I’m getting constant questions about how to make the virtual speaking experience as good as the face-to-face.  The quick answer, of course, is that you can’t.  For those speakers who thrive on the excitement and energy a live audience offers, virtual speaking is never going to be as much fun.  Your audience is atomized into computer nodes, you don’t get that visceral feedback in the moment, and you can’t connect with the audience in the same way as you would if they were there in front of you.

The longer answer, for another blog post, is that there are a number of things you can do that make the very different experience of virtual speaking worthwhile and rewarding.  But they are focused on making the most of a democratized relationship.  For now, I’m going to provide three keys to preparing for the virtual experience in order to get you, the speaker, ready to deliver in this challenging environment.

First, control your body language.  Think of the virtual speech as like appearing on TV.  As Marshall McLuhan famously noted, TV craves emotion.  What he actually meant was that the two-dimensional experience of a TV personality is necessarily muted, so you need to amp up the emotion you put into your performance.  If you normally speak at a 10, you need to dial it up to 12.  That means getting your whole body in on the act, just as if you were on stage.  A quick tip:  present standing up.  It’s very hard to get the necessary oomph sitting down.

Second, control your attitude.  Remember you are not going to get the visceral feedback you are used to getting – the laughs, the applause, the leaning in and connection that face-to-face audiences provide a lively speaker.  But you can’t cave, get angry, feel sulky, or lose your nerve.  The audience is there; you just can’t hear them. You’ve got to keep going regardless.  Quick tip: give yourself lots of positive self-talk.

Third, control your message.  When a speaker feels that the speech is landing with a thud, the tendency is to shift your pace or tactics or both in order to connect more strongly or to speed up to get the painful business over with.  Neither response is warranted in the virtual world.  In another post I’ll talk about ways to get feedback from your virtual audience, but for now just realize that you are going to have to deliver the speech as planned in spite of feeling that no one cares.  That’s why they’re paying you the big bucks – at least, I hope so.

Virtual speaking does not provide the same charge of excitement that face-to-face speaking does, but with a little preparation and a strong beginning, you can make the most of the experience.

And let’s all hope that face-to-face speaking can return in a substantial way in 2021.  When the pandemic began, and we all assumed that it would be under control by the summer, we were looking forward to a fall return of public speaking, conferences, and meetings in the beauty spots of the world.  It was hard to accept the reality when it came that the pandemic was going to affect us for much longer than originally anticipated.  Let’s not let 2021 go by without public speaking. Wear your masks and social distance, even though it’s hard!