Did you see Jaden Smith wearing the house on his head at the Grammy’s? Who could have missed it. As my dad, would have said, ‘Kids, these days…’. He’s probably right. Maybe next time Jaden’s dog will accompany him wearing a doghouse on his. Just a thought. That would make the papers.
I digress. It got me thinking about Microsoft Teams and that people struggle to come across well over Teams, or any similar platform. Just like Jaden trying to communicate through a 5” circle.
Screen meetings are a relatively new phenomenon. A gift from dear old Covid which kicked us into believe that ‘working from home’ actually could be just that. And now we have to sell, pitch, influence, buy-in, deliver, share, speak, communicate, and everything else via this little tv screen. Largely rendering any body language completely useless below the nipples. Like when we used to kick Steve under the table when he talked to much. Though it does mean that we can feign interest and still do our emails when Accounts are sharing the monthly numbers.
…And this is the reason why we need to get good at screen influencing, because the default for most people is to ‘do their emails’ in a meeting and unless we keep them engaged, we’ll get relegated to that workplace we all want to avoid of, ‘Oh no, it’s a meeting with Dave – time to get some emails done’.
How do you engage people better over Teams? Here are 4 ways:
- Don’t use slides. Draw on a pad with a marker pen & show them or Teams whiteboard to collaborate, getting them involved, or use the polling tool. Slides reduce us to the size of postage stamps, so avoid it at all costs.
- Bring your hands up. Our hands have become stuck the keyboard and the mouse. In a meeting bring your hands up to emphasise numbers by showing 3 fingers, showing distance with both hands, offering a thumbs up, or an ok sign. Use your hands.
- Non-verbal communication is really important – It is our body language and our tone which can help to drive the words of our message home. Move back from the screen & forwards more to show your level of engagement. Or show you are thinking by stroking your chin or putting your hand up to ask for a pause. Our communication is now through a fog (the screen) and so we need to help other people to know what we are thinking, saying, and wanting by using our whole self to communicate through the screen.
- Long dialogues won’t work anymore because the distractions have gained gravity (Namely emails), so we must be more succinct and clear in our communication because the margin for being mis-understood got multiplied by a factor of 10. How do you know when people have stopped listening, observe. Look for who’s stop being engaged, reading their emails, or fiddling with their phone. When that happens, stop and ask a question.
