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We’re all Celebrity Squares now

Who remembers the ITV quiz show Celebrity Squares?  Nine kinda well known people stuck in boxes on top of each other, who’d turn into giant noughts and crosses if they got the answer to a question right. Totally dignified. 

And who’d have thought that in 2020 we’d ALL have turned into Celebrity Squares? Zooming, Teaming, FaceTiming, Skyping, House Partying in attempts to keep in touch with the important people in our lives. 

The trouble is that very few of us have been trained to be celebrities. To know how to create that bond between us and our adoring audience. Particularly when we have 5cm square of real estate in which to make an impact.

The new normal?

The most recent research suggests that, as we emerge from lockdown, we’re likely to continue to have meetings online. Corona considerations aside, it’s a way of working that dovetails with environmental trends, people’s desires to work more flexibly and from home. 

But the truth is that the skills needed to connect with your audience were always needed even in real life. (or IRL as I’ve learned to call it, although it always reminds me of Republic of Ireland’s car stickers). What you could call the emotional, primitive or instinctive ways of building and developing relationships and communicating have always been needed. Lockdown and its forcing us to appear in small squares online only amplifies the challenges and adds a few extra for good measure. 

BeingThere (STAR)

So, to help people, unleash their inner celebrities, Infinite Space developed BeingThere. It uses a lot of what we’ve found works well with our live presentation skills workshop, PresentPerfect. To keep things simple and easy to use, we divided what people need in online meetings into four areas: Sound, Together, Action and Room. Which makes an easy to remember acronym: STAR. (See what we did there? Yes, it’s a little cheesy. But it’s better than R.A.T.S. Or the acronym you get if you do Action Room Sound Environment…).

Sound concentrates on voice skills, Together on how you can lead meetings and keep everyone engaged. Action focuses on how you make a physical impact in such a small space. And Room looks at how dramatically you can influence relationships by making better choices for your onscreen environment.  

Top five tips

From the workshops we’ve delivered since lockdown, these seem to be the five  things that help people the most and the most quickly (the section of the STAR acronym is in brackets after each):

1. Lighting (Room)

You don’t need to have a lighting rig that you could shoot Star Wars with. But you do need to light yourself from the front. If most of the light in your room is behind you, people can’t see your face, your expressions and it’s much harder for you to communicate all that you want to with them. Beyond this, how warm is your lighting? If you’re using natural light or a bulb with warm light, it helps you appear more approachable, literally warmer. Save the fluorescent strip lighting for the interrogation scenes. 

2. Centring yourself (Action)

You can dramatically increase your impact if you change your posture. In real life meetings it’s easy enough to ‘over-relax’ or slouch in chairs (yes, your Nan was right). It’s particularly hard to resist the temptation when you’re at home and feeling super comfortable in your environment. But if you’re sitting with a straight spine and relaxed shoulders, not only do you look more engaged, you’ll also sound more alert and energised. Your lungs won’t be crumpled, you’ll breathe more deeply, your voice will be able to have its natural resonance and you’ll sound warmer and more confident. 

3. NIQ or Name Inspire Question (Together)

Yup. Another acronym. There are many techniques you can use to make sure that everyone on your virtual conference feels involved. This simple acronym has really lit a fire with many people. It’s three techniques rolled into one. The first one is naming people. Nothing makes us sit up more and pay attention than having our name read out. The second is remembering to use the kind of energy and intention behind everything that you do that you feel and believe will inspire people on the call. It’s astonishing what a difference this simple technique makes. The third is asking questions. These can be rhetorical. Or they can be real questions asked of people on your conference, particularly people whose views you feel you would like to hear or who maybe are not used to speaking up in public.

4. Vocal challenges (Sound)

The technological challenges of patchy Wi-Fi and/or not brilliant quality microphones and loudspeakers mean that you have to make even more of your voice than you do in real life. And it is important to be prepared. If your  preparation has simply involved rolling out of bed and onto a call, the chances are your voice will not sound as dynamic as it could do. Take a few minutes to warm up your voice with a few simple tongue twisters – “Red Leather, Yellow Leather” or “Unique New York”. 

5. Hand gestures or “Does my thumb look big in this?” (Action)

People often find what they should do with their hands and arms when they’re presenting or in meetings really challenging.  We tend to gesture completely naturally when we don’t feel the glare of the spotlight. But in front of an audience we start to doubt what it is that we do, becoming self-conscious  and freezing. Online the technology presents us with extra challenges. The quality of the cameras in particular means that if we move our hands too quickly, they become a blur. Also, if you have your hands too close to the camera, hey presto, it looks like you have suddenly acquired giant hands.