On-Camera Coach. Reed Karin M.

past decade of doing this kind of work, I have noticed a trend. More and more companies are forgoing the “professional spokesperson/actor” and are instead opting to put their “real” employees on camera, people who usually have had no prior experience or training in how to communicate through a camera. To me, that's unequivocally unfair.

      I have spent more than 20 years honing my skills in front of the camera and have discovered what works and what doesn't, often through trial and error. My first stint in TV news was at a CBS affiliate in Youngstown, Ohio. Who knows why the news director hired me to be the weekend reporter and weather anchor? Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that I said I would do this for free. (They did pay me, and as a senior in college, I considered it more than adequate. Heck, I lived on Taco Bell.) I was awful on camera initially, but I learned my craft and eventually became a well-respected, award-winning journalist and anchor.

      The only training most of these corporate execs have had is a quick reminder to smile right before the red light goes on. And yet hiring someone like me to be the mouthpiece for the enterprise is becoming less and less common.

      Blame it on Steve Jobs for helping to create this age of the celebrity CEO, but be aware that the days of sending out the professional spokesperson are numbered. Your customers, your employees, and just about anyone else who is watching your video will want to hear from the decision makers, the doers, the C-suite executives – and more and more often, that means speaking on camera.

      The Global Communication Tool of Choice

      Video is a vital communication link for a workforce that is often not corralled within the bricks and mortar of the corporate monolith. It's immediate and impactful, and it can save you a ton of money.

      Important enterprise-wide announcements are regularly taped and uploaded to an organization's intranet. Training that once was held at the home office is now delivered through video portals. Colleagues can now collaborate across continents with greater ease, albeit with less sleep for those whose time zone received short shrift.

      Videoconferencing is not new. It's been around for decades, but for the majority of those years, the technology was siloed in specific rooms, which were hard to book, and usually reserved for the C-suite and senior-level executives. Today, videoconferencing has come to the masses, whenever and wherever they are.

      While the teleconference still holds a firm majority, videoconferencing is growing in popularity at a rapid rate. According to a Wainhouse Research survey in 2015, respondents indicated an average of 42 percent of their Web conferences involved video.1

      Additional insight from Wainhouse Research indicates that those who are already active users of videoconferencing are deepening their commitment to it. Of the roughly 170 respondents, 97 percent said they use videoconferencing more now than they did two years ago, and nearly the same high percentage of respondents pointed to improvements in reliability (95 percent) and ease of use (92 percent). According to that Wainhouse report, “Companies around the world are depending on video-enabled meetings to empower their people, serve clients better, and compete on a global basis.”2

      The advantages of videoconferencing are both tangible and intangible. For employees who are far-flung, virtual video meetings provide an acceptable and often preferred alternative to traveling to a meeting on site. It saves on costs and downtime due to travel, increasing productivity.

      Introducing a visual element also has the effect of turning a virtual meeting into one where etiquette mimics that of an in-room meeting. Remember the YouTube video that went viral, showing what really happens during conference calls? (If you haven't, search “Conference Call in Real Life” on YouTube.) Turning webcams on minimizes multitasking. Checking e-mail, playing solitaire, or grabbing a latte at your favorite coffeehouse becomes much more difficult to pull off if your face is constantly visible to all parties. The result? Everyone is forced to focus but rewarded by a meeting that is often shorter.

      Video meetings can be more meaningful, too. It's easier to build rapport with colleagues and “read the room” when you can see your audience. Body language speaks volumes but is silent on a teleconference call. Videoconferencing allows participants to pick up on nonverbal cues that would have been missed. In addition, research has shown that the majority of us are visual learners, so teleconferencing as a communication tool puts everyone at a disadvantage by forcing us to be primarily auditory learners.

      Hiring by Skype

      Video chat applications have completely revamped the hiring process across all verticals.

      Corporations can cast a much wider net for applicants now that interviewing over the Web is possible. Apps such as Skype, ooVOO, Tango, and Google Hangouts offer an opportunity to connect with potential candidates who may have been eliminated purely based on geography. If someone hits it out of the park during an interview on Google Hangouts, for example, the decision to bring that person in for a face-to-face meeting becomes a much easier one to make. And if there are still reservations, hiring managers can go back and “review the tape,” so to speak. Many video chat apps are capable of recording calls or have plug-ins created by other vendors that give users the opportunity to preserve those calls in a digital file.

      Video interviews also have the benefit of immediacy. Scheduling a trip to the corporate headquarters can be much more challenging than simply blocking out a chunk of time to chat online. By shortening the time to interview, a company can minimize the time to hire, allowing them to fill key positions quicker and potentially with better-quality candidates thanks to the deeper pool of applicants no longer limited by geography.

      The Perils of Video

      Want to avoid the camera today? That would be nearly impossible – and a potential professional liability. If you don't want to leverage the power of presenting to a camera, someone else will and could be seen as a more valuable asset. Self-promotion can be a strategy, and video provides the perfect platform on which to do it.

      But there are risks. Often, the messages being delivered on camera are high stakes: vital news for the entire global enterprise or, even more daunting, for an external audience of customers, competitors, and the always-intimidating media. Performing poorly can undercut the credibility of the presenter and ultimately can hurt the corporate (or personal) brand he or she represents.

      By contrast, on-camera expertise can be a true differentiator, especially as the use of video continues its exponential growth. Some camera-savvy corporate folks embrace the opportunity to connect with their audiences in a much deeper way than the written word allows. They come across as authentic and sincere, but that's not the norm.

      Most people who do not perform on camera for a living would prefer a root canal. Presenting via video combines two things most people hate: public speaking and being on camera. Even those who are very comfortable speaking to a live audience of hundreds can be flummoxed by having to speak to a single, solitary lens.

      How Reading This Book Can Improve Your On-Camera Performance

      The goal of any training is to change either you or the way you do something, but to me, the time spent in the classroom is just the first step. It's purely information transfer. The real “learning” is in the doing. This book is structured to give you not only foundational knowledge, but also ample opportunity to try out the techniques you have learned through specific exercises. Sure, you can skip over them, but your training will only be superficial. You need to practice what you've learned on camera and then evaluate your performance.

      It's actually not too difficult to separate the good from the bad when assessing your own performance. Peruse YouTube, and chances are you can easily identify those who have some serious skills in presenting to a camera from those who should have opted for another way (or person) to convey their message. Sometimes, the problems are readily apparent: lightning-fast delivery, distracting gestures, content that is hard to follow. But sometimes, there just seems to be something off. The same can be said of those who are solid performers. You might be thinking, “The camera really loves her,” but do you know why? This book will highlight some of the nuances that contribute to performance success and

1

Andrew Davis, 2015 Video Conference End User Survey, September 2015. http://cp.wainhouse.com/content/2015-video-conferencing-end-user-survey.

2

Ira M. Weinstein and Saar Litman, Simplicity in the New World of Video Conferencing, November 2015. http://cp.wainhouse.com/content/simplicity-new-world-video-conferencing.