Host Sheila Boysen-Rotelli is discussing real charisma, that being, more authentic than what you get from a book or webinar. Even those who are very charismatic in person have a hard time displaying it over a computer screen!
Episode Highlights:
- Zoom fatigue has taken over the world with everyone moving to online work all day
- Learning how to command a Zoom room is completely different than doing the same thing in-person
- Physical charisma is very difficult to directly translate over a computer screen
- Many people surround themselves with visual stimuli, stand confidently, and dress professionally to display charisma
- Stage presence can be transferred over the screen in a variety of different ways
- Your face needs to take up roughly ⅓ of your screen, especially if there are multiple people on the screen
- Expensive lighting isn't needed, but making sure you are in the best light possible will work to your advantage
- Nodding and smiling come more naturally in-person, but also need to be emulated virtually
- If you tend to be more expressive with your hands, move the laptop back a little bit to capture that
- Try to avoid an unengaged face by consistently keeping a light smile throughout
- Investing in a decent microphone or headphones with great microphones is a great way to make sure your voice displays charisma
- Emphasize points and make the conversation more engaging by varying your pitch and speech patterns
- Making eye contact via video is difficult, especially if you have a large screen and multiple documents to look at
- Make an effort to look at the camera more often rather than have your eyes moving all over the screen
- Acknowledge what others said by paraphrasing and saying it back to them
- Making others feel seen and heard through paraphrasing makes them more likely to listen to what you have to say
- Meetings can lose impact by asking too many questions and focusing on too many things
- Use the power of 3 to tighten up communication in virtual meetings
- Make 3 points at a time, only ask 3 questions, etc.
- Personally address individual people by spotlighting their video; this will make them feel more important
- Email, text, and social media are great tools to enhance our virtual substance
- Being intentional with words, questions, and tones in your virtual meetings is vital to your perceived charisma
3 Key Points:
- It takes a completely different set of skills and attributes to display e-charisma, that being charisma over the computer, than it takes to display in-person charisma.
- Nodding, smiling, great lighting, and appropriate distance from the camera are a variety of ways to display charisma over the screen.
- Eye contact goes a long way in person, but even more over a screen, given how many screens and documents there are to look at during a virtual meeting.
Tweetable Quotes:
- "How can we translate this idea of commanding and captivating a room virtually?" - Sheila Boysen-Rotelli
- "When we are in-person, we are so used to receiving and giving those visual clues...that's very difficult to do in video." - Sheila Boysen-Rotelli
- "A smile can do wonders in communicating things like charisma." - Sheila Boysen-Rotelli
Resources Mentioned:
