Do you want to stand out at work?  Visibility is crucial for getting recognized by management, bolstering your reputation, and increasing opportunities for career growth. But getting noticed can be more challenging than ever if you are working remotely all or some of the time.

In “Five Ways to Increase Your Visibility at Work" Forbes contributor Caroline Castrillon provides useful tips for those who want to be noticed and to overcome “proximity bias”  (when managers treat workers who are physically closer to them more favorably).

• Participate in conversations:  Resist turning off your camera and hiding in the background during virtual meetings. Keep your camera on to literally increase your face time with your team and to show facial expressions and non-verbal cues, which help foster a sense of connection.  Ask questions to show you are engaged.

• Show enthusiasm for learning:  Attend conferences, read industry journals, get certifications. Lifelong learners demonstrate curiosity and initiative. And improving your skills and qualifications is a path to growth.

• Volunteer for stretch assignments:  Look especially for high-profile cross-functional projects headed by senior leaders. This will elevate your profile beyond your immediate team and show commitment to collaboration.

• Share the spotlight: Sharing credit strengthens team morale while simultaneously enhancing company culture and building trust.

• Establish a relationship with your manager: Don't hesitate to solicit feedback and ask your boss if they need help on any projects. 

How do you ensure that you get noticed at work? To join the conversation, click "comments" above.

Learn more about creating a habit around masterful communication with our online learning courses awarded International Gold for Best Hybrid Learning of 2022. ​

Holding audience attention during a presentation is always a challenge, and more so if you are giving it via Zoom. In a virtual setting, you cannot employ or read body language as much as you would in person, and your attendees might well be distracted by other things in their environment (kids, pets, beeping microwaves). 
 
Writing in the Harvard Business Review, Carmine Gallo, instructor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and author of Five Stars: The Communication Secrets to Get From Good to Great, offers tips for sharpening your presentation skills: 
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• Reduce clutter; use fewer slides: Great presenters are great editors. Massive PowerPoint decks do not impress; they put viewers to sleep.
• Forget bullet points: Augment text with photos, videos, and graphics.
• Use your voice as a tool: Varying the pace, pitch, and volume of your voice increases your effectiveness.
• Give your audience something extra: Novelty recognition is a survival skill all of us share. It may be harder to incorporate “wow” moments when your presentation is virtual, but think about what you can do that’s unexpected.
• Rehearse: The world’s greatest speakers are great because they put in the time.
  

How have you adapted your presentation style so it can be as captivating virtually as it is in person? To join the conversation, click "comments" above.

Kacy Miller, President of CourtroomLogic Consulting, LLC, a jury and trial consulting firm, contends that every one of us has an innate tool we can use whenever we "put on our advocacy hat." That tool is our voice. "When used effectively," she writes  (http://bit.ly/2p8XLNu), "our voice has the capacity to maintain our listeners' attention, persuade, and even evoke emotion." Variety is the key. Some strategies to consider:

• Rate: We tend to speed up our speech when nervous but listeners need time to process what we are telling them, especially when the content is new, complex or technical. (Tweet it!)

• Inflection: Monotony can be yawn-inducing and annoying. Vary the energy and emphasis you place on certain words.
• Pitch: Research shows that higher-pitched speech conveys a sense of excitement, fear, or nervousness. A lower-pitched voice communicates confidence, certainty, and calm. We all have a natural pitch, but we can shift it up or down when we want to persuade.
• Volume: Know when to turn the dial up or down. Often, people only think of increasing volume to persuade, but don't underestimate the power of a whisper If you want your audience to take notice and lean in.
• Pausing: Silence is a great tool for persuasion. By integrating carefully orchestrated pauses into your speaking, you are essentially speaking in all caps. It's an easy, effective way to let listeners know that what you just said (or are about to say) is important.

We agree with Miller when she says, "We spend hours preparing content for a speech, opening statement, oral argument, or even a client pitch. Make the most of your delivery by adding a healthy dose of vocal variety to your presentation. Your listeners will appreciate it."

Think of a speaker you enjoy - do they make the most of these techniques? What about a speaker you don't enjoy? To join the conversation, click "comments" above.

If you would like to read more about creating a habit around masterful communication, check out our book: Be Quiet, Be Heard: The Paradox of Persuasion.

In the 1970s, renowned psychologist Daniel Kahneman suggested giving government officials estimated probabilities of events. Looking back years later, Kahneman changed his mind, saying: “No one ever made a decision because of a number. They need a story.” (Tweet it!)

In the past year, many of us have been surprised by certain outcomes, many of them political, and we complain that our prediction models are incorrect. But the models are not incorrect: It is just that we tend to misinterpret numbers that tell us “this has a 10 percent chance of happening” as virtually no chance at all.

In a New York Times column entitled “What I Was Wrong About This Year”, pundit David Leonhardt writes that probabilities “are inherently hard to grasp. That’s especially true for an individual event, like a war or election. People understand that if they roll dice 100 times, they will get some 1’s. But when they see a probability for one event, they tend to think: Is this going to happen or not? They then effectively round to 0 or to 100 percent.”

But what if a probability came with a story? “Imagine that a forecast giving Candidate X a 10 percent chance included a prominent link, “How X wins.” It would explain how the polling could be off and include a winning map for X. It would all but shout: This really may happen.”

As Leonhardt says, this won't eliminate confusion, but it might minimize it. “The rise of big data means that probabilities are becoming a larger part of life. And our misunderstandings have real costs.”

Do you feel anecdotal explanations of probabilities would help you understand odds better? Have you ever used one, and can you give an example? To join the conversation, click "comments" above.

If you would like to read more about creating a habit around masterful communication, check out our book: Be Quiet, Be Heard: The Paradox of Persuasion.

We typically try to identify other people’s emotions through their facial expressions—eyes in particular. Eye contact is certainly critical in empathy, and many psychologists use the “Reading the Mind in the Eyes” exercise (where you detect subtle shifts in the looks people give you) to test empathy in their experiments. (http://socialintelligence.labinthewild.org/mite/)
 
But The Washington Post reports that a new study by Michael Kraus of the Yale School of Management has found that our sense of hearing may be even stronger than sight when it comes to accurately detecting emotion. Kraus found we are more accurate when we hear someone’s voice than when we look only at their facial expressions, or see their face and hear their voice simultaneously. In other words, you may be able to sense someone’s emotional state even better over the phone than in person (Tweet it!).
 
In several follow-up studies, Kraus focused on the reason why the voice—especially when it is the only cue—is such a powerful mode of empathy. Participants were asked to discuss a difficult work situation over a video conferencing platform, using either just the microphone or the mic and video. They were more accurate at detecting each other’s emotions in voice-only calls. When we only listen to voice, he found, our attention for subtleties in vocal tone increases. We simply focus more on the nuances we hear in the way speakers express themselves.
 
So how can we get better at interpreting emotions in voices? The human ability to perceive nuances in voices is extremely sophisticated, research shows. But as with other communication skills, paying attention is key. The more you focus on audio cues, the more you will learn.
 
Can you think of a situation where you were able to “read” important emotional information through someone’s voice alone? To join the conversation, click "comments" above.

If you would like to read more about creating a habit around masterful communication, check out our book: Be Quiet, Be Heard: The Paradox of Persuasion

When you want to present in a clear and confident way, “the happy midpoint is to speak extemporaneously, knowing the structure and the content very well, but choosing the exact words in the moment,”
writes Dr. Ken Broda-Bahm in Persuasive Litigator. Practicing on your feet—perhaps in front of a test audience is, says Broad-Bahn, the best way to reach the happy medium between memorization and improvisation.
 
Producing is more active and more likely to stick, rather than passively reading content or editing notes and slides. Perhaps that is why even “covert rehearsal” (practicing in your imagination) enhances speaking performance. And a recent Canadian study—the first to focus on hearing your own voice—showed that even listening to yourself recorded can be effective (Tweet it!).
 
What techniques do you use to prepare for a presentation? Have you tried covert rehearsal, practicing aloud or listening to your recorded voice? To join the conversation, click "comments" above.

If you would like to read more about creating a habit around masterful communication, check out our book: Be Quiet, Be Heard: The Paradox of Persuasion.

From wedding toasts to sales presentations to job interviews, situations where we are the focus of attention tend to generate churning stomachs and pounding hearts. Not even elite actors, athletes, and musicians are immune from performance anxiety—although many use it as fuel and thrive as the stakes rise.

“Research in this area has led to a number of insights that we can all use, whether we want to handle pressure more effectively in our professional lives, or simply get the better of our golf buddies,” writes Noa Kageyama, Ph.D., performance psychologist at the prestigious Julliard School (http://bit.ly/2AkfbyF).
 

• Reappraisal: Studies show that those who interpret anxiety as “excitement” perform better. So, the next time you start to feel nervous, try saying “I’m excited” to yourself instead of trying to calm down (Tweet it!).
• Pre-performance practice: Research suggests that to perform better under pressure, we must also practice under pressure. Try practicing your speech in front of coworkers in the break room.
• Pre-performance routines: Have you ever noticed that basketball players all seem to go through some sort of ritual before shooting a free throw? Studies show that doing so helps them make the shot. So, whether it’s something as simple as taking a few deep breaths, or visualizing how you want to perform, a pre-performance routine can be a valuable tool for improving consistency under pressure.

What kinds of performance situations make you anxious and what do you do to handle your jitters? To join the conversation, click "comments" above.

If you would like to read more about creating a habit around masterful communication, check out our book: Be Quiet, Be Heard: The Paradox of Persuasion.