"Reading the Room" Redux

“Reading the room” continues to be a critical and essential skill for business development professionals and executives alike.  But with more meetings and presentations occurring on conference calls, Webex’s and the like, what are some quick ways to adapt and “read the conference call” or “read the presentation?”

Start with assessing your own active listening skills.  Are you able to pick-up and read the verbal cues – including silence – accurately and quickly?  Or are you concerned about your slides and your deck?  By honing and practicing “active listening” you can begin to immediately sense the tone, tenor and “online language” that your audience is conveying and make adjustments to your presentation.  Using probing questions can also help you listen more attentively. 

Create a conversation, not a confrontation.  Always confirm what everyone wants and needs from the meeting or conference call.  All too many web presentations and conference calls are blunt force exercises of cramming 100 PowerPoint slides into 60-minutes, leaving no time for dialogue or questions or really exploring the problems and opportunities.  Assess how willing and how open the meeting conversation requires you to start and direct the conversation, and create an environment of openness.  By being more docile and more up-to-speed on various topics and addressing topics in real time leads to substantially better content -- and limits wasted time. 

 Assume that anyone and everyone (even your team) will be multi-tasking during the call – you will have maybe 50% of their attention at the outset.  By making this assumption, you are forced to create ways to (1) keep their attention focused on the topics at hand and (2) it will cause you to prepare even more.  Ask more questions and call on specific people to see if their needs are being met during the call.

 Just like any good detective, don’t jump to conclusions immediately.  If at all possible, create some key phrases or actions that confirm to you that you (and the call) is on track and moving forward.  But once you have “the evidence” that the call is going in the direction you need, keep assessing what is being said in hopes of quickening to a positive conclusion.

 Use video conferencing more and more.  By inviting someone to go on camera using any of the video conferencing software, you get a immediate read about how interested and how committed they are – as well as how tech savvy they might be.  Plus it allows you to actually read their non-verbal communications.

 More accurate reading of “the room” can happen immediately by: (1) changing your preparation prior to a call; (2) more active listening and interpretation of language; and (3) more compelling content.