Working with the noises and sounds in your home to present at your best

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Now that we’ve improved how you present yourself visually on video calls and meetings, we need to address sound, how you can reduce any noisy interruptions to your calls and meetings while working from home.

Interruptions

It’s essential to set yourself up for success in managing interruptions during your calls and meetings as they are sure to happen.Partners, spouses, children, pets, and other unexpected interruptions can happen to any of us. Your partner is checking what time you’re finishing, the doorbell, a pet, or your children coming in to say ‘hello’ to you during a call.It’s easy to manage and to reduce the impact of these interruptions with sound with a few simple approaches.

Sound

The biggest advice I can offer in regards to sound is that we all need to learn to use the mute button like a ninja.Figure out if you prefer to use a software or hardware mute switch, and always use this approach. Only take mute off if you are speaking.

Mobile phone, home phone, and tablet

For all calls and meetings put your mobile, phone, or tablet on silent.A useful backup in case you forget to put your phone on silent is to make sure that you have a suitable professional ringtone and alert sounds. Some things can be hard to undo. Hearing your ringtone, or message alerts during a presentation to the Board, that is hilarious on the weekend, is not something you should allow to happen to your career.I repeat, put your devices on silent.[/vc_column_text][us_image image="7268" size="us_600_400_crop" align="center" meta="1"][ultimate_spacer height="32"][vc_column_text]

Doorbell

There are times where I am in a call where I cannot pay attention to someone at my front door. I am lucky enough to have a doorbell that lets me turn the sound off when I am going to be a presenter on a call. If you are not so fortunate then the overarching rule of being on mute at all times, and being ready to mute like a ninja, is your best approach.

Children

Our children are the love of our lives and the centre of our world. They are the most important thing in many of our lives and why we do a lot of the things we do.If your children are older enough to follow instructions, then I recommend that you discuss with them what is an emergency, and what isn’t. If there is an emergency, I’ve asked my children to come in and stand silently at the side of my desk until I speak to them.This approach has enabled me to go on mute and ask them what is up. I can then decide a course of action, and tell my children what to do. This approach has worked for me once or twice and has been necessary so as not to disrupt a call or meeting.If you have younger children, then the best approach is to ensure that the person who is caring for them while you are working is prepared, and preferably can take them outside for their hour of exercise during your most valuable calls.Failing that, be prepared to mute like a ninja.

Unavoidable interruptions

No matter how much advice you take, or preparations made, there is always the chance of an unavoidable interruption. If you are interrupted unavoidably ensure you are on mute and turn your video off. Combined with being on mute, you can resolve many things with minimal disruption to a call or meeting.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]

Technology

Using technology to solve problems is a great idea. From noise-cancelling headphones to shield you from noises around your home, or to reduce the noises from your home being picked up by your microphone while presenting and off of mute.

Wireless headphones

Bluetooth headphones are a huge plus as they allow you to move around more freely. Should you need to get up and move to another room temporarily, or accept a delivery while on mute, you can do this easily with Bluetooth headphones.I have found my Trekz After Shocks to be a great solution to my calls and meetings. They are discreet and sit over your ears and can be ideal for use while presenting. The battery also lasts for a full day of use.[/vc_column_text][us_image image="7267" size="us_600_400_crop" align="center" meta="1"][ultimate_spacer height="32"][vc_column_text]

Noise-cancelling headphones

Noise-cancelling headphones such as those by Apple, Bose, or Sony are fabulous at removing environmental noises that are around you, helping you to focus on your work. However, they do not remove noise from the microphone while you are on a call. Be cautious here as you may think everything is peaceful and tranquil; your fellow participants will hear more than you anticipate.

Noise-cancelling microphone

Noise-cancelling microphones such as those from Plantronics or Jabra are used in call centres to soften and reduce the ambient noise that is picked up by your microphone. I have used these in a small office environment but have not yet found one that works as well as I hope.

Artificial Intelligence noise cancelling

An alternative to a hardware solution is the option to try a software solution with your current setup. Krisp is a software utility that positions itself between Teams and your existing microphone and headphone to use artificial intelligence to filter out unwanted noises.You can download Krisp from Krisp.ai for both Windows and macOS. It has a free trial, and then a monthly subscription fee. I have tried this recently on a Mac and found it useful in its use of AI to remove background noise, but it was temperamental on the machine I was using when I tried to join another call. But, it has a free trial, and as they say, your mileage may vary.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]

Conclusion

In these uncertain times for us all, working from home has been an enormous success in keeping businesses moving. I want you to be confident that you are presenting yourself at your best, and positively progressing your career. I hope this series has been helpful to you and given you some strategies and approaches to improve your situation.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Featured image by Jason Rosewell on unsplash.com[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

How to be present yourself professionally in a Teams video call or meeting

To present yourself at your best in Teams calls and meetings, you should use the resources that you have have to maximize how you are presented.

Sight

It is important that we can see your shoulders and face. You should position your camera so that you can visually own the space, with your head and shoulder being presented in the stream you are sending.

Position your laptop so that the camera you are using is as close to your eye level as you can. For those who have their laptop camera in the hinge of their laptop this may be something you only do for the most important meetings or presentations. Open your laptop screen as far as it will naturally go, and using books or other objects, prop up the back of your laptop.The rest of us can use a stack of books or a box to raise our camera height for key calls and meetings.

Remember, you are the only person who will see the props and tools you use.Anything that will help to present you better, and that cannot be seen on camera, is a viable approach.

Lighting

Light should be in front of you, and behind your camera. Ideally, you will be able to sit facing a window or other source of natural light to present at your best.If natural light is not an option that is available to you, place a lamp or other light behind your laptop, tablet, or smartphone camera. Like many people your desk may be facing a wall.

In this situation your best approach will be to bounce light from a lamp off the wall. You can do this by aiming the light at the wall, and adjusting the position to maximise the light reflecting on to your face.If the light coming from your lamp is too warm you could order a new lightbulb from Amazon with a higher Kelvin rating to get a light that is more white.

Standard light bulbs tend to be available up to 6,000 Kelvins. In my experience something around the 4000 Kelvin range will give a cooler light.

Your background

In my earlier post in this series, How to present yourself at your best in Teams, Microsoft Teams, like Zoom, and other Video platforms has a feature to replace your background image.This is very effective at either blurring, or removing your background from your video stream.

This is a great feature that you can use as an equaliser in terms of our sudden need to be visible from home, without revealing everything.If you find that the remove background feature is not a useable alternative, for your most important calls, turn your desk so that you back is against a plain wall.If you cannot turn your desk, remember, if you place your laptop on a suitable surface, you can sit with your back to a plain wall, without the desk. No-one will know.

Be engaged

If you have taken the effort to present yourself professionally, front and centre, it is important that you are engaged in your call or meeting.

Pay attention and remain focused on the meeting you are in.I attended a webinar last week in which one of the presenters kept using his iPhone while the other speakers were presenting. It was easy to tell he had an iPhone as he held it in view of his camera for us all to see him using it while the other presenters were speaking.

If you need to keep track of an issue on your phone place your phone on mute and hold your phone next to your camera or laptop screen. This way you can discreetly view the incoming messages with only minor sideways eye movements.Prop your phone up as needed. You must keep your phone out of view of the camera.

If you're presenting yourself with confidence, you can pull off pretty much anything.

– Katy Perry

Grooming

We are all now in some stage of lockdown and restricted personal movement. Some of us had more time to prepare than others. I know I wish I had gotten a haircut closer to being locked down. But that was 8 week ago, and even with a haircut I would still have 2 months of growth to account for.It’s important that you present yourself as well groomed as is relevant for you and your profession.

For those of use working remotely and using Teams our careers have not stopped. How you present and carry yourself through this period has the potential to have an impact on your career. I think it’s worth trying to make it a positive one.

Clothing

Our dress code while working remotely is another area where you can impact positively on the impression that people have of you. While the Financial Times recently suggested you could lose your tie (Keep the blazer, lose the tie - the new rules of home workwear), they still recommended a business shirt and suit jacket, or blouse and jacket, for important meetings.

In many other meetings an open collared business shirt or blouse is perfect. The overarching advice from the FT was to maintain the standards of your workplace.

Conclusion

We’ve now covered issues around how you are presented visually in video calls and meetings. In the next post in this series I tackle how we are heard, and what others can hear from us during our calls and meetings.

Be sure to come back for the next post in this series on presenting yourself at your best in Teams video calls and meetings.

How to present yourself at your best in Teams

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]With the onset of the COVID–19 global pandemic in 2020 using video from home has become the new normal for around 35% of the population, now known as ‘the remotes’ (Robert Reich). It is important to present yourself at your best in video calls and meetings.However, not all of us are fortunate enough to have our own quiet and well furnished home office. Many of us are now working from home in a shared workspace. For some it’s with our partners, or housemates, and for many us is it’s with our children as well.This new working environment has implications, and complications, not just in our relationships. But also in terms of what can be seen, or heard, by your colleagues and fellow attendees during online meetings.

Virtual and remote teams

I’ve been leading and working in virtual and remote teams for more than a decade. The recommended best practice for virtual and remote teams promotes as much use of video and face time with each other as is possible. So we need to find a way to present ourselves professionally in these new circumstances.

Learn to hide your need and show your skill.Jim Rohn

Microsoft Teams (Teams) has long had the feature to blur your video background in a Teams meeting. This option was originally introduced to support our colleagues who may be lip-reading during a meeting. By bluring the background of a speaker and removing all other movement it makes it easier, for those who are lip-reading, to maintain a focus on the presenters mouth.The blur background feature also has the added benefit of allowing us all to blur our video background in Teams meetings to disguise what is behind us.As of April 2020, Teams now has a feature to replace your video background in a Teams meeting. This currently lets you select from a library of images in Teams to replace your video background in Teams calls or meetings. It’s really good at removing your own background from the video and improving how you are presenting yourself.A best practice for joing a Teams call or meeting is to join on mute, and with your video off. This will allow you to choose to blur your background, or disguise your background using the built in features of Teams.

Change your background before a meeting starts in Teams

Before you join a call or meeting set up your video in More options (just to the right of the mic switch). _Select Background effects | Background settings_.You can blur your background, keeping yourself clear while Teams conceals everything that is behind you. Or you can replace your background with one of the example images provided in Teams.To change your background during a meeting go to the meeting controls and select More actions (...) More options button > Show background effects.You'll be able to preview your change to see how it looks before you apply it.

Teams background update in May 2020

As of mid-May 2020 Microsoft will allow you to use your own background images. This update will enable those presenting their company to customers or prospective customers, to select a common background image, perhaps with a company logo.

Great background images for Teams

If you wanted to select an image that matches your own style I can recommend looking at Unsplash.com and searching for keywords such as minimalist, office, home, or other ideas you can think of.Some of my personal favourites from Unsplash are:

Conclusion

In an ideal world we would all be joining Teams meetings in our own home-office that is quiet, well decorated, professional, and reflects our own style and taste.If this is not the scenario that you find yourself in then watch out for my next post where I will suggest and recommend approaches to present yourself well in Teams calls and meetings.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Featured image by Bernard Hermant on unsplash.com[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Think beyond the pixel

Introduction

This is part three in my series of articles building on the Adobe 99U profile piece on Katie Dill, the Vice President of Design at Lyft. Katie has made a sizeable team of more than 100 designers at Lyft. In the 99U article, they cover what she regards as eight important parts of scaling a design team.

I will post my article on each of the eight points over the coming days. I hope you stick around for all eight as there is much valuable information and benefit. So, let’s continue with the third of Katie’s topics on scaling your team, that of ensuring your team can think beyond the pixel.

3. Look for designers who ‘think beyond the pixel.’

It’s easy for design leaders at tech companies to get swept up in the online experience, but the offline experience is just as important. “Yes, a lot of our work is related to those pixels, but as a customer, your experience of us isn’t just in the app – it’s on a street corner, it’s sitting in the back of a car, it’s riding a bike, it’s talking to someone who moments ago was a stranger,” says Dill. That’s why she looks for designers who pay attention to more than what is on the screen. “Do they think beyond the pixel? Do they think about every moment of the journey and all of the different modalities of that interaction — from a billboard to an app, to a seat cushion, to the person-to-person interaction? That’s what we want.”

I think that there is much complexity hidden in the simple statement of being able to ‘think beyond the pixel’. You cannot be a successful designer if you are not able to think beyond the screen for the projects and art that you’re creating.

What is the message you are trying to convey and to whom are you trying to communicate it? Flight information in airports is shown on large banks of monitors where 95% of the data displayed is useless to everyone who looks at it? Many of those looking at the arrival and departure boards may also be tired, stressed, dealing with early starts or late finishes, or flying with small children or other family members with a world of their own emotions and events. How do you ensure that the customer receives useful information?

Here is a very, VERY, small selection of examples that go beyond the screen that you need to think about how it will impact and interact with the art you are producing.

Are there any trends in your industry, or society in general such as #MeToo, for marketing and communication material? Should you be following these trends, or not? Whatever your choice you need to know why you made that choice.

Photo by Deva Darshan on Unsplash

For projects with physical material as a finished installation, such as for signage and exhibitions, can you visit the location of where the art will be? Alternatively, can you see photos from different angles and times of day? Can you see floorplans of venues? Do these floorplans show who your fellow exhibitors are, and who will be nearby? Where will your work sit and how will the environment around your art impact it or interact with it? Is the impact or interaction good, or bad? Is it something you can leverage and use to your advantage or an unresolved exposure?

Photo by Andreea Popa on Unsplash

For digital art, will it work in all screen sizes, devices, and orientations? Will the audience be able to see your work and interact with it as you intend?

Are you the final decision maker on the presentation of your work? I once met a team of animators at one of the Creative Mornings breakfasts in London. When the group introduced themselves to me, I knew of their latest work. It was great in many respects, but I challenged them over an element of child safety that I felt it had introduced.

The unfortunate team all dropped their heads in frustration. I was not the first to raise this issue. The BBC had shown their series out of order which had caused many issues around child safety as an unintended consequence.

It’s often good to look at things in isolation, or even backwards, from the end to the start, to identify any problems that you can resolve up front.

Photo by Teemu Paananen on Unsplash

For presentations and pitches do you know what equipment will be used to present your work? I was once involved with a large Tier 1 corporate pitch where there was a fault with the projection equipment that was to be used by the proposal teams at the customer venue. This fault was only identified during the rehearsal by one of the companies presenting. We were prepared for this and won the work.

Even further, regarding presentations, do you know the room size, the screen size, the audience size? Will it be a darkened room or will the lights be switched on? Will you have access to the internet over their network or will you be relying on a mobile device and signal. What’s the smallest font size you should use? What colours project well and which don’t? Will the audience be seated or standing? Do you know of any colour blindness in any of the key decision makers?

For branding - how will this be applied in the real world. Is the brand image impacted if the customer fails to dedicate the budget to office refurbishment and signage?

Conclusion

The issues above are only the very tip of the iceberg of the problems that you may encounter with work relating to branding, design, graphics, and creative work. Your team must be able to consider the real world application of their work and the impact that external factors can have. You can’t always resolve for these external factors, but being aware of the issues positions you and the customer for how to respond and manage for them. Of course, there are also times where you can leverage these factors for even better results.

I’ll address the next element of building a great team, that of transforming your mission into values that can drive the business, in the following article.

I’m currently based in both London and Berlin and on the lookout for new opportunities. Please (get in touch using the Contact page) if you’d like to discuss more.

Get the best result by engaging with your brand and design team

Introduction

Adobe 99U have just posted a profile piece on Katie Dill, the Vice President of Design at Lyft. Katie has built a sizeable team of more than 100 designers at Lyft. In the 99U article, they cover what she regards as eight important parts of scaling a design team.Scaling a design team can deliver important benefits and results for a business. There is a lot of useful information that I'd like to discuss and address based on my experience of growing brand, design, and creative services teams to support the enterprise. My creative services function at KPMG consisted of 100 creative staff in the UK and India, and while at Goldman Sachs, where I started my career in design, I was part of a group of more than 250 creatives based in London.I will post my article on each of the eight points over the coming days. I hope you stick around for all eight as there is a lot of valuable information to benefit from. So, let's get started with the first of Katie's topics scaling your team, that of engagement between your creative services team and the business.

1. Get designers involved from the ground up.

"Lyft’s design team used to operate as a centralized design agency, coming up with solutions when approached by product teams. Today, the team is integrated in every step of the product development process, which Dill says has led to more creative, customer-driven results. “It’s a great example of how design is a part of the product development process at all stages, and how design is partnering with product management, engineering, and data science to determine the right thing to do for our consumers and our drivers,” she says."

Katie is right that design should be part of the product development process at all stages. Often organisations who are just starting out with a new focus or investment in a design and creative services function start by providing solutions to the business based solely as a response to individual requests received.

Getting started

This can be the most labour intensive stage of building a creative services function - both for the business and your team. To support this, and to minimise the cost in all terms, it's critical that your creative teams are enabled to do their job well by being knowledgeable about their craft, equipped with the rights tools, and know the brand.As a team lead or manager you need to enable your team in these areas, assign the right team members for each task, trust your team, and conduct lessons learned processes after each project. This will help share the experience and knowledge gained amongst your group. It will also support you in not having to go back to the same team members again and again.

Complexity

Often situations like this are also coupled with a new brand or an existing brand that has never been well supported or had much attention paid to it by the business. This may mean that you are extremely limited with your resources. In my experience, this complexity is best managed by being clear about a staged introduction of the brand, and the elements that are vital to be delivered correctly from day one. For example, this may be agreeing that the new logo, colour palette and typography are applied in all customer-facing media first. It may also mean identifying elements of your communications approach to prioritising. In my experience, there have been times where events and digital were prioritised over print and product. It's all about how you can deliver the best result with the resources available.You can then work to quickly follow this up with templates and desktop tools and resources for users. This will enable you to be consistent across the business with the focused approach and the components that you provide. It can also help to reduce any 'buyers remorse' for the company concerning the extent of work required to deliver design and the brand well.

Relationships

Each of the scenarios above can cause friction and frustration when trying to scale your creative services team, both for the team of creatives as well as the internal customer who have not previously had any constraints applied to them concerning brand or design.By engaging the creative services team with the business at the early stages of projects you benefit from developing relationships with operational teams and your team members. This allows the ability to demonstrate the benefit that the creative services team can bring to the business, the product, sales, marketing, and other related operational and customer-facing teams.

Knowledge

Another meaningful way that getting creative team members involved early is the increased exposure of the creative team to the business and what it is that the company does.This should inform the perspective of your team as to what problems the business and your product or service is actually solving for customers - because it's not always what you're told it is!This information and knowledge enable designers to shape their work in ways that have a more natural and automatic fit for the business, customers, and the market.

Productivity

Early engagement also improves productivity for both your team and the business. Your operational teams don't waste time going down paths that brand and compliance need to pull them back from, and time and effort are not spent on work product that needs to be discarded. Also, nobody's ego gets damaged or put out of place. Early engagement with design and brand supports productive working relationships.

Conclusion

Engage your design, brand, and creative teams early on. We want to produce a positive, professional, and impactful result for you and the business. Furthermore, use platforms and automation to leverage your work. I have deployed more than a dozen platforms and automation tools in my career in creative services. Each of these added systemic leverage and scale to the business to increase quality and reduce costs.I'll address the next element of building a great team, developing a good mix, in the following article.I'm currently based in both London and Berlin and on the lookout for new opportunities. Please get in touch using the Contact page if you'd like to discuss more.