Virtual Meeting / Presenting – Tip #5 – Control Their Eyes / Control Their Attention (Part 2)
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By Joe Friedman, Zehren♦Friedman Associates, Ltd.
Welcome to our new world. As someone who has worked from home for the past 27 years, today is…Tuesday, just like any other one, unless I’m in a classroom.
Most of our business (pre-Covid-19) has been delivered in-person, 75% of which are two-day classes, the other 25% are one-day. Several years ago, we started experimenting with the various web-based platforms and created a concept we call the Virtual Classroom, and yes, it’s the next best thing to being there in-person. We do role plays, there are large and small group discussions, we white board; participants are talking, others are sending instant messages. I’m talking, typing and listening. (It also takes two people to deliver the class – I have a producer / co-facilitator helping me.)
We’ve had years to figure this out, and we’ve had a LOT of practice doing it. So now, you find yourself working at home, involved in virtual meetings and you think technology will “make it easy.” It won’t!
Each Virtual Presenting tip will come in a bite-sized chunk, so it can be implemented more easily. Plus, as this spills out of my brain, I’ll one day organize all of these tips into a book on the subject. (That was just a thought bubble, right?)
And one shamelessly salesy moment before I launch in…all of our classes (sales, presentation skills, negotiation skills and influence) can be delivered virtually!
You can contact Joe Friedman (love to speak of myself in the third person) by phone or email –
312-841-3364, jfriedman@zehrenfriedman.com. Zehren♦Friedman Associates website is www.zehrenfriedman.com.
As I was wandering into my office this morning, I turned on the TV to observe the “masters” at visual engagement. I watched five minutes on CNN (through a commercial break), then switched over to FOX and did the same. With a slight variation between the two (visually speaking only), here’s what was on the screen:
The reporter,
A guest (or two or three),
A chyron (defined as “an electronically generated caption superimposed on a television or movie screen”) scrolling headlines on the bottom of the screen,
A second chyron with the main point of the interview being held,
An insert into the top chyron announcing the title or credentials of the interviewee
Network logo (bottom right for CNN, bottom left for FOX),
Two time zone “current time” within the logo (switching to listings for the Dow, Nasdaq and S&P once the markets opened),
“Via Cisco WebEx” on the top left,
Location of the interviewee below that,
Stats or other information down the right-hand side of the screen.
That was just the news! I watched four commercials (total) on the two networks, wasting four minutes of my life that I’ll never get back. Other than the toll-free phone number at the end, where the screen was relatively still for 5 seconds, what I viewed on screen was populated by overlays, animation and live people walking, talking, driving, visiting, etc.. All in all, during 240 seconds of ads, what I viewed on-screen changed 60 to 80 times. (I’m also waiting for several nutritional supplements and my tee-shirt from the ASPCA.)
Why in the world is this happening? The simple answer – control the audience’s eyes, you control their attention. One reality of 21st Century communication is that our attention spans have shrunk due to sound bites and tweet-length content.
In our new work environment where we’re meeting and presenting virtually, we are shifting to a visually dominant communication mode. That means our support visuals will now play a more important role. When you’re presenting or running a meeting in-person, you become the focal point of the presentation (hence the term “visual aids”).
Now, on top of everything else, you need to control the flow of information that your audience sees. Put a visual up and address it for 10 minutes with no variation of the image and you are encouraging your audience to (at best) multi-task and (at worst) tune out. Here’s some guidance:
Use reveals – have information appear – every graphics package on the planet allows for information to be revealed. That’s great. However, not all virtual or meeting management platforms smoothly display reveals. For example, you might have a slide with five bullet points which advance on the “mouse click.” You may need six slides: one with the just the title, the second with the first bullet point, the third with two bullet points, etc.
Use an overlay – have information covered up. Is there a conclusion you’re trying to draw? You could insert a new slide with the conclusion, or you could cover up what’s on the slide. One of our clients did a research project about some new functionality they were adding to their customer service portal, and the impact on Brand Image. The project was quite extensive and the presenter wanted to give the audience a feel for the magnitude of the research that was done. They purposely violated the “less is more” and “big and bold” tips from my last blog, as you’ll see below.
The presenter left this image up for only a couple of seconds, then used two overlays to drive home their point. Here’s overlay 1:
Here’s overlay 2:
Ever run out of time? Have a question you must answer where the slide is ahead or behind in the deck? Ever watched someone page through 10 slides to go forward or back? Want to look slightly more professional?
Print out your slide sorter for the entire deck, then number your slides starting at “1.” (See the incredibly complex graphic below.)
You get to decide how many slides you want per page – for this use, I did 9 slides. Then, let’s say you want to move ahead to slide 25; use your keyboard to hit the “2,” then the “5,” and then hit the “enter” key. PowerPoint will move you to slide 25. When you want to move back, enter the previous slide number and enter, and voila!
Insert a hyperlink to move around your deck – got a five-page deck and a 45-page appendix (tip #4 for those following along at home)? Need to access that appendix or have it available just in case? Create a hyperlink (which connects two slides). Here’s how to do it in PowerPoint:
1. Start with the slide from which you want to “launch” the hyperlink,
2. Put an image in a corner (a star in this case),
3. “Click” on it, then go to the “Insert” tab on the top of the screen,
4. Find the “Action” tab and click on it; a window will open,
5. Click on the option “Hyperlink to” and click on that pull-down tab; there are many options, one of which is “slide,”
6. When you click on “slide” it opens up the entire presentation by slide number (I picked slide 7 in this case),
7. Pick where you want to go next, click OK and you’re done!
8. Well, you’re not completely done, because once you’ve “jumped ahead,” you probably want to jump back.
9. Insert another hyperlink to do that.
10. When you’re in “show” mode in PowerPoint, moving the curser to the icon in the corner (or wherever you decide to put it), click on it, and you’ll look like you know what you’re doing!
Finally, as it applies to navigating through the deck you’re using, on many platforms (I know for a fact on WebEx), you can display thumbnails of your slide deck (down the left-hand side of the screen). When you click on any particular thumbnail, you go directly to that image.
White Boarding – you want to use White Boarding for two important reasons:
1) It is a great tool for interactivity. Ask a question; have a brainstorming topic; request ideas from other attendees. At its most hectic, you can have people off of mute talking, others can be typing instant messages and you need to be reading, listening and typing. Whaaaaaa? Here’s how I do it:
a) I have a teammate reading to me what people are typing on instant messages.
b) I have a blank slide for each discussion or brainstorm that has been prepared – all that means is that there’s a title on the slide and bullet points down the left-hand side.
c) Each time you type means you need to insert the cursor next to one of the bullets – sometimes it’s not perfectly aligned, but it wouldn’t be perfect on a flip chart either.
2) It is a great tool to use for the “Parking Lot.” Remember, the Parking Lot is where you place ideas that are either off-topic, or would take the meeting down a time crushing rabbit hole.
B O N U S
Brady Bunch view of attendees or not?
This would certainly be a way to make sure audience members pay attention! I’ve got a simple rule of thumb to apply:
Virtual meeting – yes.
Virtual presentation – no – While being able to see everyone would guarantee that people were paying attention, there might be too much visual “interference” when you want the audience to focus on your visuals and your message.
Lesson? Visuals are a powerful tool to keep your audience engaged. One component for helping you to achieve that goal is to control the flow of information on the screen.
Stay Safe!
Joe Friedman is co-founder of Zehren♦Friedman Associates, Ltd, which sells and delivers sales, presentation, negotiation and influence training. Joe spends over 100 days a year in the classroom (virtually and in-person).
You can call Joe directly at 312-841-3364 or email to jfriedman@zehrenfriedmam.com.
