On video, if you’re not talking, you may just disappear. How to build virtual presence that’s still you, with real examples from our coaching.
Wolf & Heron co-founder Stephanie Judd talks with The Executive Insight about slide-free training, surviving COVID, and closing the gap between agreement and action.
The first time Stephanie watched Damien work, he had a Palm Pilot in each hand, an earbud in each ear, and apparently half his brain listening to two calls simultaneously. (Yes, that Palm Pilot reference ages Stephanie. She’s aware.) Damien seemed to be everywhere at once, always with something to give. He was also her skip-level boss. His kids were teenagers, and Stephanie was closer in age to them than she was to him. In her first job out of college, he both impressed and terrified her. So when Stephanie was sent to Ithaca, NY on a recruiting trip to Cornell with Damien, her nerves took over. She saw this two-day trip as an amazing opportunity to build a relationship with him, and she wanted to make sure to impress him with her easy competence and magnanimity. Yes, always the overachiever, Stephanie had a clear vision of how the trip was supposed to go.
It's never been more important to be yourself. Kara's brother learned this while hiring for his company. He was eight interviews into a search for a new position at this company, and every one of them wasn’t who they said they were on their resume. Some invented their experience. Others leaned so hard on AI that he couldn't find the actual person behind the answers. He was aggravated trying to figure out what was real and what wasn’t. All he knew for sure was that he couldn’t trust his own read, so he handed the search to a recruiter. That's what happens when people can't tell what's real. They get suspicious of everyone. And when one thing about someone seems off, we doubt the whole person: the experience, the credentials, the firm handshake.