How to tank a Zoom session

Everyone knows you’re not really listening

Humans are exceptional at detecting when attention is not pointed our way.

You might think you have the acting skills to pull it off, but your carefully rehearsed ‘deeply intrigued’ look and your too randomly timed ‘Mm-hmm's' aren't fooling anyone. 

People are on to you, even if they’re not calling you out on it.

If this charade doesn’t even work in casual interactions, what effect do you think it has on your professional pursuits?

The experience is critical

I'm a coach and coaching skills teacher. Working with clients globally, all of my key interactions happen on Zoom calls.

If, like me, a large chunk of your day is spent working with people virtually (both one-on-one and groups), you know that there is nothing more important than your client’s session experience.

How people feel in your session translates into how they feel about you and your business.

And it’s your oh-so-critical session experience that’s at stake when you don't know how to listen skillfully.

Here’s what not to do

I see it a lot and I’ve done it myself.

Talking in nice-sounding yet ultimately meaningless statements.

Things like ‘I love that!’, ‘That’s awesome!’, or ‘Thank you for sharing’ come to mind.

We use these phrases as our default. They’re lifesavers in certain social situations and when all our CPU is used for something else (i.e. when we’re distracted), we can always fall back on these.

But they block true connection.

These phrases are perfectly polite, but in an otherwise meaningful exchange (read: your session), they sorely stand out and come across as a cop out.

Why? Because you haven’t been focusing on the speaker. Not providing a thoughtful response is like admitting you haven't been listening, and people notice.

You miss subtle cues from clients, leading to miscommunication, awkward silences, or at the very least, missed opportunities for deeper discussion. 

Doing this once is no big deal. But doing this continuously adds up.

If remarks like this become your default throughout your sessions, your authentic vibe and value will go unnoticed. Because it simply isn’t visible to anyone.

Before you know it, you’ll show up with only 50% of the impact that you could have had in your sessions, reflected in a 50% drop in attendance over time.

What’s hurting your session experience is hurting your business.

What it looks like

The problem is, we’re polite people and we won’t tell you you could do better.

We might even write you a vanilla testimonial that says your sessions were ‘great’ (the international sign of ‘meh’).

You have to go out and diagnose this yourself. Could you do better?

• You talk more than you listen

• Your sessions lack engagement from participants

• Your responses are generic

• You notice a declining attendance or lack of repeat customers

• Your clients aren’t progressing as you’d expect

• Your clients give bland and diplomatic feedback

When it comes to delivering a fantastic customer experience, there's no better return on your time than learning to become a better listener.

What your customers want

I was very lucky to be trained as a coach. For my business, this killed two birds with one skill set.

Apart from coaching clients one-on-one, my coaching skills also helped me teach by creating a session experience founded on listening.

The main thing I learned was that to be able to respond well, you have to stop thinking about your response.

Having been the type of person to be in love with carefully crafting responses in the past, this was quite the mindset shift for me.

There’s a trick to it though:

Listening to understand rather than listening to respond.

If you do that, your response will flow naturally from your curiosity and genuine intention to understand them. In contrast, focusing on what to say next will ensure a disconnect.

Some guidelines that have been helpful for me:

• First, set yourself up for success: turn off notifications and put your phone away.

• Trust that the version of you that listens is the best version.

• Turn off your response reflex. Your attempt to craft a ‘good’ response while they are talking is actually making it worse.

• Seek to understand

  • It’s enough to simply try.

  • ‘Reach out’ for what they mean, and read between the lines. What are they not saying?

  • Ask yourself (not out loud…) ‘Why are they telling me this?’

  • Get curious about their perspective.

When you occasionally drop the ball and accidentally say something superficial to ‘keep the conversation going’, that’s okay. Old habits.

Realize though that a clearly generic response like that keeps the notion alive that we have to say something. This isn’t true.

It’s actually very okay to not respond immediately.

Taking your time to digest what someone said is bound to be part of truly listening to someone. It’s also a sign of someone taking you seriously, and it will be felt. Especially when you respond thoughtfully after your ‘big pause’.

Stop thinking about what you’re going to say, how you look, how you’re perceived, and instead spend your energy and attention on what they’re saying.

Trust that what comes out of your mouth will be fine as long as you’re a human (check) and you’ve been listening.

It will get you what you want. Stellar session experiences.

Wow

This shift will lead to customers lowering their guard and extending the vital trust necessary for your message to come across and be absorbed. And to ultimately help them change their lives.

You’ll understand your participants better and in the process create a more engaging and supportive environment, resulting in ‘wow’ session-experiences for your customers.

You'll see this reflected in how much they speak up, higher survey scores, lower drop off, and people begging for more sessions.

I’d say that’s much better than ‘great’.