Teleconferences are a necessity these days. With the coronavirus spreading and people confined to their homes, meetings have to be held via teleconference.
Unfortunately, it is not always a given to make yourself heard as well as if you were in a room with your colleagues.
Here are 8 tips that can help you communicate with ease and sound like a pro in your next teleconference:
1) Before your teleconference Before a meeting, take some time to connect to your breath and to yourself. Make it a habit to sit 5 minutes early at your desk before a meeting starts, where you just breathe and visualise the meeting going smoothly.
2) Speaking during a teleconference Speak close to the microphone, but don’t lean forward and compromise your posture. Invest in a headset or use the headset of your smartphone. The closer the microphone is to your mouth the better your voice will be heard on the other end.
3) Watch your posture
Sit up straight or stand up. You could use a laptop stand that you can put on your desk like this one if you need to look at your screen as you speak. You can also check out my blog post - 7 tips: how to have a good voice without investing a lot of time and money.
4) Agreeing and Disagreeing Make sure you vocally agree or disagree. As you cannot rely on body language, nodding or shaking your head will not be perceived. You need to actually say out loud “Yes” or “No”.
5) Clarity during an online call
Be extra clear about what you want to say. As people either cannot see you or see you in a very limited way, you have to be really clear. A little trick I use comes from Dale Carnegie:
“Tell your audience what you’re going to say, say it; then tell them what you’ve said.”
6) Keep communication brief Make it shorter than usual. If you have the tendency to speak for a long time, shorten your interventions - which is probably good for the future as well. The shorter and clearer your intervention, the more likely your colleagues are to follow you.
7) Less is more
Teleconferences are less efficient than face-to-face meetings. Reduce the number of topics you want to get through by 10-20 %. This way you won’t get frustrated.
8) Ending your meeting
At the end of a teleconference-meeting, make sure to repeat or sum up what decisions have been taken. Making sure that everybody knows what the next steps are, will eliminate unnecessary follow-up emails from colleagues. Everybody will go back to their home-office-lives feeling accomplished and ready for the next step.
If you could use some guidance in speaking with more confidence in a teleconference, book a 30 min discovery call and let's chat!