Oh Yeah, Another Critical Thing For Both Online and In-Person Presenting Success
So far I have looked at the eye and voice power aspects when presenting, whether you are full form in front of an audience or struggling to get out of that tiny box in the corner of the screen that, Zoom or WebEx or whoever, has relegated you to, when you are online. What about body language? Does this remain the bastion of live presentations only and we are unable to muster much of its power, when we are looking down the barrel of a camera lens at the top of our laptop?
Certainly, it is very powerful when we are in person. We have three distances, three angles and three stage positions when in front of an audience. The three distances are as close as possible to the audience, standing somewhere mid-stage and moving to the back of the stage. Now these distances may be contained, when we are using slide decks and projecting on to a screen. If the screen is at head height, rather than lofted well above us, we need to be mindful of our position. We should be standing audience left next to the screen, so that the punters will look at us, read the screen and then look at us again. What we don’t want them captivated by the screen content and oblivious to us.
Whether we are next to the screen or not, we can still change our distance engagement with the audience. When we want to make a strong point, we can move as close as possible to the audience. We can’t stay there though, because the pressure on the audience is too much. So, we move back to the mid-stage area, a type of neutral ground. If we want to make an expansive point, we move to the rear of the stage area and embrace the whole audience at one time.
The three angles are chin straight, up and chin down. At the center position, our chin is straight. When we move to that expansive position, we need to slightly elevate our chin. When we are close to the audience, we tuck our chin in, ever so slightly. This chin adjusting business just strengthens the power of the position we are speaking from. Try it. Stand close to the audience with your chin up and it won’t have anywhere as much power as when standing in the same position, with your chin being held slightly down.
There are also the three stage positions of center, left and right. This allows us to engage with all of our audience. Those sitting on the extreme sides, can feel remote from the speaker. By moving to the extreme left or extreme right, we bring them into our presentation. To engage those right at the back, we stand on the very apron of the stage with our chin up and looking at those in the distant “cheap seats”. When moving across the stage apron, try not to fall into the orchestra pit. Don’t laugh, stages are often curved and without too much difficulty you can be head up, watching your audience and not watching where you are going. Next thing, down you go.
What about in the online world? We are often seated, but if it is a presentation, why are we seated? Why not mount the laptop so that the camera is head height, when you are standing. I was giving a presentation on giving presentations, to this year’s JMEC or Japan Market Expansion Competition participants and doing it online. I chose to stand when giving this presentation, because I wanted full access to my body language. That mean mounting a folding set of steps on my study desk and having my laptop precariously balanced on some books, so that I achieved the required eye height.
One thing I didn’t figure well enough into the equation was that I need a dedicated light source for my face, rather than relying on the room lighting in my study. This is something we need to work on, when presenting online. It does make a big difference to the clarity of our presence on screen.
On camera we are more limited in our movement range, so we are more dependant on our facial expressions and gestures. We don’t want to be swaying around like a drunken sailor, as that doesn’t look terribly convincing on screen. We need to stand in the one spot, but stand up straight and project credibility, reliability and professionalism. We can move our hands forward, rather than sideways and stay in shot more easily. So rather than showing something large, by spreading our hands wide from left to right, we can hold one hand close to our body and move the other closer to the camera. It communicates the size concept, without us going out of camera range.
Energy is much easier to generate and project when we are presenting standing up. We can access our full body power. Then we combine this with our hands, face, eyes and voice for a total wall of power effect on the audience. We might be wearing a headset and microphone combination for the best audio quality and usually we are able to stand close enough to the laptop to connect the cables. If we have to stand, such that we are using only the laptop microphone, we can expect that the audio quality may not be as good. You might also get some room echo on the audio, when you are positioned away from the camera. We can also use slide advancer technology, so that we are released from the laptop or we can just use the remote mouse.
The key is to always maximise your body language power, regardless of whether you are in person or online.
