13 Mar Controlling the Impression You Make

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12 Mar Virtual Presentations Beyond the Basics

Since COVID, there has been a surge in the use of Zoom, Teams, Slack, and other tools for virtual presentations. Dr. Ethan Becker, President, and Laura Mathis, Executive Communication Coach have together coached hundreds of remote presenters and share best practices in this 30-minute recorded webinar.

13 Feb The Unique Challenges of Neurodiverse Communication in the Workplace

As an Executive Communication Coach, I’m thrilled to see Neurodiversity becoming more recognized and celebrated at work. However, its nuances in the workplace can cause frustration and miscommunications.

For example, if you work with someone who rarely makes eye contact, you might assume they are shy, nervous, or uncomfortable. Using eye contact is an essential nonverbal communication behavior that most of us use automatically in work interactions. Eye contact helps people communicate their interest and attention to a conversation. Yet, making eye contact with others can be very challenging for some people with Autism. There are many books and articles written by adults with Autism who describe the stress they felt when well-meaning bosses and managers tried to force them to make eye contact during conversations, client meetings, or presentations. In many cases, they describe being further distracted and unable to focus on the conversation because of this insistence.

Neurodiversity describes the idea that people experience and interact with the world around them in many different ways; there is no one “right” way of thinking, learning, and behaving, and differences are not viewed as deficits. Still, it is often used in the context of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), as well as other neurological or developmental conditions such as ADHD or learning disabilities.

Here are a few additional definitions for clarity:

Neurotypical is an informal term describing a person whose brain functions are considered usual or expected by society. This term is often applied to people who do not have a developmental disorder like Autism, differentiating them from those who do. It is neither a mental disorder nor even an official diagnostic term.

Neurodivergent describes someone who isn’t neurotypical, and Neurodiverse generally refers to differences in brain function among people diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). These words can be applied to other neurodevelopmental conditions like dyslexia or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

There are many forms that Neurodiversity can take, but for this article, I’ll speak specifically about the Autism Spectrum.

I’ve had the opportunity to coach professionals who identify on the Autism spectrum and also have a close family member on the Spectrum, so I have no shortage of practice when it comes to noticing the small microcommunications that are often lost or misperceived. I do not claim mastery but merely the complex process of listening and communicating with clarity, patience, and an open mind.

You may wonder if you currently work with someone on the Autism Spectrum, or perhaps someone has told you specifically that they are Autistic. Either way, how we communicate needs to be looked at with flexibility and deeper understanding.

If you consider yourself Neurotypical, consider the workplace examples below. You’ll see a few ways a Neurotypical person might communicate with someone on the Autism Spectrum (let’s call this person with ASD your “colleague.”). Observe below how messages and information can get crossed:

You don’t get any eye contact from your colleague when speaking with them, and it feels like they aren’t listening.

After a long conversation, your colleague didn’t speak much and only said ‘OK’ and then walked away, but you aren’t sure if they understood.

After an excellent co-presentation with your colleague, you raise your hand to high-five, but they walk back to their desk right past you.

In the elevator, you ask your colleague how their weekend was, and they say “Fine” and don’t ask you back.

You pull a piece of fluff off your colleague’s coat, and they jump away and recoil from you.

Your colleague is the only one who never joins the team for happy hour on Fridays.

You run weekly stand-up meetings where everyone shares their work progress, but your colleague only sends theirs via Slack.

What do you think of these examples?

It might be tempting to diagnose this colleague as…. a JERK!

And maybe that’s true?

In that case, we might be brought in as coaches to help this person come across better in terms of their communication style and approach to relationship building.

But…

It could ALSO be that your colleague is on the Autism Spectrum, which means they may function differently than you when it comes to understanding nonverbal cues, processing verbal information, expressing emotions and thoughts, managing sensitivities to food or sounds, physical touch, social gatherings, knowing how to engage in small talk, and much more.

There is no quick and easy solution to creating harmonious relationships at work with a Neurodiverse colleague. One place to start is recognizing the need for deep understanding and tailored approaches. Acknowledging and addressing distinct differences can lead to a more harmonious and supportive workplace where everyone feels heard, respected, and appreciated.

4 Dec “84% of employees expect this job perk—but most executives think it’s a ‘waste of time’”

Can you guess what it is?

Answer: Eighty-four percent of employees expect their employer to provide the training and education they need to stay up-to-date with changing skills in their industry, according to a recent survey of more than 800 C-suite executives and 800 employees from online learning platform edX.

But senior managers aren’t seeing that way according to an article in CNBC by Ece Yildirim.

The article shares that employees value their career development and want to utilize L&D programs. And they’re willing to look elsewhere if their bosses fail to provide. In the survey, over three-quarters of employees said they’d stay with their current company long-term if it offered better training and development opportunities. More than half said they want to develop skills to position themselves for better future opportunities at their current jobs, but 39% said they’d likely leave within the next year for a job that offers better learning programs.

We know the modern world requires constant upskilling throughout a career. Clients who engage our communication firm The Speech Improvement Company know that driven employees want the opportunity for career growth, not just more work. If you want to attract and retain the best talent, they must be offered the opportunity to get to their next level of mastery. There are a lot of options. How do you know if a specific learning and development program will work for your company?

This training must happen during the work week, not in a fluorescent-lit room off-site over the weekend.
This training should be customized to your company, no one-size-fits-all program that’s delivered to many different companies. Your team should be able to apply the new learning immediately.
This training should be interactive and organized by teams or departments. There should be plenty of time for breakouts and practice with immediate peer and instructor feedback.

Our advice: start talking to trusted advisors about how your company can prioritize learning and development programs to keep your people happy, upskilled, and motivated.

Read the CNBC article: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/13/workers-want-ld-job-perks-bosses-say-theyre-a-waste-of-time-survey.html

11 Jul Top Five Tips for Better Communication on Virtual Sales Calls and Meetings

Since many salespeople and business professionals are still conducting remote video sales calls and running virtual meetings, here are some important tools and techniques to give those interactions greater impact, and be more persuasive with both internal and external participants.

As an Executive Communication Coach at The Speech Improvement Company, I see professionals struggling to show leadership as virtual facilitators and presenters. If you are moderating or facilitating a VIRTUAL sales call, team check-in, meeting with senior leaders, or aiming to PERSUADE the listener, you need a more intuitive approach to engage participants.

A skilled moderator or facilitator helps the group understand the common objectives and reaches them in a short amount of time. The facilitator or moderators’ goal in a virtual setting, such as Zoom, Teams, or Google Meet, is to encourage participants’ involvement and control the conversation’s flow.

Facilitating and moderating virtually creates challenges. During the event, participants can multi-task, walk away, or disconnect entirely, any time they choose. How many of you reading this do more than one thing if your camera is off during a virtual meeting? (Even if our camera on we can be sneaky about paying “fake” attention) During a virtual video call, have you ever checked an email, sent an email, wrote and responded to a text, turned off your camera to go make a coffee, or anything else that seemed more interesting and appealing?

Don’t let this happen to you. Remember, successful facilitating means creating opportunities for interaction, engagement, and a synthesis of the information throughout your meeting. It’s critical for the success of your video meeting to know how to support these engagement opportunities. 

As an experienced corporate coach for over 20 years, and a chronic Zoom user, I repeatedly see the same fatal errors. But there are plenty of ways to succeed in virtual meetings. Here are five of my top tips for virtual facilitators and moderators:

1. Engagement starts with eye contact.Use direct eye contact with the camera lens when you are talking and when listening. Most people are looking at the gallery view of participants or their own image when they speak on video. My company has helped thousands of people get their eyeline set up correctly since the pandemic kicked off video meetings. If you aren’t sure about your eyeline, but suspect you are doing it poorly, email me, and I can talk you through it.

As a moderator, you’ll also be checking the platform dashboard to monitor chat, participant questions, and feedback about technical issues. Still, when you are talking and listening, you need to be looking at the camera lens. This takes practice and feels counterintuitive, but trust me, it looks great, and adds a level of polish and connection.

2. Review the attendee list.First, who is attending this virtual meeting? What do they already know? What do they want to know? What type of content or information would be valuable for them? Ensure you are providing what they want. Why do they care about the agenda topics and what is the benefit of listening?

When you know your participants’ demographics, you can then provide them with tools they feel comfortable using to interact with you, the other speakers, and each other. Will you use a formal agenda, a variety of speakers, chat feature, camera’s on or off, demos, polls, Q and A, pre-reads, pictures, screen share?  How will you use these features in real-time? Take the time to understand who is listening and how they prefer to participate.

3. Make time for a technical run-through in advance and be purposeful about the sound and video settings.Practice interacting on the chosen platform based on your plan above. Almost every virtual meeting will have some small (or large) technical issues, (a few of the ones I see over and over are some people did not get the Zoom link, someone comes in with no audio, someone is calling from the car while driving, someone has a hard stop in 20 minutes, screen share won’t work, the person who has to record is not the Host, the video sound won’t work, the PDF disappeared, you can’t find the latest version of the deck, there is someone installing a new roof and people can hear the banging, the dog is barking, your WIFI goes out). For important sales calls, meetings, or alignment discussions, always be ready for a Plan B when it comes to technology.

If appropriate, make sure everyone has a chance to participate. Leave longer than comfortable pauses to allow space for people to speak, (it takes longer to decide to unmute or not and people will often chime in at the exact same time) and call on people to make sure everyone has an opportunity to weigh in.

‘Tis no lonelier an experience than a presenter who makes a hilarious comment virtually but is greeted with silence since everyone is on mute. Think about having some portions of the meeting where everyone’s microphones are ON (but if someone has a screaming child or barking dog in the background they’ll still need to mute as needed). The benefit of all mics on is that it feels more like a real, spontaneous conversations and adds human connection so Mike can make a crafty joke and hear everyone crack up, and then you can say things like, “Mike, that story about the new hire TAM on the field ride was hilarious!” and we know this is true because we heard everyone laugh.

4. Follow the “one person at a time” approach. Facilitators ned to have “rules of the virtual road.” Use the raise handfeature in some platforms to call on people, state the rule of one speaker at a time, and don’t be afraid to say, “Tracy, let’s hear from you, and then it’s David’s turn.” Master various inclusion techniques that an excellent facilitator relies on.These tools help to maximize participation by all, even the introverts, or speakers that are reluctant to make the effort to unmute unless they are absolute sure they are saying something new and helpful to the conversation. Or, perhaps you want it to be a free-for-all, where anyone can chime in at any time. Whatever you choose, be purposeful and clear about expectations.
5. Reserve ten minutes at the end of the meeting to recap and review. Find bridges between information shared and synthesize what it all means. “This has been a terrific alignment call. In an effort to stay on time, let’s start to summarize our final thoughts and action items. I want to be sure we end on time or maybe even a little early.” If you can end a virtual meeting ten minutes early, you will be the unsung hero that our bladders and mental health deserve. At a minimum, ALWAYS end one minute early. We need to survive continued long days of back-to-back zoom meetings for the next 30 years or until something better comes along like asynchronous virtual-reality meetings in the French Polynesia. “Hey team, check the coconut tree by the daiquiri shack for your tree mail, and be sure to sit by the ocean for 20 minutes before you log off!”

These tips are an effective way to improve your virtual communication skills, from selling to celebrating. Even if we can’t be in the same physical room, we can still be connected, productive, and aligned.