6. Facial difference and virtual meeting technology

As so many of us are now working from home as a result of physical distancing and “shelter at home” requirements, I thought it might be a good time to share my experience of working with others virtually via online tools in which our face will be visible.

Several years ago I was in the lucky (or unlucky!) situation of taking on an exciting role for the first time in which there was no one in my work team in the same country as me. This meant, whether it was for 1:1 meetings or team meetings, I was suddenly put in a work environment in which I had to dial in using virtual meeting technology for over half of my interactions. 

Prior to taking on the new role, channels for interaction were much the same and manageable :
For 1:1 interactions, such as my coaching sessions for individuals in other countries,  I still had the option to just use a phone or voice-only format. In fact, the phone was still the most common form of interacting with people not in the same office.

For in-person team work,  I mostly had the luxury of seeing people in person and being able to take advantage of aspects of the physical environment to shape how others perceived me.
For example, for in-person meetings, I had developed a strategy to reduce focus on the paralysed side of my face by arriving early so that I could get the seat at the table at which I would be able to show the “normal” side of my face to most of the room (e.g. in my case it would be the seat on the most right most side of a table so that as many people as possible would be sitting on my left and would see the left side of my face (which is the unaffected side of my face).

Below I share the stages I went through as I adjusted to using virtual meeting technology for the first time and hints & tips I was able to pick up along the way.

Adjusting to being seen via virtual meeting technology

Stage 1: Initial resistance to the new context 

In my first week in my new role, as I realised that almost all of my most important and regular interactions were going to be on virtual meeting technology, I felt an intense feeling of dread.  I was now going to be appearing on a screen, in most cases only my face would be visible, and I would have no control as to how I was appearing to the viewer. I found out that some meeting rooms in other offices could be huge and so my face might end up showing up on a screen the height of a wall 😱

My initial strategy was to resist and limit the technology as a protection. I would switch off the video so that only my voice could be heard, I’d try to sit on the edge of the screen so that the paralysed side of my face wasn’t visible or I’d even try to choose a large meeting room and sit so far back that my head would be tiny on the screen and try to make sure that the video camera was not zoomed in at all.

However, I quickly learned how these approaches were actually undermining my image and reputation rather than improving them.  I’d never met the individuals in person as I was new to the team, so they were immediately confused or suspicious when I consistently turned my camera off. My attempts to hide or obscure my face made me seem unapproachable and less trustworthy just at a time when I needed to quickly develop trust.  I started to get more comments about not being seen as engaged in meetings and found that I was creating my own obstacles in interactions, especially as the act of “unmuting” on a conference call would require me being closer to the screen and so it would always take me longer to get to the “unmute” button, by which time someone else had already gotten ahead of me and started asking their question.

Stage 2: Acceptance instead of  resistance: “Shikata ga nai”

After 2-3 weeks of waking up with the daily dread of  interactions ahead via a screen, I had a kind of “aha” moment: I realised that instead of investing my limited energy resources in resisting a technology that ultimately I couldn’t change or influence to the extent I wanted, I could instead choose to apply my energy and attention to work with the technology as a new experiment to find new ways to connect and develop trust.

I’ve spent a lot of my working life in Japanese-speaking and Japanese cultural contexts.   I’d always marvelled at the difference between attitudes on rush hour trains in Tokyo versus in London. In London there would generally be more animosity, pushing and swearing,  while in Tokyo people would board quietly and without resentment regardless of how cramped the conditions. This attitude of acceptance or resignation, especially in situations in which resistance is not going to improve the immediate situation, is called  “shikata ga nai” or “sho ga nai” in Japanese.    It literally means “there is no way” or “nothing can be done about it”

So it was this concept of “shikata ga nai” that helped me as I changed my attitude and approach to my interaction with and use of the technology which was going to be an essential part of my personal interactions at work whether I liked it or not.

Stage 3:   Practical actions for drawing attention in different directions

Over the years I’ve experimented with different approaches to getting the most out of technology such that my facial difference doesn’t get in the way of me developing relationships.

Draw attention towards the side of your face without paralysis

• Using your environment to your best advantage:
  • If sitting in a room near a window, try to sit so that the window or lighting falls on your non-paralaysed side
  • Arrange a colourful or interesting picture or wall hanging positioned so it is behind you on the non-paralysed side of your face so that it draws attention to that side of your face.
• Test out microphones so that your voice can be clearly heard:
  It may seem obvious but it is even more important that your voice is clearly heard as otherwise people will be even more likely to look for visual cues.  
• Don’t touch the side with the paralysis: I had a habit of trying to lift up the paralysed side of my face until a friend told me this actually made them look at my paralysed side more and also made it look like I was fidgeting.
• Here are some other tips, some of which I’ve picked up from resources on facial difference and facial paralysis on drawing attention to one side more than the other:
  • Hair: arrange your parting so that more of your hair is on the non-paralysed side of your face
  • Clothing: put a broach on the same side as the non-paralysed side of your face.
  • Make-up: regardless of whether you are meeting in person or via GVC, there are some ways you can use make-up to reduce asymmetry. There are several specialists in this area but just as a starting reference I found that  in Lindens Clinic was able to introduce me to a specialist who could give me advice based on my unique circumstances.
• As my smile often isn’t read as a smile I noticed other things I can do to create trust and warmth. For example, when taking meetings from home my cat can be visible – I noticed that my cat appearing on the screen not only helped me relax but brought a sense of fun and ease to meetings. 

Taking stock and taking advantage of untapped parts of your style and personality

Voice as part of your character
Until I had to deal with facial paralysis, I had not thought much about my voice, but it turns out that my accent happens to be an accent that has a lot of positive associations for others.  So, I’ve had to learn to slow down and refer to my accent in self introductions as a way to help people focus on aspects other than my appearance.

Voice as a tool to connect
Due to the facial paralysis, my dislike for speaking on stage and in public which I had as a child grew into a much greater fear and I found that any context in which more than 2 or 3 people were watching me caused me considerable anxiety.
In order to address this I decided to join a local  “Toastmasters” club which at the time was an organization for people interested in improving their skills in public speaking.  Through this club I learned about other aspects of voice that I was failing to take advantage of such as pitch, rhythm, speed, volume, etc. and discovered that some of these aspects of voice were easy for me to pick up and apply.
I am not suggesting that everyone should join a club for public speaking, but you may find there are aspects of or techniques in how you use your voice that you could bring to the fore as a way to reduce reliance on visual cues and appearance.

Personality and fun
After living with facial paralysis for several years I started to notice that, when with close friends and in situations in which I was relaxed, people would often comment on how much fun I could bring to a conversation.  Making jokes is something I had avoided because it made me laugh, which of course made my facial paralysis and asymmetry even more noticable. However, I realised that by restricting myself in this way I was actually neglecting an important aspect, not just of my identity but of my personality that could take more advantage of to help people see beyond first appearances.  

Since taking this insight from others on board I’ve tried to be more intentional about bringing more fun into interactions and it’s also made me aware of even simple things we can do to bring a sense of fun and reduce the focus on our face. I recall one example from a colleague who was on a team in which she was the only one who was not in the same office location. She said that often people would start to forget that she was on the dial-in screen during discussions and gradually become more and more focused on only those in the same room. As a result, she decided to start to wear different funny hats to each meeting as a way to create a stronger impression so that the team would be less likely to forget to include her in discussions in the moment.

This might seem overly simplistic, but it is worth thinking about what aspects of your personality you could be forgetting to bring to interactions that might help you in reducing the focus on your physical facial appearance.

Finding the right approach for you and crowd-sourcing more ideas
I do not suggest that everyone should only use the visual/video option when using meeting technology as we are all in different situations dealing with different challenges. However, I share some of my own experience in adjusting to the reliance on virtual meeting technology in the hope that it can be of help in some small way for anyone learning to navigate new channels for communication as a result of working from home and working in different physical locations for the first time.

I also realise that my strategies are just a small set of options and so would love to learn from others. What have you learned and what would you suggest to help people with facial paralysis and facial difference get the most out of working with virtual meeting technology?
What other resources have you come across that would be useful to others?