John recently appeared on the Business Ninjas podcast in an episode titled “Bridging the Gap Between Data, Logic, & Storytelling.” The host, Andrew Lippman, is a Partner at Write for Me, a content marketing agency that fully automates the content marketing process. Here’s an excerpt from his conversation with Andrew Lippman about virtual meetings, edited for readability.
John: Virtual is a different beast. So many people didn’t get the memo about setting your camera so your eyes are two-thirds of the way up the screen. We call that the newscaster framing. You’ve obviously gotten that memo!
I think because when COVID hit, it was such a scramble that we’ve all just said, “Virtual is bad, and we have to live with it.” But with very simple tweaks, we can reduce the impact that virtual has on our effectiveness.
Andrew: I’m under the assumption that people like you became even more valuable in COVID because, hey, when you meet in person, even if your pitch isn’t 1,000%, there is a palpable sense of you and your energy and your expertise that may cut through some flaws in your presentation. But when we transition to 2D and it’s just video, Zoom, and people across the world, now you really have to tighten up because you can’t see if you have their attention.
They may be drifting off into other tasks. Tell me about the COVID years and the challenges and opportunities for you to grow John Polk & Associates.
John: We literally had never done a virtual workshop before COVID. Everything we did was in person.
Even today, I much prefer in-person. There’s no substitute for being able to feed off the energy from your audience. On Zoom, if everyone’s on mute and I tell a joke, I don’t know if it landed.
When we’re teaching software tips and tricks in person, there’s often something that would lead to audience gasps. In my virtual classes, I now say, please put your gasps in the chat. Audiences have been more than happy to engage with me that way. But, we did have to pivot when COVID hit.
Every one of my clients, when COVID hit, said, “Let’s just wait a couple of weeks and then we’ll get everybody back together.” A couple of weeks became a couple of months and a couple of months became more than that. That forced us to go figure out the best practices. How do we get the best out of the virtual environment by converting what we know works live to its in-person equivalent?
If you write on a whiteboard in a workshop or have everybody put post-it notes on a whiteboard in an exercise, we can do that through the virtual equivalent. But then, how do we take advantage of the handful of strengths that we have in a virtual world? I tell my clients in their decision-making meetings, there’s an opportunity to make your decision-making process more democratic.
In the in-person meeting, the presenter with an idea presents their idea. Everyone waits for the most senior person to give their opinion. We call that the HiPPO, the Highest Paid Person’s Opinion.
Andrew: I’m sure that person doesn’t like to be referred to as a hippo, but it is funny.
John: In the virtual world, we can use polls, chat, and whiteboard exercises to get everybody’s input before the senior-most person can express their opinion and completely sway the group to their ideas.
Andrew: Oh, it makes sense. Anonymity can lead to more honesty, especially if there’s some sort of repercussion to you raising your hand when polled in a big room, and you do it quickly.
And knowing when there are crickets after you tell a joke, that’s important feedback. I haven’t seen cricket emojis come up in a [virtual] meeting yet, and I’m glad to say that.
Listen to the complete podcast here: Business Ninjas.