Enhanced Transcribe:
Hey folks, Dr Ro here, hope you’re well.
If you can see above me an image there of two people communicating from their laptops which of course is a huge subject area right now. We are doing it a lot now.
I think most of you would have had at least one of these conversations.
We’re in a new world of communication. We actually get frustrated or feel like we’re in front of the computer for long periods of time, the reality is we are communicating like this more.
How are we doing it?
Meetings, interviews, interviewing somebody else, somebody else interviewing us, getting onto social media like this presenting in front of audiences.
I do three straight days literally looking into a camera, nine hours a day it’s pretty intense. I spotted a lot of mistakes that people are making when it comes to communication. What they don’t realise is it’s losing them business, getting people to not trust them as much. It may be meetings are not as productive or possibly getting people to push away a little bit and oddly enough, some of the people I’m seeing doing it actually have got a pretty good message.
First of all, this whole thing about talking to somebody remotely. I know people believe that at least it’s keeping a connection, but it doesn’t always keep a connection because not everybody knows how to communicate effectively through the camera. Let me give you three tips.
One of the classic mistakes people make is how they frame the camera. When I bring a guest onto my events and you only see the top of their head or possibly they’re too close.
Now it’s not the end of the world, but in the same way a great photographer will have the third rule, for example, where you frame the photograph and it gives that depth to the other person. That doesn’t necessarily come into play here.
The whole point here is on a zoom call that isn’t needed so somewhere centrally and about here is a really good position. The first thing is get your frame right. Let them get a sense of your face as there are so many tell-tale signs when it comes to the face. If you go into mind reading just by moving the muscles around the eye or nose or lips it gives lots of clues away.
Think about this tomorrow if you’ve got meetings, zoom calls, just take a few minutes to set the camera up frame back here is okay, but it depends on what you’re doing. I’ve got a boom mic here that’s something you’ve got to consider. At the end of the day it’s important that the person you’re communicating with feels comfortable that comes to eye contact, and this is the big one. People screw up with this. Interestingly enough, I’ve noticed that the people that struggle to do this on zoom if you took them from a zoom meeting and you took them into a face-to-face meeting they actually do something similar. In a face to face situation sometimes they won’t look directly at the person they’re talking to, but when that translates to the camera now we’re in a different place because it is a magnifying glass.
You will be looking at things like for example have I got an eyebrow sticking down here, something on my chin. There are all sorts of things our face gives away and one of the things when it comes to a zoom call is being mindful of where you look. I know people who are doing this, talking here and then when people are watching me they’ll be like why is Dr Ro not looking at me and of course I’m looking here that does not help.
That’s a very different experience for the viewer, so it’s the shift from here to here and the camera becomes you, as in the person you are communicating with. I’m talking to the camera as it is you that level of eye contact is really important.
If you want to make an important message to somebody, and this is a really important message, in the years that I’ve been doing this or communicating with other people, one of the things I found is it’s so important to look in their eyes and really engage with them and yet I’m not doing it myself.
It’s important to swing it back here and look straight. The third thing and if you look at the communications system I have, I’ve got 38 components and of them is connection, it’s about being open, being authentic, relaxed, being yourself. I think people are getting better with that, they’re more comfortable coming onto the zoom meetings and having these conversations, but it’s still important to get connected with people.
Even if it’s for a minute or two before the meeting starts everyone is there and it’s weird as they’re all in their own worlds. It’s like the lift situation and you just watch it and everyone is waiting for Jimmy to come into the meeting, it’s hysterical to watch, so get that connection.
This is so important and be mindful of that type of frame, which is a little bit too intense. I think this is quite a good one because it does allow me to use my hands and eye contact, eye contact, eye contact, absolutely critical.
I could even talk about torso movement and how we protect ourselves. Little hand gestures, breaths taken at certain moments in or out can give a lot of clues to how somebody is so, hopefully this is useful.
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