Building (Virtual) Presence

Business communication has been transformed very rapidly during the COVID crisis. In-person interactions have been largely replaced by virtual meetings and presentations using various platforms such as Zoom, Skype, and MS Teams, making leading online teams more complex and challenging.

Our presence, the non-verbal effect we have on other people, has been radically transformed, and requires learning how to build trustworthiness and rapport through virtual channels.

IEDP was delighted to host psychologist Maja Djikic, Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior and HR Management at Rotman School of Management, for a webinar in which she offered invaluable expert advice. View the recording here:

In this session, participants will learn about:

• Non-verbal building blocks of executive presence;
• A five-channel framework of presence—including face, voice, text, body, and visuals;
• How to recognize and employ variables of face, voice, and upper body—all of which are strongly emphasized in virtual settings;
• How our cognitive and motivational factor unconsciously ‘leak’ through the five channels;
• Best practices in managing virtual teams.

About the speaker: Maja Djikic, Ph. D. is an Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management and the Director of Self-Development Laboratory at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. She is a psychologist specializing in the field of personality development. Her work examines means of developing a congruent and flexible self. She has been a post-doctoral fellow with Desautels Centre for Integrative Thinking at Rotman School of Management, and Psychology Department at Harvard University. She has published more than 30 articles and book chapters in the area of personality development in journals such as Psychological Science, Journal of Research in Personality, Creativity Research Journal, New Ideas in Psychology, etc.  Her research has been featured in The New York Times, Salon, Slate, The Scientific American Mind, and many other media outlets.