What’s Your Virtual Persona?

How to Use the 3 Factors, Immediacy, Receptivity, and Composure, Proven to Drive Engagement.

The Challenge

It’s a brand-new day for many of us. We are spending more and more of our time in some form of computer mediated communication, mostly video conferencing, and we just aren’t as comfortable with that as we are sitting around the conference table or speaking directly to a large group in a room.

There’s almost always a lot of noise in the channel when disruption like we are experiencing now occurs and I thought I would try to bring some clarity.

My biggest fear, and I suspect I’m not alone, is that I am losing my audience, that I am not engaging. Let’s face it, in the virtual world, if you lose your audience, you’re done. People will literally be doing something else in the background and yes, some video conferencing tools will allow the speaker to know when that is happening but wouldn’t you really rather rely on the carrot than the stick when seeking engagement.

A couple of years ago, when there was already a trend towards more and more virtual work settings and leaders at all levels were called upon to lead without continuous physical presence, I was asked to develop a point of view and some basic training regarding someone’s Virtual Persona. That’s a term I coined to describe how we show up in virtual contexts.

While I have been a telecommuter for more than 8 years and began designing and facilitating virtual group processes more than 20 years ago and, therefore, have direct experience of the feelings and challenges associated with virtual work of all kinds, I like to supplement my experience and intuition by getting grounded in research done by others.

The Research

Here is the research on what actually creates an engaged viewer of video conferencing. This research comes out of work on how students perceive teachers and react to them in video conferencing versus face-to-face[i] experiences.

You can think of the challenge as:

• What the presenter is displaying, saying or doing?
• What does the audience experience?
• What is the audience’s engagement level?  

These Presenter Characteristics create the Audience Experience that drives Engagement!

The Practical Tips

The question now becomes how best to improve Immediacy, Composure, and Receptivity as a virtual presenter. The good news is that there are a number of simple improvements you can start today to make a big difference the level of engagement you create in your viewers. In order of importance, it is most efficient to focus first and most on Immediacy, then on Receptivity, and finally on Composure. I would suggest you record a few of your virtual sessions and evaluate them using the tips. Don’t take on too much at a time when trying to improve. Pick the things you notice the most and start there.

Here are a couple of general pieces of advice taken from the performing arts, when trying to improve in subjective emotional expression, use your memory[i]. For example, when trying to improve your warmth or enthusiasm, take a moment before you start your session to recall a topic, event, or time when you really had a strong feeling of “warmth” towards others or had a strong feeling of “enthusiasm” for something you were saying or doing. Close your eyes and visualize the experience. Now pay attention to all the various sensations you can recall both feelings and senses like sights, sounds, smells, etc. These memories help you ground your Virtual Persona in real experience and add authenticity to your presence.

How do you get to Carnegie Hall, the old joke goes, practice, practice, practice! So, another insight from the performing arts is that the more you practice, the better, more confident, and more comfortable you will become. Several coaches put it this way, amateurs practice until they get it right, professionals practice until they can’t get it wrong!

I should note that to implement many of these tips will require you are standing and can freely move within a reasonable area in front of the camera. This in turn means you need the right camera, microphone, and speaker to ensure the audience sees and hears appropriately while you can hear them well too!

Immediacy[i][ii]

1.     Communicate/Reinforce enthusiasm and that the conversation is stimulating, you are interested not bored when presenting/interacting with a member or all the audience.

2.     Vary the pitch, volume, and pace of your speaking.

3.     Be “animated” when presenting/interacting with the audience.

4.     Demonstrate an intense involvement in the conversation.

5.     Speak with your hands too, using gestures to reinforce your speaking.

6.     Be aware of and use facial expressions to reinforce your speaking.

7.     Communicate/Reinforce “warmth” when communicating.

8.     Be aware of and increase your use of verbal and non-verbal cues.

9.     Increase your use of present tense verbs and inclusive pronouns.

10.  Look directly at the camera for several seconds at a time when speaking.

11.  Avoid communicating a sense of “distance” between you and the audience by leaning in towards the camera when you want to appropriately increase your immediacy.

Receptivity[iii][iv]

1.     Smiling when interacting with a member of the audience signals your receptivity to them.

2.     Look directly into the camera when listening and responding to a member of the audience to create the impression that you are “facing” them.

3.     When appropriate, don’t be afraid to laugh with those who speak as it signals receptivity.

4.     Use nods appropriately to reinforce acknowledgement or others and their feeling or thoughts.

5.     Demonstrate/Convey a willingness to listen to others and openness to the ideas and suggestions of others in the audience, particularly those with which you might obviously disagree.

6.     Demonstrate/Convey honesty in communicating with a member or all the audience.

7.     Listen attentively and affirm the experiences, problems, and stories of others.

Composure[v][vi]

1.     Demonstrate/Convey you are very relaxed when presenting/interacting with members or all of the audience by avoiding holding your posture rigid, frequently shifting, or appearing tense.

2.     Avoid movements that do reinforce your speaking like playing with hair or objects.

3.     Do not convey a lack of confidence/composure by paying attention to yourself, your appearance, or your own thoughts.

4.     Avoid conveying any sense that you are “nervous” by avoiding shaking or nervous twitches, jerking motions of limbs or head, and/or shaking hands or fingers when presenting/interacting with members or all of the audience.

5.     Maximize your speaking fluency by eliminating stutters, omissions, repetitions, or noticeable pause fillers (um, er, ah, …).

6.     Speak at an audible, but not extreme level, rarely extreme volume for extraordinary emphasis – don’t let the volume distract from the message.

7.     Be appropriately “animated” by tailoring behaviors to reinforce the message/content.

AI Tools for Evaluation of Performance

As part of my work at CCL, I seek out novel approaches to our work and have found some for improving your Virtual Persona. Not surprisingly, there are now several AI enhanced tools for improving your presentation skills. Many of them “score” you on key elements of your Virtual Persona though originally created to improve your in-person skills. They measure vocal characteristics, like variations in pitch, pace, loudness, and others. Some also measure non-verbal characteristics like eye contact. Still others measure the content of your presentation on things like clarity of expression. They follow up their measurement with advice related to the specific areas that need improvement.

I have had a chance to review, evaluate, and use a few of these in actual training. I have even had people using them compare and evaluate the effectiveness of the tools versus human raters and they found them to be as effective for the characteristics they measure.

Non-AI Evaluation of Performance

It is as important, if not more important than simply practicing, to seek feedback on how you are doing when you start to improve your Virtual Persona. If you are not using one of the AI tools available, one thing you can do is record your presentation and score yourself. But you can also ask others to score you at the end of a session.

Here is a quick 6-item scorecard you can use for yourself or others as raters. Of course, as you can see from tips, a great Virtual Persona, involves a number of factors and this does not measure performance with that much specificity but it is easy enough for you to trace back from these 6 items to the larger group of behaviors in the tips.

Please rate my presentation characteristics during this virtual event from 1 to 7 where

1 = Needs significant improvement, 4 = Acceptable, and 7 = Needs no improvement.

_____ Was I effective in projecting presence?

_____ How well did I convey my warmth?

_____ Did I appear calm and relaxed?

_____ Did I convey an interest in you and others?

_____ Did I express openness to others’ ideas and views?

_____ Was I effective in creating trust between you and me?

The Medium is the Message . . .

“A statement by Marshall McLuhan, meaning that the form of a message (print, visual, musical, etc.) determines the ways in which that message will be perceived. McLuhan argued that modern electronic communications (including radio, television, films, and computers) would have far-reaching sociological, aesthetic, and philosophical consequences, to the point of actually altering the ways in which we experience the world.”[i]

Dr. McLuhan was far ahead of his time, making this statement as far back as 1964. Today, I would say it this way today: your Virtual Persona is the message! The way your ideas land on others is shaped by the medium and no one who strives to be a great virtual communicator can afford to ignore their Virtual Persona.

[i] Retrieved from https://www.dictionary.com/browse/the-medium-is-the-message on 5/19/2020 at 8:43am PST

[i] Richmond, Virginia & McCroskey, James & Johnson, Aaron. (2003). Development of the Nonverbal Immediacy Scale (NIS): Measures of self- and other-perceived nonverbal immediacy. Communication Quarterly. 51. 504-517. 10.1080/01463370309370170.

[ii] Janie H. Wilson & Lawrence Locker, J 2007, ‘Immediacy Scale Represents Four Factors: Nonverbal and Verbal Components Predict Student Outcomes’, The Journal of Classroom Interaction, vol. 42, no. 2, p. 4

[iii] Lawrence R. Wheeless, Ann Bainbridge Frymier & Catherine A. Thompson (1992) A comparison of verbal output and receptivity in relation to attraction and communication satisfaction in interpersonal relationships, Communication Quarterly, 40:2, 102-115, DOI: 10.1080/01463379209369826

[iv] Rena Y. Robinson (1993) The usefulness of the verbal receptivity construct in instructional communication research, Communication Quarterly, 41:3, 292-298, DOI: 10.1080/01463379309369890

[v] Judee K. Burgoon & Beth A. Le Poire (1999) Nonverbal cues and interpersonal judgments: Participant and observer perceptions of intimacy, dominance, composure, and formality, Communication Monographs, 66:2, 105-124, DOI: 10.1080/03637759909376467

[vi] https://www.natcom.org/sites/default/files/pages/Basic_Course_and_Gen_Ed_Conversational_Skills_Rating_Scale.pdf Retrieved 5/4/2020 at 2:26pm PST

[i] Retrieved from https://www.briantimoneyacting.co.uk/develop-sense-memory/ on 5/4/2020 at 8:24am PST

[i] Laura R. Umphrey, Jeffrey A. Wickersham & John C. Sherblom (2008) Student Perceptions of the Instructor's Relational Characteristics, the Classroom Communication Experience, and the Interaction Involvement in Face-to-Face versus Video Conference Instruction, Communication Research Reports, 25:2, 102-114, DOI: 10.1080/08824090802021954