and you get to consider some new nuggets of information to amalgamate into your own existing years.
Eric Silverberg
That's great. Anything else come to mind for you, Eric?
Eric Johnson
I was going to go to typically what I've been an audience, there's really two groups that I noticed, there's the groups that are the sources of energy, the ones that are smiling and nodding, and you're like, alright, I've got them, I could say anything, and I've got them. And then there's the people that are like distracted and out of it. And usually I'll go to the person that's distracted and out of it. And if I can get them on board, then I know I've got everybody else. And I find that challenging when you're doing digital, because there's always going to be even if you ask everybody to be on video, there's always going to be somebody who's not who's just called in or on mute, or whatever.
Eli Gladstone
Or whose camera is conveniently broken.
Eric Johnson
Right? Yeah, that's crazy. I can't get it to work. So I think to, to be a good audience member digitally, participate to the fullest extent that you can digitally. So, like, be at your desk. You if you can, you know, be on mute to not be annoying, but like, have your mouse ready to come off the mute button to contribute to the conversation. Use the camera function and see your point like variants. Even if I'm on mute, and I'm agreeing, I'm nodding my head right now. But like you can't see it. If I'm nodding digitally, yeah. Oh, yeah. For sure. Like thumbs up, you know, like I agree with you. I think you almost have to, as an audience member, go over the top with your reactions.
Eric Silverberg
Yeah, I agree. And the other thing, where I thought you were going, which you didn't really say explicitly was do what is intended for you to be doing. If this is meant to be consumed on your laptop, because I'm going to be sharing some visual aids. And you're meant to have your camera on, like, don't call in on your cell phone in your car. Make sure you're on the laptop and not seeing the small crappy version on your on your iPhone, because he can't read the slide that way. So try for your presenter to consume it the way it's meant to be consumed.
Eric Johnson
Yeah. That's good. I think it was helpful for me at least I I'm still a digital presentation, rookie. I've done thousands and thousands of conference calls and video calls mainly for teens, but rarely what I do it as a, you know, two hour presentation or class discussion. So it's a little bit of a different format for me, and I'm still definitely learning so I got some good tips. I'm excited to do my next few classes and try to use some of the tips that I've gotten. But I appreciate it guys, thank you so much for dropping some, dropping some knowledge and riffing on the topic of digital communications and how to make it suck less. I appreciated that.
Eric Johnson
It was fun. I mean, Eli and I, we intended to say at the beginning that we are live public speaking experts, not virtual public speaking experts. So instead of saying at the beginning, here, here we are saying and now you know, take everything we said with a grain of salt because we don't have too much experience doing virtual presentations either. But hopefully you got a nugget or two and it was certainly fun to spitball and play with the topic and you know, try to give our two cents on what we what we do know.
Eric Johnson
That said the demand right now is higher for sure, at least in my lifetime than it's ever been. So if we're all hoping that we return to some semblance of normalcy over the next little bit, but seems like over the next few weeks, at least, digital will be the prime means of communication.
Eli Gladstone
The global context as far as Eric and I did think about it a little bit, but this conversation has certainly made us think about it even more. So that's awesome. Thanks for that.
Eric Johnson
Thank you guys. Appreciate your time.
Eli Gladstone
Take it easy.
Eric Silverberg
Thanks for having us.
Introduction/Outro
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