This week’s Stand Out Virtually Principle reminds us that Things Get Magnified in the Remote Space. This includes the good, the bad and the not-so-great. What are the things you want to intentionally magnify? What are the things you want to minimize?

Items which may get magnified include:
Lack of interaction or one way passage of information. What are the ways you want to engage others in the conversation? Consider polls, annotation, using the whiteboard etc.

Lack of purpose or focus for the call. Be sure to frame out the main bullet points for each call. For example:

By the end of our call we will have:

• Explored ____ topic;
• Discussed _____ element;
• Created an action plan.

 
Lack of visuals – Too much text is not going to be absorbed in the same way as other messaging. What are the visuals which are going to support interaction and engagement with your message? Consider using icons, or going to sites such as Unsplash, Pixabay or Adobe Stock to build out your pool to draw upon.

What can you do to create a more focused, interactive call, so that the things you DO want to get magnified DO?

With best wishes,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders 
Coaching Skills Training | Leadership Development | Teamwork
Growing Team Leaders, One Conversation at a Time™ in the Remote Space
Contact us to discuss leadership, coaching or performance needs for your and your team
Phone: (416)996-8326

The Stand Out Virtually micro-brand was birthed this past summer in June. I first started writing it here at the blog on July 21st with the Flashback Friday post I shared. Here it is again in case you missed it:

The digital space can get very crowded, with one Zoom call looking like another.

Today’s post gets you thinking about different ways you can stand out virtually. If you are a leader, coach or business owner, what can do you do make sure that your call stands out virtually?

#1 – Be clear – From the start, let people know what they can expect. How long is the call? What’s being covered? What is the process going to be?

#2 – Create expectations – From the start, let people know what they can expect. What is the process you are going to follow? A lack of clarity creates a lack of certainty.

#3 – Consider the visuals which will create a WOW – Our brains process visuals faster than text. What are the visual elements you want to use to help anchor your work? What is the environment you would like to create?

#4 – Create a pause – One of the common characteristics of a lot of virtual calls these days is that there is no space to breathe. Literally. There’s no pauses or chance to catch your breath. Part of creating memorability is doing something different or novel.

#5 – Create connection – In my remote working whitepaper I shared the 7 Cs – Remote Enablers. Connection (along with clarity) is one of them. We want to make sure that we are creating CONNECTION on multiple levels, in multiple ways. What is the connection to the topic? What is the connection to a person’s world? What is the connection to others on the call? What are you doing to create connection?

#6 - What’s your call to action? What is the call to action you are making? What will people do after the call? Are you building in time for people to note their next steps? Articulate or share their next steps?

As you think about your upcoming conversations in the year ahead, What’s your favorite tip? Share with us in the comments below.

Enjoy the conversation and reflection,
Jennifer

Virtual calls will continue to be the norm into the next year. With this in mind, here’s a quick refresh of five things to keep in mind as you are leading or participating with virtual calls:

#1 – Clarity around purpose and outcomes. As Stephen Covey wrote, “Always start with the end in mind”. What is the outcome you are aiming for? What will it look like when success is achieved?

#2 – Leverage the different learning styles which exist. There are many different types of elements of interaction you can participate with – from more auditory listening to more hands-on kinesthetic approaches where we can incorporate annotation.

#3 – Leave time during the call for silence and reflection. Most people are moving so fast right now that there is minimal time to focus on what’s important. What are you doing to create a pause point for people to be able to catch their breath and take notes?
 
#4 – Make it visual. The power of visuals is often overlooked. What is the journey you want to take people on? What do you want to focus on as you move forward? What are the visual metaphors you want to capture? What else is important to note?

#5 – Leave time at the end for people to name and note their next steps. Before we know it, we are off to another call. What are you doing to ensure that people have the chance to identify and write out their next steps, even scheduling it in.? As Peter Drucker noted, “What doesn’t get scheduled, doesn’t get done.”

Best wishes,
Jennifer

Aligned with this week’s theme of branding, celebrations and motivations I thought it would be useful to reach back to one of my July 2020 posts. This year I’ve been building out a series of programming around Stand Out Virtually™, and what it means for you and as a business.

Here’s what I wrote back in Teams365 2403: 

One of the many challenges faced at the moment is standing out remotely. With back-to-back virtual meetings becoming the norm, one call can blend into another. Note, if you haven’t read yesterday’s Back to The Basics call on the Energy of the Call, check it out.

At the same time, many professionals are concerned that they are not as visible in the virtual space as they are in a face to face environment. This translates to concern around their visibility for career progression, taking on special projects etc.

Several things you will want to consider:

#1 – What does “standing out remotely” mean for you? What’s important about this? Do you want to stand out more so that your message is remembered – which may mean more about presentation techniques? OR is it standing out as a professional?  And perhaps someone who is known for great virtual calls which whiz by and are remembered. What’s your WHY around this?

#2 – Our personal brand can get translated through the screen through our slides, images, our background and also what we are wearing. What are the brand elements you want to keep in mind?

#3 – Be proactive. This might mean getting into the rhythm of connecting regularly with others. It might mean getting a mentor. It might mean focusing in on getting active in a professional association. What do you want to be known for?

Standing out remotely means many different things. I’ll be focusing more on the topic in August as it relates to leading more engaging and memorable virtual calls. Are you ready to Stand Out?

Even though the Challenge is complete, you can check out my 5 Day Challenge – Standing Out Virtually. Participate in the challenge at your own pace for $97 US.

I hope you will!
​Jennifer

As someone who has had the privilege to coach entrepreneurs for more than 15 years, I love working around the topic of Personal Branding. This is now a topic of critical importance to everyone in the remote space. Since we are not being “seen” live in the same frequency, things can get pronounced. What are you noticing about how you communicate who you are, what you stand for and how that gets translated on the screen?

Enter personal branding.

“A brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer’s decision to choose one product or service over another.” - Seth Godin

What is the message you want to communicate through your colors, tagline and visuals?

Brands are like a fingerprint for a business. They are unique. They communicate to the external world on many different levels – who you are, what you do, what they can expect.

Brands are linked to our business, or focus, and signal a lot without us even saying a word.

This month you are invited to explore the different elements of your brand. Brands consist of several elements including:

• Colors
• Images and Icons
• Your Tagline
• The slides you use
• The Typography
• Musical Elements
• The words you use

Questions you will want to explore around your brand include:

• What’s important to communicate to others? What’s the look at feel about your brand?
• What type of brand do you want – Playful? Serious? Minimalistic? Colorful?
• What do you want to communicate through your brand? – Speed, service, reliability?
• Do you use any taglines? The tagline for the CBB is Daily Steps + Consistent Action = Momentum
• Colors – What are the colors of the brand you want to signal? Check out this article from 99 Designs on Branding and Colors 
  Or Marketo’s What Brand Colors Can Reveal About Your Business
  
• What’s your name?
• Are there any other elements – sounds, movements?
• What images and icons represent your brand? (More on this later this week)
• What typography represents your brand – Bold, flowery?

What’s important to note about personal branding for you right now? This is a topic we explore in the Incubator program, which starts quarterly.

Enjoy!
​Jennifer

One of my favorite activities at the end of a meeting or training session is the Gallery Walk. In in-person realms, we can look around the room at what has been created, on flipcharts or a whiteboard.

What can we do to translate this to the virtual environment?

We can do a Virtual Gallery Walk!

As you go through your meeting or training virtually, consider what are the elements you want to highlight and showcase at the end.

You might take screenshots as you go through a meeting OR you might bring forward whiteboards again.

Think about what moments will highlight the different moments in time.
​
Enjoy the “walk down memory lane”!
Jennifer

This past week I hosted a 5-day challenge called “Stand Out Virtually – Corporate Edition”. We explored what’s needed to create interactive, and memorable, corporate engagements, whether you are working in organizations that are for-profit, not-for-profit, public sector, start-ups or associations. Those who attended were coaches and other learning professionals, leaders, and entrepreneurs, who lead programming for organizations and have had to pivot or expand their virtual offerings.

Three key themes we talked about this week around creating memorable and impactful virtual calls are what I term in my book – Effective Virtual Conversations – “Death By Conference Call” or today’s term of “zoom fatigue” were:

#1 - Invite people to interact and get active – Conversations are not meant to be a passive endeavor. They need to be active. Talking at people one way is not having a conversation. Be sure to use the “engagement levers” available to you – from chat, to annotation, polling or breakouts. Different size virtual rooms, and different platforms will provide different options available.
Task: Review one of your current presentations this week. What is one way you can create more active focus on the part of participants? Note incorporating this every 7-10 minutes is often a good rule of thumb.
 
#2 - Improve your questions – Leadership in the remote and virtual space is via influence. This is another reason why conversational skills become so important virtually. Consider what questions will elicit the response and action you are looking for.

Questions are usually asked one at a time, only 4 to 6 words in length, and the most open-ended questions usually (but not always) start with WHAT. Why questions may put people on the defensive if trust levels are not high. How questions will move people into a process orientation.

Asking two questions at a time is often referred to as stacking and may lead to people not knowing which question they should refer to.

Task: Spend some time thinking about and reviewing the questions you want to ask in an upcoming presentation. Are they clear? What do they invite people to do – connect the dots, look to the bigger picture, etc?
 
#3 - Consider the visuals – One of the main channels we have in communication is visual. What are the visual elements you are using in your presentation or conversation? Is there an opportunity to create a metaphor to make a more complex topic simpler? Or a graphic or illustration which could synthesize new ideas.

Task: Consider your visual elements this week – photos, colors, metaphors and images.  What is important to note about your visuals?

Just a reminder, that this week we are starting the Stand Out Virtually Fall 2020 Incubator.

If today’s blog post is a topic of interest to you and you want to learn more about creating WOW conversations for the corporate arena, I’ll be hosting a seven week virtual learning series this fall on Mondays from 1:00 – 2:30 pm ET called the Fall 2020 Stand Out Virtually Incubator. Each week we’ll host a live learning call, you’ll participate in viewing some micro-learning and you’ll also be paired with a peer accountability partner to support you in building out and positioning your work. Whether you are external or internal to an organization, this program will build your tools, clarity and confidence around standing out virtually. Click here to learn more and register. 

The program runs from Monday October 19th to Friday December 4th.

Best wishes,
​Jennifer

Our brain processes images faster than text or words. With that in mind, what can you do to use more screenshots in your virtual events, particularly if you have met over multiple sessions? In former in-person events, one of my favorite activities was to a gallery walk at the end of the program. In the event virtual space, we can do that by showing some of the screenshots we’ve taken as we’ve gone throughout our journey.

The best practice is to always be sure that you have permission or have indicated that you will be sharing screenshots from an event.

Consider these software and apps for taking screenshots:

• The snipping tool in Windows
• Snagit (a software)
• Lightshot - if you are on a Mac or apple product
• Check out these different options as well – Best Free Screenshot Options for Windows 
• How to take  a screenshot on android 

​Beyond the HOW TO’s, think about the screen shots which will capture the themes, funny moments and highlights of your current conversations. What’s going to support you?

Enjoy the conversation!
Jennifer

Welcome to our weekend journaling prompt! This weekend’s prompt is “Frameworks include….”

What are the frameworks you are grounding your work in?

Frameworks are useful for a number of reasons:

#1 - They put a boundary around things. This can help to keep things contained or IN FOCUS.

What are the boundaries you have enacted?

How do your frameworks keep things in focus?

#2 - They help with communication.

In this week’s journaling maybe you want to sketch out the steps in your frameworks, or present it in a different way – an iconograph instead of text.

What is the map of your framework?

What do you see as the frameworks which help guide you, your actions and your focus?

Enjoy your journaling!
​Jennifer

Earlier this month in the September 2020 Remote Pathways podcast community call, I shared the 8 Layers of Remote Work. These are nuanced areas which can be important to learn more about as it relates to your colleagues, stakeholders and work.

In yesterday’s Teams365 blog post, I covered the first four of eight layers of remote work – Digital, Decisions, Delegation and Distractions.

Today’s post is going to explore the final four layers – Design, Dialogue, Do and Depth.

Let’s look at each one of these in turn:

Design – Design skills are increasingly needed by remote professionals of all kinds, given that the way we present our information and ideas may be even more visual and graphical. Likewise, in the remote space it may be likely that you are designing more meetings and programming and presentations. We will be looking at the elements of exceptional virtual design tomorrow, September 17, at the one-day Stand Out Virtually Studio Day Masterclass. Learn more and join us here. 

Dialogue – Talking at people is not communication. With collaboration being an essential, and overlooked, skillset in the remote space, dialogue is critical for success and partnering. The word Dialogue comes from the ancient Greek world of dialogus – which means two way. Dialogue is a two-way conversation. With many remote professionals feeling like they are constantly being communicated to, but not being talked with, fostering a culture of dialogue is critical. This may mean earmarking certain calls for discussion as well as focusing more on using breakouts and other key strategic areas.

Do – The 7th layer of remote work is simple. DO. Get things done. There’s not a lot of time or space for procrastination in the remote space. If you create and lead programs, what can you do to build in more time for people to get things DONE during your time together? Will they pay you to do things for them?

Depth – The final layer is Depth.  As broad as the remote working space is, it is important to have depth in terms of your relationships, levels of trust, connection and clarity around your goals and results. Spending time going deep around agreements, processes, and how you are going to operate is also important.

Be sure to check out the September 1st Remote Pathways Podcast Community Call – you can find it here.

Enjoy the conversation!
Jennifer