See show notes for this episode: S 02 | Ep 29 The Portal to Your People: Why Your Camera is Your Most Powerful Tool.
Alex: Welcome, Karin Reed. Karin is an Emmy Award-winning journalist turned leadership and communications expert. A four-time author and recognized thought leader in business communications, her insights have been featured in major magazines. Interestingly, McKinsey calls her "the author who inspires us." Karin is also the CEO of Speaker Dynamics, where she coaches companies ranging from Lenovo to Eli Lilly. Karin, welcome to the pod.
Karin Reed: Alex, Alex, Alex. Delighted to meet you! And I think it’s hilarious that I did that as a communication coach. I always stress that authenticity is important, and that was my authentic self coming through.
Alex: I had an "Axel" moment. Yeah, that was Axel speaking—because it was.
Karin Reed: Well, you did call me an "Enemy" Award winner. It’s Emmy Award winner; I don’t want to be an "Enemy" Award winner!
Alex: All right, I’m the enemy of the Emmys. "Emmy"—that’s perfect. This is actually a great lead-in, Karin. As we were getting ready to chat, I mentioned I was going to read the intro my team prepared so capably, but that I’d probably mess it up and look like I was reading. In this case, I just read it wrong! Could you give us a tip on how to read something while looking like you’re not reading it?
Karin Reed: It’s funny because I responded incorrectly as well by calling you the wrong name. I was just trying to make you feel better! But in all seriousness, as you said, I’m a communication coach and I’ve been doing this for a long time. My background is in broadcast journalism, primarily for NBC.
One thing I learned early in my career was analytical reading. This is a way to mark your copy or script so you sound more natural. Most people don't sound like themselves when they read; there’s a "flattening" of the vocal range. Rather than having highs and lows, you end up talking in a monotone. You lose the rhythm.
Alex: That was Axel talking again!
Karin Reed: Unfortunately, that just came organically from some weird place in my brain! But I think what happens is you focus more on articulating words in a specific order rather than thinking about the meaning behind them. The key is recapturing that meaning.
Analytical reading asks you to look at your script and underline the "meaning words"—the most important words in the sentence. If you didn't have them, the message wouldn't make sense. Do you want to do a quick trial?
Alex: I didn't underline it, but let me try this again.
Karin Reed: What does the first sentence say?
Alex: "Karin is an Emmy Award-winning journalist turned leadership communications expert."
Karin Reed: Right. Of those words, you wouldn't underline everything. The first thing you'd want the audience to hear is my name. Typically, you don't emphasize "Karin"; you emphasize the last name, "Reed." Then you’d underline "Award-winning" and "communications expert."
Alex: Yeah, I see.
Karin Reed: You "punch" those words. The second part of analytical reading is marking for pauses. So often when we read, we just blow through it and everything sounds the same. In natural conversation, we pause to give the audience a chance to process the information. Placing pauses is critical. In my news days, I would underline the meaning words and then use a slash (/) where I needed to pause—often at the end of a sentence, but sometimes in the middle to let a point land with impact.
Alex: So, Karin, given that, is it almost better not to read the intro? Is a "bad" impromptu intro better? For example: "Karin is an amazing communications expert; McKinsey consultants wake up and get inspired by her. Karin, why don't you tell us your story?"
Karin Reed: I’m happy to do so! I would say it depends on the format, Alex. This is very informal.
Pause I have to cough—speaking of informal, can I do that? Hold on a second.
Alex: Yes, that was a beautiful cough.
Karin Reed: There we go.
Alex: Very elegant.
Karin Reed: Don't you wish you had a mute button in real life? I think that would make things so much easier.
Alex: But I have three children, so I think I would overuse it a little bit at times.
Karin Reed: You have different environments that play to certain styles of communication. This is very informal, so it would be odd if you were reading my official bio. I'm going to cough one more time—hold on. A pro would have a glass of water nearby; I'm obviously not a pro today because I don't have it with me. I already chugged it earlier.
Alex: I'm offering you a virtual one!
Karin Reed: I wish! So, because this is informal, I think going off-script is probably better. It's just a matter of knowing the key things you want to mention—like "communication expert," "McKinsey," or "the author who inspires us." Those are the things I’d want percolating in my brain.
If I were doing a formal presentation, though—say, when I had to introduce Tom Brokaw at the Naval War College—that was a terrifying moment.
Alex: They were going to kill you if you messed up!
Karin Reed: Well, it was a very intimidating environment. You look out at a sea of uniforms, and they’re all high-ranking officials. I was in the media at the time, and traditionally, the media and the military did not have a great relationship, so I was already on my heels. And then, I was introducing Tom Brokaw!
Alex: Were you the "Enemy" Award winner then?
Karin Reed: I was the "Enemy" Award winner, probably! You're right, that’s classic. It was a scary moment, and the idea of me going up there and just "winging it" while introducing Tom Brokaw just wasn't going to happen. At that point, I needed to ensure I could read it in a scripted, formal fashion because it fit the environment.
Alex: So, lesson learned. This is actually great for everyone else, too. I think sometimes, thanks to AI or just general insecurity about what we’re about to say, we have a tendency to rely on scripts. It’s easy to get a script now—you just ask an AI and boom. But that’s the downside of the ease of technology: we’re losing authenticity.
This is meant to be an authentic conversation. I always feel slightly awkward doing intros because I don’t want to over-prepare. Sometimes I have time to prepare, but other times I just want to meet the person and let it be organic. I run a startup in addition to the podcast, so I don’t want to overdo it, but I want to be respectful to the guest. It turns out that even with the best intentions, the ease of having a script may backfire.
Do you see other examples of a "quick win" like this? This is a huge win for this podcast—future guests and the audience will thank you. What are other things that well-intentioned folks like myself get wrong when trying to get a message across?
Karin Reed: Authenticity over perfection—that is the key element. Often, that means you should prepare, but don’t over-prepare. One thing I work hard on with the executives I coach is getting them away from the script, because a script feels comfortable and safe.
Oftentimes, I’m working with main-stage speakers. I have a big conference coming up where I’ll be backstage for a major tech company, working with people who will be speaking to thousands of audience members. That isn't something they do very often.
Alex: So you’re taking these "big brains"—subject matter experts and company leaders—and they need to engage people who are usually looking at their phones.
Karin Reed: Exactly. But the people at the conference are there because they have an interest in the company. What I often find is that speakers want to look at "confidence monitors"—the screens at the edge of the stage that show speaker notes or slides.
What happens is you have this huge stage and an excited audience looking at the leader, but where is the leader looking? Not at the excited faces, but down at the confidence monitors. The connection is snapped, the authenticity is sapped, and you lose them because they know you're just reading.
You have to reach a level of comfort where you can tell the story using the words that come to you in the moment and trust that you can communicate them. That means you have to be prepared enough to know what that story is. In some ways, it’s easier to read off a teleprompter or stick to a script you were handed, but it’s very difficult to make that sound genuine. I teach tricks like analytical reading to make it easier, but no matter how good you are at reading a script, you’re always going to sound more authentic if you speak spontaneously.
Alex: What are the ways to engage in more spontaneous communication without a lot of prep work? Everyone is stretched for time. Does it just come down to having a few prepared speeches that you run through for different audiences until they become familiar? A lot of people seem to do that, but it's not very fun, and it doesn't always work. Are there other methods to get good at spontaneous storytelling?
Karin Reed: Well, I think you develop a "library" of stories and anecdotes that fit certain topics. I’ve worked with keynote speakers who have a revolving list of stories they plug in based on what the audience cares about.
One of the most practical strategies I suggest is to get away from the speaker notes. Instead, use your slides to guide you. Put just enough on the slide to serve as a reminder of what comes next. I am a big fan of using animations and "builds." I’ll show one bullet point—not a long sentence, but the key point I want to express—and then I’ll talk around it. I might use an illustration of it happening, or tell a story from my past, or explain how another client applied it. Then I’ll click, and the next few words will pop up, triggering my memory to talk about the next topic.
If you use your slides to drive the presentation, you can’t read because there’s not enough text there to read! It gives you just enough of a guide to keep you on track. This is different from a Steve Jobs-style presentation where there are only two words on the screen. Some people can do that, and it’s genius, but I find the majority of us need a "memory hook" to push us along.
Alex: And Steve Jobs notoriously prepared quite a lot for those presentations. It showed; they were successful and they worked. I think we’re all trying to "pull a Steve Jobs" if we can. A lot of what we’ve talked about so far feels like it applies to in-person presentations, but it works for virtual, too. Speaking of virtual, I see a few books on the shelves behind you.
Karin Reed: Shameless self-promotion!
Alex: I love it. Two of the four—one of them is Suddenly Virtual, which I understand you wrote right as Covid hit?
Karin Reed: I’ll tell you the whole story because it’s actually kind of crazy. I was a broadcast journalist before moving into coaching. After I left TV news, I wanted more control over my schedule, so I started working as an on-camera spokesperson. I noticed a trend where companies would bring in people from the "corner office" or the "corner cubicle" to be on camera alongside me. These people never imagined this would be a required skill set, yet they were expected to perform really well.
Alex: And Karin was like, "Why should they be able to do that? That’s not fair."
Karin Reed: Exactly! But there was one C-level executive at a company where I was doing a lot of work who said, "Karin, I’m doing these videos and I hate how I’m coming across. Can you help me?" I thought, "I don’t know, can I?"
As I figured it out, I developed the core of my curriculum: The MVPs of On-Camera Success.
Alex: So, not "Most Valuable Player." In my world, "MVP" usually means "Minimum Viable Product."
Karin Reed: Right, but this is what started it: someone came to me with a pain point that I could uniquely solve. I was happy to find that I could actually coach others to do what I did. That’s not always the case—some people can "do" but they can't coach or put it into terms that make sense.
I loved helping people feel confident in that environment, and it quickly expanded to helping people speak with ease across any platform—on camera, in person, or via virtual tools. I started coaching in 2010. In March 2020, I was asked to be a subject matter expert for a big video collaboration company alongside Dr. Joe Allen. We did a webinar on the future of meetings. We said, "In five to ten years, there will be a bunch of virtual meetings and video will be at their core."
Well, you know the punchline—all of that happened in about two weeks. We realized we could help people navigate this, so we wrote our first book, Suddenly Virtual, to provide guidance. We combined forces and the book did really well. Then, as things started opening up, people asked, "What do we do about hybrid?" Because hybrid is hard! But it can be satisfying if you do it right. So, we wrote Suddenly Hybrid together. Based on the success of those two, we were even approached by the "Dummies" people to write a book for them.
Alex: I actually called them and said, "Hey, I need help!"
Karin Reed: And for you, we wrote the book Effective Meetings for Dummies.
Alex: There you go.
Karin Reed: But it’s been a prolific collaboration. I adore Joe Allen; it’s been wonderful to work with him. The funny thing is, I actually wrote all those books with him without ever meeting him in person. We developed this very close relationship as colleagues without ever seeing each other’s legs! We were just "from the chest up" the whole time. When I finally met him in person, I screamed because I was like, "Oh my gosh, this is amazing!"
Alex: You’re embodied!
Karin Reed: Yes, exactly. "You’re a full person!" So that was really fun. It was a bit of a "ten-year overnight success," you know? But I think we were able to amplify what we had been doing and help a lot of people who were struggling to figure out how to get business done this way. We were able to say, "Here are some tips."
Alex: Well, this is still super relevant. A few years out from that 2020 period, what have we learned about virtual meetings?
Karin Reed: Oh, gosh, we’ve learned so much. First of all, my thinking on "camera on versus camera off" has changed a little. Initially, I thought you should have your camera on at all times, no matter what.
Then the "meeting explosion" happened, where every single hour of the day was clogged with meetings. You had these poor people on camera for eight, nine, or ten hours straight, and they were exhausted. "Zoom fatigue" became a real thing. There was an overcorrection where people said, "Cameras off for everyone."
But Joe’s research into the value of video indicated that you’re doing yourself a disservice by not using the richest medium possible when it matters most.
Karin Reed (cont.): The richest medium is in-person, face-to-face. Right below that is video with audio. Then there’s a steep drop-off to audio alone, followed by text and email. I realized there has to be a middle ground. We came up with three things to consider when deciding if the camera should be on:
Size and Interaction: If the meeting is huge and people are just talking at you with no expectation of interaction, it’s perfectly fine to have your camera off. Sometimes it’s a matter of saving bandwidth. I work with global companies that have thousands of people joining; they have to ask people to keep cameras off to avoid a perilous technical position. It’s also less distracting for the speaker. I remember doing a sales kickoff keynote where everyone had their cameras on, but they all used the exact same virtual background. It looked like a weird industrial warehouse with rows of identical boxes—it was very distracting.
Relationship: If you’ve worked with these people for years, you already know their "bank" of non-verbal cues. If I know Alex rolls his eyes when he’s being sarcastic, I don’t necessarily need to see him do it to understand the intent. However, if there is a new person on the team, they need to see those faces to make connections and build their own bank of non-verbals for each team member.
Topic: This is the most important. If the topic is emotionally heavy or very complex, you want to communicate in the richest way possible. If you can’t do face-to-face, video is the second-best option.
Alex: On that note, how do we make video feel more like face-to-face? I’m trying to "move in" to the camera here. There are some communicators on YouTube whose energy you can almost feel through the screen. Others are just "talking heads" who communicate authority but feel a bit stagnant. I’m standing right now because it’s energizing for me, but I don’t know if that’s distracting.
Our audience is wondering: how should we present ourselves? Is it better to be full-screen? Is it better to be a small window while the slides are featured? Have you found any patterns of what success looks like?
Karin Reed: There are so many aspects to this, but the most important thing is having the right mental mindset.
Alex: Okay, let’s cover the "MVP" framework then, shall we?
Karin Reed: We can do that. There is a lot to it, but I will give you the "headline" version. The Mental Mindset starts with asking yourself one question: "How many people am I talking to?"
I’ll throw it out to you, Alex. Whenever you're in a virtual meeting, how many people do you feel like you're talking to? Does it feel like no one? An infinite number? One person? Or does it depend on the participant count? Where is your headspace?
Alex: Obviously, it varies by the meeting.
Karin Reed: It’s actually not that obvious! What I would say is that no matter how many people are on the call, it is always an audience of one, because every individual is receiving your message privately.
The conversation space is very small in this environment. If you go into what I call "Presenter Mode"—projecting your voice, using big gestures, and failing to make eye contact with the lens—it looks inappropriate. At worst, it looks fake.
You have to recognize that your framing (how much of you is seen on screen) creates the perceived distance between you and your partner. Right now, if we translated our screen setup into an in-person situation, we would be about four feet apart.
Alex: I took a shower, so I think you’re safe at four feet!
Karin Reed: Exactly. So, with that in mind, how would you talk to someone standing just a few feet away? You wouldn't project your voice; that would feel uncomfortable. You wouldn't use huge gestures because you’d be invading their personal space. You stay in a conversational space that is intimate and less formal than if you were standing at the front of a room.
That’s how you stay authentic. If you met me in person, I would be the exact same as I am right now. The big difference is that I am pouring my energy through the camera lens. That is where I direct it. Because the camera is the portal to my people, it’s the only way to reach them.
Alex: So let’s make it real. You’ve been observing me for 30 minutes—is my eye contact off?
Karin Reed: It is right now, yeah. Look at your camera lens.
Alex: Okay, so I need to be looking here. Tell me about your setup, Karin.
Karin Reed: I have my camera sitting on top of my MacBook Pro—the one with all the ports, because I like my ports!
Alex: Wait, do you have an external webcam or the built-in one?
Karin Reed: I use an external webcam. I recommend that setup depending on what works for you. For people with multiple monitors, the setup needs to be different. The absolute key is making sure the lens is at eye level.
Alex: Right now, mine is a little bit higher than eye level.
Karin Reed: You are using a standing desk, right? You want to be able to draw a level line from your eyeballs to the camera, parallel with the floor. That allows your conversation partner to feel like you are looking directly into their eyes.
Alex: So, am I losing people because it looks like I’m looking down on them?
Here is the edited text. I have polished the grammar, removed the repetitive stammers, and organized Karin’s "Vocal Variety" and "Physical Factors" advice into a clear, readable format.
Karin Reed: If you frame yourself poorly, it looks unnatural. You need to be aware that your framing creates the perceived space between you and your conversation partner.
Now, for the second part of MVP: Vocal Variety. This is true for both in-person and virtual communication. You want to create variation that the ear can pick up because our brains are hardwired to notice changes in the environment. If your delivery never changes, your words will simply wash over the audience.
Alex: So it’s like saying, "I... have... a... very... exciting... message... for... you," in a flat voice.
Karin Reed: Exactly. You have three main tools: Pitch, Pace, and Pauses.
Karin Reed (cont.): Pitch is your vocal range—how high or low your voice goes. When you speak in a monotone, the words go in one ear and out the other because a steady tone becomes white noise. You need to hit the highs and lows. We previously talked about underlining "meaning words"; that helps generate inflection. When you look at an underlined word, you are more likely to emphasize it, and emphasis usually involves a change in pitch.
Alex: I love how you emphasized "behavior" there—everyone will remember that!
Karin Reed: The next key part is Pausing. We often fail to recognize the value of a pause because silence feels uncomfortable, especially in a virtual setting where there’s no ambient noise to fill the space.
But silence is valuable for both you and your audience. It’s valuable for you because you need time to gather your thoughts. When we don't give ourselves that time, we use "verbal placeholders" like "um" or "uh." We know we have more to say, but we don't know how to say it yet. If you use too many, people start counting your filler words instead of listening to your message. If you "swallow" the filler and substitute it with silence, you give the audience an opportunity to actually consider what you’re saying. They need that time to digest information.
Alex: So, what’s a quick tip for someone like me who says "like" and "um" too much?
Karin Reed: First, if you're doing a virtual presentation, identify your favorite filler word. What’s yours, Alex?
Alex: What have you picked up on so far?
Karin Reed: Honestly, I haven’t picked up on a specific one yet. I’d have to look at the transcript—which, by the way, is a horrifying experience because you realize how many fillers you actually say!
But the goal isn't to eliminate all filler words. The goal is to reduce the ones that stick out the most, like the ones between major thoughts or sections of a presentation—for example, saying "Um, on this next slide..."
My favorite filler word is "so." What I do is put the word "SO" on a sticky note on my monitor. When I look at it, it registers in my brain and actually takes the place of me saying it out loud. Try that: put your favorite filler on a sticky note. Awareness facilitates change.
Think about a comedian. If they deliver a punchline and immediately plow into the next joke without letting the audience laugh, the material just smushes together. You want people to appreciate what you’ve said. If you deliver a key takeaway—like why you are head and shoulders above the competition—let it sit there. Give your partner time to think, "Huh, I see."
Alex: Right, because you want it to become their idea, not just yours.
Karin Reed: Exactly. They have to digest it. If you just throw a wall of information at them, it muddies the message.
The last piece of MVP is P: Physical Factors. The question I always get, whether in-person or virtual, is: "What do I do with my hands?" My answer is always the same: If you are thinking about what your hands are doing, you’ve already lost focus on the message.
Karin Reed: If you focus on what you're saying, your body will support it organically. You don’t tell people what you had for dinner last night by saying, "For my entrée, I had chicken—now I’m going to move my right hand. For dessert, I had a chocolate torte—now I’m going to move my left hand." It doesn't happen! Your body just does its own thing, provided you focus on the message.
Allow yourself freedom of movement. We communicate with our whole bodies, not just our words or tone. If you try to muzzle any aspect of that, it makes you less authentic and less effective as a communicator.
Alex: So, rolling back to the MVP framework—the "Mindset" piece is near and dear to my heart, yet I still got it wrong. I thought it depended on the audience size, but you’re right: you should imagine every interaction as a one-on-one connection with every individual member.
This is exactly why we started the Relate universe. We wanted to create a more conversational experience within digital content. Even if you aren't in the room—perhaps it's a recording—you still want the audience to have that one-on-one experience.
Karin Reed: Exactly. A PDF is very prescriptive; there is only one way to go through it. But a multimedia experience offers the opportunity to cater to the user's true interests. Video has a great way of connecting. When I worked in TV news, people would come up to me in the grocery store and ask, "Karin Reed, how are the kids?" They talked to me like a close personal friend. When I was pregnant, they knitted me baby booties and blankets!
They had developed a relationship with me—one-sided, perhaps, but it felt genuine to them. Multimedia connects in a much deeper way than text alone ever could.
Alex: We’re going to bake more of Karin’s ideas into Relate. It sounds like the foundational principle is: "Is your goal to throw information over a wall, or is it to have a conversation?" Organizations often struggle with technical, complex information because they get too obsessed with the data itself.
Karin Reed: Oh, absolutely. They present it from their own vantage point. I always instruct my clients: "Don’t tell them what you want to say; provide them with what they need to hear." That requires audience analysis.
Multimedia gives the audience the agency to choose their own path and dive deeper where they want to. The best virtual engagements are interactive—not monologues, but dialogues. I suggest delivering information in digestible chunks followed by conversation. It makes for a much more satisfying experience.
Alex: Well, Karin, I think people feel like they’ve just had a one-on-one conversation with you! If people want to continue this journey, where can they find your books and services?
Karin Reed: The "be-all, end-all" is speakerdynamics.com. That is the resource for all things Karin Reed and my fabulous team. There, you’ll find our books, podcasts, and video tutorials.
We also have Speaker Dynamics University, our learning platform for asynchronous classes. You can record yourself on the platform and get feedback. We cover four main "buckets" of training:
Executive Presence
Powerful Presentations
Meetings that Move the Needle
Navigating Media Interviews
I'm happy to have a conversation with anyone who feels a "pain point" in one of those areas.
Alex: Beautiful. Karin, thank you so much for joining us. You’ve already helped me, and I’m sure if you can rescue me, you can help anyone become a better communicator.
Karin Reed: Thank you, Alex. It was my pleasure!