Why We All Need ‘Remote’ Presence

With the exception of actors, who started their career with the aim of want to live it on screen? Almost no-one. And yet for professional men and women this is where they are spending an increasing proportion of their professional lives. It’s all about being plugged in, camera on, staring at and talking to our computers. With this reality now in play, why should we care? Well, the short answer is: for a whole host of different reasons.

Firstly, as leaders and influencers, being remote from our audience makes our ability to have impact; to be seen, to be heard and to be influential – even more difficult. As if it wasn’t enough already.

• Communicating at a distance takes away the connection made from being in the same space together. It removes that ‘hard to define but we know it if we see it’ sense that rapport exists, and it also makes makes ‘reading the room’ much harder because three dimensions has become two and sometimes we don’t even have visual with which to work.
• For some occasions, the whole experience is based on one communication facet – your voice.
• If that wasn’t enough, being successful in business today means influencing ‘horizontally’; being persuasive with others over whom we have no direct control; who may not be individuals who we see regularly face-to-face; who may not operate in the same time zone as us, nor work in the same department, vertical or organisation as us and who care much less about our priorities than they do their own. You see? I said it wasn’t easy.
• Added to this challenge is the need to rely on the speed and quality of our internet connection which can delay, distract and deter even the most enthusiastic presenter.
• Finally let’s add to the mix, our ability to be distracted by our phones continually, causing all of us to live in what is commonly known as the ‘attention deficit economy’, where most people aren’t listening most of the time. In fact, we are now blatant about it; talking to each other whilst staring at, typing into and scrolling on our devices.

So what do we need?

I call it ‘remote presence’. Quite simply this is: “The ability to effectively communicate, contribute and challenge remotely. Irrespective of the media, demonstrating the skills to ‘reach’ an audience by being persuasive, impactful and compelling with our contributions."

Who amongst us needs to hone our ability to do that?