No More Boring Onsite or Online Meetings

by Evan Kirstel (Linkedin) & @evankirstel (Twitter) - Chief Digital Officer for NYDLA

“If you are boring face-to-face, you will still be boring via video teleconference,” noted Hal Josephson, a telepresence expert, more than 30 years ago. Peter Adams of RVC later noted, “Technology only makes it worse.”

Whether you call them online meetings, video chat, video meetings, telepresence, video conferencing or other related terms, you are still meeting at a distance and using technology to “fold space” between people. Video, like any technology, changes the way we think and behave, just like the way writing changed our sense of time and space and allowed people to communicate across vast distances, and even centuries.

Spoken and written communication are different, and require different modalities. The written word, after all, has a sense of permanency. We think of speech as fleeting, or at least we did until inventions such as Edison’s phonography came along. Video takes this mix of the spontaneity of speech with the permanence of a “written” record and creates a radical mix. When you throw in the ways in which these digital tools allow us to connect, in real time, in ways that transcend the limits of space, it’s easy to see why the implications of this technology are so profound.

Video meetings used to be the purview of elite executives who held exclusive meetings across the globe. Today, video has been democratized so that anyone can Skype, Zoom, Facetime or use other platforms. With these tools, we can see each other anytime from almost anywhere. We can see what we are doing as well, whether climbing a mountain, building a home or playing a sport. Video meetings are changing the way businesses operate. We can communicate faster than ever, which really means we can change our business processes at equally rapid speed.

This results in a global communication network that would have been inconceivable to Edison. It pays to remember that not everyone has access to this network. We all benefit when digital communications are available to all to share information and contribute to building a common language. After all, with global communication and access, come some ancient problems. It isn’t always easy to understand people across cultures. Context is critical. Meanings shift. For communication in this wide network, we must strive for clarity, and be aware of the unexpected ways in which our words might be received.

I have worked globally and, indeed, realize how fortunate I am to be a native English speaker. English is the most widely used language in the global digital network. Interestingly, in my own experience, I have found that it isn’t the big, technical terms that people don’t understand. It’s the small stuff.

As my colleague Tom Cross, author of “A New View of Tele/conferencing,” said, “Communications will always fail, except by chance.” The daunting implications of this are difficult to ponder. It may be that a “failure to communicate” in inherent in language. We shouldn’t be alarmed. In practical terms, this means we have to accept the inevitable: our words will be misunderstood and our meanings blurred. Master communicators are able to accept and anticipate this inevitability.

What does this have to do with boredom? You don’t need me to tell you how boring teleconferences can be, or how this boredom can interfere with one’s effectiveness as a communicator. It’s a critical element. Listeners must be engaged. To engage them, we have to make them active, not passive, listeners. We have to get their neurons to fire and their imaginations to ignite.

I have coached many live speakers and online presenters and the methods of accomplishing this are beyond the scope of this article. I will leave you with one thought. The key to being an engaging telespeaker is to rehearse. Rehearse by yourself. Rehearse with others. Rehearse again. As you rehearse, imagine the effect your words have on the audience. As you rehearse, look for moments that are unclear or ambiguous. These are moments where you might lose an audience. This one technique can make a major difference in your effectiveness as a communicator.

Summary – We are all on the forefront of this new epoch in business and social communication. While it’s easier than ever to access the technology, telecommunication remains a complex skill such as writing that needs to be developed and mastered. Part of this mastery involves putting our words through “driver training.” We need to learn to anticipate and avoid the pitfalls of digital speech. This way, we learn to keep an audience engaged with our core message.

? Evan Kirstel – all rights reserved