Welcome back to the Look and Sound of Leadership, an ongoing series of

executive coaching tips designed to help you be perceived in the workplace the

way you want to be perceived. I'm Tom Henschel,

your executive coach and today we're talking about learnings from video.

Roddy was telling me about his latest encounter with Craig.

It had happened on Zoom.

Roddy said, right at the beginning when he first started in on me, I had my same old reaction.

My heart rate jumped like Craig was right there in the room with me.

Craig was the head of the private equity firm that owned the company where Roddy was

CFO. One goal for Roddy's coaching had been to master his panic response to Craig's

bad behavior. Normally Roddy would only see Craig four times a

year at board meetings but now with the pandemic and the downturn Craig was

agitated. Roddy and his CEO were having to report every week. Roddy's panic

response was getting a lot of exercise. Roddy said, you know what saved me from full on panic this time?

Being on video.

If I had been in the room with him, I think I would have been as panicked as ever.

My brain would have been screeching as ever my brain would have been

screeching away at a million miles an hour trying to figure out how to defend myself.

But not on video I asked. No not this time I could have spoken up and defended myself. I could have taken myself off mute. But I could see he wasn't going to stop talking for a while. I suddenly just relaxed. I stopped preparing my defense and in a snap it looked

completely different to me. Different how I asked. From a distance, I guess he said Craig was suddenly this little yapping head in a little

window on the screen of my monitor he looked like he was having a tantrum

and that was what occurred to me. He was a

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