Zoom In, Zoom Out

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Video conferencing interface, no participant cameras on.I’m noticing there are two types of people in this world; those who when on Zoom calls (or Teams, etc.) turn their camera on, and those who prefer to leave the camera off.

With one of my clients – a large professional services firm –despite pleading and cajoling and shaming, I generally get only 30% of webinar participants to come on camera. With another client, it’s 100%.

What’s the difference between the two groups? More importantly, is one group more right than the other? Should you go on camera on Zoom calls? If so, when, and why? And what does this little issue have to do with creating trust in the 2020s?

First, the two groups. The first one (70% lurkers) is mainly made up of 30-something and 40-something midlevel professionals. The second is made up of college students.

It’s hard not to suspect a generational difference here. Gen Z’s are generally more comfortable with casual online exposure than are the Gen X’s and millennials of my professional services client. Or so goes the theory.

A related issue is the use of digital backgrounds on these calls, vs. the natural background of where your camera happens to be. One group finds the digital backgrounds more professional, while the other group considers the absence of artifice and the presence of coffee cups and keyboard-treading cats to be signs of authenticity.

So What–Why Do Zoom Behaviors Matter?

I think there’s a bigger issue here than online calls. There’s also the work-from-home-vs.-office debate. There’s also the attraction of AI to customer service and other functions. There’s also the approach of marketers and sales folk using impersonal techniques to mimic the sense of personal contact.

The larger picture is – how can emerging technologies help or hinder the creation of interpersonal trust relationships?

I have a bias on this issue: it is that these technologies are here to stay, and each of us has a choice to make about their use. Do we seek out technology to help build relationships, or do we hide behind it hoping that technology can substitute for personal relationships?

This admittedly artificial and binary distinction rests on one theme: risk-aversion. Most people would agree that in-person one-on-one contact is richer and better for creating personal relationships, while at the same time more risky, time consuming and messy.

A lot of work-from-home fans are motivated at least in part by a desire to avoid the messiness of interpersonal interactions.  I suspect it’s the same motive behind a desire to stay off-camera on Zoom calls. And, farther out on the limb of inferences, I suspect the same people are attracted by emerging digital approaches to lead generation and customer acquisition and customer service – “if we can just automate things, find the right algorithms, it’ll all go easier for everyone.”

The other side – full transparency, it’s my side – says we have not evolved in the last few decades out of our innate, human, emotional messiness. Technology will never substitute for human relationships; but technology can contribute to, or hinder, their furtherance.

The right choice is to let technology help. On your Zoom calls – get on camera for them, all the time. Eschew that Golden Gate Bridge green screen background. Lean into the camera, then lean out. Use voice modulation; use your words to convey things that body language might usually say. Let the dog lie in sight of the camera. Comment on other people’s backgrounds (“nice wall hanging; interesting vases on that table; what’s your dog’s name?”).

Don’t use LinkedIn to scrape names and then ruin it with messaging like “I’d like to connect.” (I’d like to win the lottery; so what? Tell me who you are an why we should meet, why you reached out, and how might we help each other?).

Hire more and better customer service staff. Stop lying to me (“our menu has recently changed”). Put “talk to an operator” at the top of your menu, not at the bottom. Treat customer service as a revenue center, or at least not just as a cost center. Use LinkedIn to find out about people, not just to categorize and target them with canned “marketing” messages.

We can use technology as an enabler, or as an excuse. I suggest the former.

Building Trust in the World of Zoom

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Zoom and other virtual meeting spaces helped save personal and professional relationships across the globe during the COVID-19 pandemic. While we all adjusted to an explosion in the prevalence of virtual teams, which have since revolutionized the modern workplace, the challenges were — and still are, quite honestly — clear.

The lighting. The sound. The background. The Wi-Fi. The inadvertent interruptions from partners, kids, pets, and even unexpected doorbells. It all adds up to Zoom fatigue.

And that is not even half of it.

Using technology and virtual meetings to communicate, nurture professional relationships, and increase revenue inherently leaves participants feeling disconnected. While the calls for employees to return to the office are being met with resistance, a structured hybrid approach is a resounding answer to encouraging a productive workspace.

This means Zoom meetings will remain a large part of the business culture.

So, how do we leverage virtual meeting platforms to remain connected to new hires, seasoned employees, upper management, prospective and existing clients, and vendors? How do we build trust with essential teams that rely on technology to communicate? We have answers.

Pre-Meeting Preparation & Communication

Before the meeting, create an agenda and provide participants with links, documents, and other reference materials to actively engage in the conversation.

When meeting organizers set well-defined objectives and clearly communicate the purpose of the meeting before it starts, participants are more likely to trust that their time is being valued and used productively.

Be Punctual & Prepared

Whether you are the organizer or participant, being punctual shows that you respect everyone else’s schedules and demonstrates that you are a positive addition to the conversation. If you were emailed meeting documents, read them before the meeting and have them available when it starts. When other participants feel others are unprepared (deservedly or otherwise), there is an immediate lack of trust.

Use Video & Active Nonverbal Cues

While appearing on video is not everyone’s favorite, it helps participants see facial expressions and body language, enhancing the sense of connection. Nonverbal cues, like nodding and smiling, show engagement and empathy.

Introduce Participants, Their Roles & Backgrounds

It is not uncommon to see unfamiliar faces in Zoom meetings. Immediately, this sends everyone scrambling for details about the participants, which takes their attention away from the forum.

Begin the meeting by making sure everyone’s role and background is clear, paying special attention to newcomers or infrequent attendees.  Ask participants to share something personal (even as simple as where they’re located) to help establish personal connections and foster a sense of belonging. Inclusivity helps build trust and respect.

Actively Listen and Encourage Openness

Actively listening to each person and thoughtfully responding to their comments encourages open dialogue and shows you value their input. Encourage participants to ask questions and address any concerns they might have. Share your thoughts, experiences, and challenges when relevant. If you aren’t sure if it’s appropriate (or don’t have the opportunity to) interject, use the visual response button or the meeting chat to show support and add to others’ messages. While engaging publicly may feel vulnerable, this vulnerability can encourage others to do the same, fostering a sense of authenticity and trust while demonstrating your willingness to be transparent and responsive.

Follow Agendas, Stay Focused & Manage Time Effectively

Demonstrate that you are organized and respect other participants’ commitments by sticking to the meeting agenda. Allocate time for each agenda item and stay on track. Reliable behavior and respecting participants’ time build trust in your ability to lead or participate in a productive meeting.

Align the Team Through Technology

Share meeting notes, action items, and next steps with participants and ensure consistency across all communication platforms using resources like shared calendars, collaboration channels, online filing systems, and project management tools. This demonstrates accountability and helps keep everyone on the same page. It can also encourage participants to provide feedback on the meeting format, content, and structure to reduce redundancies and improve processes while showing you value their input.

 

Building trust virtually requires all four elements of the Trust Equation, credibility, reliability, intimacy, and self-orientation, to facilitate meaningful interactions and collaborate effectively.

 

Trust-Based Resources to Maximize Your Team’s Potential:

The 80/20 rule for Virtual Relationships (Part IV): Double-Down and Ramp Up the Rational Trust Builders

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This post was co-authored by Andrea P. Howe and Noelle Mykolenko.

The initial post of this blog series introduced what we called the (new) 80/20 rule for virtual relationships, warning that focusing too much on the “virtual” part of “virtual relationships” could lead to missed opportunities and damaging long-term consequences.

In that post, we pointed out that relationship-building and selling aren’t really different these days, in spite of what people are trying to tell you, and in spite of what your own fears are whispering—or maybe shouting—in your ear.

Using the trust equation as a framework, the second and third posts addressed the more emotional trust factors, self-orientation and intimacy.

In this final post, we invite you to consider how you might double down on your relationship EQ and ramp up your virtual IQ on the rational side of building trust – Reliability and Credibility – to strengthen your bonds with clients and colleagues when you can’t be together in person.

Reliability

It does not diminish the importance of reliability to say that it is the aspect of trust at which most professionals excel. This is the factor most likely to be done well by you (and your competitors). It is also the on factor of trust that requires time.

Judgments on reliability are strongly affected, if not determined, by the number of times the client has interacted with you. We tend to trust the people we know well, and assign less trustworthiness to those with whom we have not interacted. After Intimacy, Reliability is the second most powerful trust builder.

Double down on time-tested relationship principles (80%)

  • Make small promises. You don’t have to wait for a big “thing” to be delivered to flex your strong reliability muscles. Amp up the number of small promises you make. Give others more data points to assess your consistency/predictability by creating bite-sized “deliverables,” then consistently follow through.
  • When you miss a deadline or an expectation (and you will), say something about it ASAP. Clean up any residual messes and re-promise. Do this even for things that may seem small or inconsequential.

Ramp up your virtual best practices (20%)

  • Communicate more, and more often. Absent a crisis, reliability is table stakes, and generally over-emphasized by professionals at the expense of other variables. During a crisis, its relative importance increases because of our basic human need for predictability. Consider how you might regularly communicate what you know about a situation, even if it’s little or nothing—the “regularly” is actually more important than the content of your message.

Credibility

Credibility isn’t just providing expert content. It’s expert content in conjunction with “presence,” which refers to how we look, act, and present our content.

Credibility is also about honesty and candor—saying what needs to be said, in spite of how awkward or uncomfortable it may feel.

Double down on time-tested relationship principles (80%)

  • Be bold with your point of view. Initiate conversations, post opinions, publish articles. The “advisor” part of “trusted advisor” is just as important as the “trusted” part. Have the courage to put a stake in the ground. If not now, when?
  • Express passion for your work. Show more than just professionalism; show your genuine enthusiasm for what you do, and for what your clients do. Passion is something that everyone can benefit from expressing more, but it can be especially uplifting and impactful during a challenging time.
  • Be real about your limitations and errors. For example, be willing to say, “I don’t know,” straightforwardly and with a blend of confidence and humility. You’ll build credibility through honesty. And therein lies the plot twist/paradox: when you’re OK to admit what might be perceived as weakness, people see your strength.

Ramp up your virtual best practices (20%)

  • Dial down the amount of content. The tendency to over-pack conversations and presentations is more damaging now that we’re all perpetually tired from having to engage in “constant gaze.” Think and apply “less is more” when it comes to content and give people more time to digest it and react to it.

Many professionals believe that being credible and reliable is enough to form strong trust relationships. While these two factors often provide the foundation for trust, they are only part of what forms the everlasting client bonds and deep, unshakable loyalty that come with true trusted advisorship.

Winning trust requires that you do well on all four trust dimensions (in the client’s eyes).

The 80/20 rule for Virtual Relationships (Part III): Double-Down and Ramp Up Intimacy

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This post was co-authored by Andrea P. Howe and Noelle Mykolenko.

In the first post of this four-part blog series, we introduced what we called the (new) 80/20 rule for virtual relationships. For anyone seeking a “silver bullet” to build virtual relationships, focusing too much on the “virtual” part of “virtual relationships” becomes an easy distraction from what really matters.

Now is the time for 80% focus on our relationship EQ and 20% focus on improving our virtual IQ—not the other way around.

We introduced the trust equation in Part II of the series as a framework to do just that, sharing our favorite low self-orientation relationship builders (the 80%) and behaviors to incorporate specifically for virtual interactions (the 20%). Today look at the most powerful trust-building factor: intimacy.

Intimacy

The most common failure in building trust is the lack of intimacy. Some professionals consider it a positive virtue to maintain an emotional distance from their clients. We believe that they do so not only at their own risk, but also to that of their clients.

Double down on time-tested relationship principles (80%)

  • Listen with earnest empathy. And then do it some more. And some more. Borrowing Charlie Green’s wise words: “Wow” is a complete sentence.” So is “Ouch,” and “Good on you!” Statements of empathy are ways of mirroring emotions, and empathy is key for connectedness and influence.
  • Create “small talk” moments. Neuroscientists teach us that something as simple as the exchange of pleasantries (like talk about the weather) produces feel-good chemicals in our brains that promote bonding. Go one step further and ask about the photo you see on the bookshelf behind them. Small talk can facilitate a big personal connection.
  • Dare to talk about feelings (yours and theirs). We all have them, and they’re a legitimate part of professional life. Steer towards first-person language when you focus on their feelings, as in, “I’m sensing hesitation” (compared to, “You’re hesitating”) or “If it were me, I think I’d probably feel …” (instead of, “You probably feel …”). Speak candidly about your own feelings, as in, “Well, I’m a little concerned about …,” or “At the risk of being the outlier, I’m not on board yet with this idea.”
  • Let others get to know you. For real. Now is not the time to err on the side of “buttoned up”; now is the time to connect meaningfully across our humanity. Fortunately, our collective context makes it both relevant and easier to reference our outside lives. Take emotional risks. Beware the temptation to make excuses or hide the truth—if you have to cut a call short to help your child with homework, be honest about it. Charlie also reminds us, “Don’t legislate cats out of the picture.”
  • Ask for feedback. Be proactive about seeking critique. Ask well crafted, open-ended questions that help with the inertia that most clients have to overcome to say something unfavorable. Be equally willing to take in their positive remarks. And don’t just ask about content and task; inquire about the quality of your relationship, too.

Ramp up your virtual best practices (20%)

  • Seek greater (emotional) bandwidth. Try a higher medium of communication than you did six months ago. Debating over text versus email? Go with the one that’s a little riskier because it’s more intimate. Also remember the forgotten application embedded in our smart phones: the phone itself.
  • Attend to nonverbals more than before. We’re all at a massive communication disadvantage, far more consistently than we once were. Practice making regular “eye contact,” for example, which means letting them look you in the (camera) eye. Tune into—and make deliberate use of—the sight and sound senses that are still available: voice modulation, gestures, movement.

The behaviors that build intimacy—discretion, empathy and personal risk-taking— create emotional safety for the other person. Intimacy was already the most important factor in the Trust Equation, and in times of stress, it’s vastly more valuable.

In our final post of this series, we’ll explore increasing credibility and reliability in virtual relationships.

The 80/20 rule for Virtual Relationships (Part II): Using the Trust Equation to Double-Down and Ramp Up

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This post was co-authored by Andrea P. Howe and Noelle Mykolenko.

We recently introduced what we call the (new) 80/20 rule for virtual relationships. In the first of this four-part blog series, we acknowledged that it’s anything but business as usual these days, but cautioned that focusing too much on the “virtual” part of “virtual relationships” could lead to missed opportunities and damaging long-term consequences.

We concluded that now is the time for 80% focus on our relationship EQ and 20% focus on improving our virtual IQ—not the other way around.

That’s because how we interact may have changed, but what builds trusted relationships has not. True trusted advisorship demands that we find ways to make choices from our higher selves, not from our baser instincts, and not from our bag of virtual tricks.

The temptation to spend a lot of time and money on the technological equivalent of shiny objects becomes an easy distraction from what really matters, when our current reality is a call to lead with time-tested relationship principles and shore them up with virtual best practices.

Enter our old friend, the trust equation, as a framework to help us all do exactly that.

Many professionals believe that being credible and reliable is enough to form strong trust relationships. While these two factors often provide the initial foundation for trust, they are necessary but insufficient to form the everlasting client bonds and deep, unshakable loyalty that come with true trusted advisorship. Trust has multiple dimensions: credibility, reliability, intimacy and lack of self-orientation. Winning trust requires that you do well on all four dimensions (in the client’s eyes).

Consider how you might double down on your relationship EQ and ramp up your virtual IQ to form everlasting client bonds and deep, unshakable loyalty.

Self-Orientation

We begin with self-orientation because there is no greater source of distrust than advisors who appear to be more interested in themselves than in trying to be of service and trying to help the client.

Unfortunately, your self-orientation is likely to be high right now, whether you realize it or not. On the other hand – so is everyone else’s.

We recognize – and will remember – those who are able to genuinely reach out beyond their own psyches and connect with others in such times.

Double down on time-tested relationship principles (80%)

  • Lead with your genuine caring as an individual. Reach out just to say hello and find out how they are. We’ve always advocated for this relationship-building practice, only now it’s more important than ever.
  • Lead with your genuine caring as an organization. Now is the time for rallying cries that are truly client-centric. Don’t let fear set your goals and choose your messaging.
  • Make generous offers. Propose something concrete that you can give away that would be helpful—resources, ideas, small bites of work that you can do remotely and not charge for. These are gestures, not discounts, and there are lots of ways to do this without compromising your fee/rate integrity.
  • Leave clients feeling good about themselves when they’re around you. It’s a favorite piece of David Maister wisdom: “You don’t make people want to spend time with you because they feel good about you. You do it by making them feel good about themselves when they are with you.” Think about how you might acknowledge or promote your clients—genuinely, of course.
  • Be rigorous about the rituals and practices that help you get and stay grounded. Zoom fatigue is real and everyone’s surge capacity is in short supply. Be intentional about managing your fear along with your overall well-being, and be a good role model for others in the process.

Ramp up your virtual best practices (20%)

  • Plan for interaction/engagement every five minutes or so during virtual meetings. No, that’s not a typo. It’s far too easy for clients to get distracted when we’re together online, plus it’s harder to sense what isn’t being said, so we all have to work harder to be collaborative when virtual is our primary/only option. Have both tech-savvy and traditional tools at the ready and use them appropriately: annotate, chat, breakout, pause and reflect, and many more.

Finally, grant yourself the grace to realize that things are different . Recognize and acknowledge what you are experiencing, and manage your Self-orientation moving forward.

In Part III of this series, we’ll share what to double down on and what to ramp up to increase Intimacy in virtual relationships.