It doesn’t matter if you are confident or not. What matters is whether your audience perceives you as confident, as opposed to stressed.
Be mindful of the signals you send out and try to control them as much as possible without appearing forced.
Running a video call
Self-soothers and adoptors
Avoid self-soothers (fingers or hands on your face, rubbing, repetitive fidgeting with objects) and adaptors (repetitively adjust your clothing or hair)
- Objects should be out of reach, not just out of the camera’s frame
- If you reach out to an object in frame, people will see you’re fidgeting
- If the object is out of frame, people will see you take up more space in the frame, maximize, trying to dominate
Eye contact
Keep continuous eye contact with the camera
- Eye contact raises the levels of dopamine. People will feel optimistic and perceive “something good is going to happen”
- It also captivates the attention of your interlocutors
Smile
Stick a smiley sticker close to the camera
- This will help you to keep eye contact and also prompt you to smile
- You smiling will stimulate dopamine in your audience
Eye level
Set your camera’s height appropriately
- Eye-level: people will perceive you’re meeting on the level, eye-to-eye
- Higher than eye-level: you will be looking up to people; they will feel you are submissive
- Lower than eye-level: you will be looking down on people; they will feel you are dominant
Background
Your background contains many triggers
- Corporate virtual backgrounds must be avoided. They block personal connections and create a feeling of distrust, since they hide something. A much better solution is having branded physical objects within the frame: an award, a coffee mug, etc
- Personal virtual backgrounds (photo of holiday, pet, etc) should be avoided, but may be used to trigger a personal connection and as a conversation starter
- If you’re on the go and not in your usual spot, just provide context (i.e. “I’m on the way to pick up my daughter”)
- A couch or pillows give a sense of comfort
- A table light turned on suggests “someone lives here”, “this person is alive and is actively thinking”, while lights off signal you being passive
- The more people see, the better. In the absence of signals, the mind makes up negatives way more than positives
Framing
Keep your face on one side of the frame, rather than centered
- The background on the other side should have lines converging to where your face is; this creates a vanishing point that captures the eye of your audience
- Staying on one side will allow you to use the other side’s empty space for hand gestures
Correct position
Incorrect position
Distance
Leverage the distance between you and the camera
- Lean into the camera to get big and close, signaling intimacy and trust
- Get farther to give space, let people into your personal space, give a sense of comfort
Reading your audience
Use the SCAN technique to read the person you’re interacting with and get closer to the truth.
- Suspend judgement. Your unconscious mind will always come up with judgement: ”Person is angry. Person is happy. Person is worried”. Always add a “maybe” with your conscious mind: “Person is angry, maybe”.
- Context. You’re looking at things through your narrow context. Try to widen your context as much as possible.
- Ask “what else?”. Validate your thoughts and feelings. Ask the person: “It seems you’re angry. Is that right?”
- New judgement. Take a few moments to go through SCAN, then consciously make a new judgement that’s either the same or a different one than your instinct provided.