Presentation Coach Ray

10/21/2026

Some workforce skills are hard to measure.
On-camera presence isn't one of them.
Five skills, each scored 1 to 5, against a standard.

360Learning just scored more than 1,000 L&D teams on seven areas of their work. Measuring what training changed scored lowest. 63% of teams rated themselves 1 or 2 out of 5 on it.

The report's own advice: start with a quantified need. Get a number before the training, so there is something to compare it to after.

On-camera presence gives you that number without a survey. Eye contact, lighting, sound, background and gestures are visible the moment a we**am turns on. Record one short session per person and score each skill 1 to 5.

Those scores sit next to the numbers you already track. And because the standard is written down, you can apply it again when someone moves into a role where more people see them.

That is a durable human skill, reported as a workforce capability instead of a completion rate.

I've coached presenters for over twenty-five years. Most of that coaching now happens on camera.

Which of your workforce skills could you score this month?

10/15/2026

Fall is coming?

10/11/2026

THE MODERN ENGAGEMENT STANDARD: Ray Franklin is the author of The Modern Engagement Standard: How Senior Leaders Train Teams to Show Up, Speak Clearly, and Get Results on Zoom, Teams, Meet, and Every Online Platform. He has coached presenters for over twenty-five years. The we**am changed everything...

10/07/2026

Thanks to@PatrickKelleyTattooedNerd, this is the most shared home studio lighting video I share:

https://youtu.be/rgTCyOD0dBc

Share it with coworkers.

10/02/2026

Looking forward to the playoffs beginning tomorrow with the New York Yankees. Go Rays.

09/21/2026

Keep your live image dominant when sharing content. No more tiny windows, or you will lose your audience.

Why? Because the same screen they watch you on has email, chat, TikTok...

Sharing your screen on Zoom/Teams/Meet and WebEx is much easier on OBS Studio (free).

Another PresentationCoachRay Tip

09/14/2026

https://youtube.com/shorts/nAwU3RCvRm4

Everyone watching your webinar is watching alone. Maybe they're h...

09/14/2026

L&D can finally measure how a team shows up on camera.
Not a vibe. Not a gut feeling.
Five skills you can see, assess, and coach.

Last week, I watched a sharp manager present to her team on Zoom. Her ideas were strong. Her eyes stayed down on her notes the whole time. The team felt it before they could name it, and the message landed flat.

Here's what I keep coming back to.

On camera, presence isn't a soft skill. It's five things you can actually see: eye contact, lighting, sound, background, and gestures.

You can watch, score, and coach each one.

The field keeps saying the same thing. As teams push for AI readiness, durable human skills separate a message that lands from one that doesn't.

Ben Eubanks put numbers on the gap: most leaders believe skills are aligned, while only about one in five employees feel it.

On camera, that gap becomes visible.

That's why I start teams with a 30-person diagnostic cohort.

You see each person's gains.
You also see the pattern across the group.
From there, you get a clear map for building capability next.

So here's my question. When your team shows up on camera, can you tell what's working, or only that something feels off?

09/03/2026

Your employees may be on camera every day.

Do you know how well they communicate there?

For L&D leaders, online presence is now a skill that can be assessed.

And what you find may surprise you.

I recently watched a webinar with 150 people attending.

The presenter was speaking to them but rarely looking at them.

Instead, the presenter spent much of the session looking at the gallery view.

Meanwhile, those 150 people were sitting alone with email, texts, phones, and plenty of other places to put their attention.

That is the challenge L&D leaders need to recognize.

Online communication is no longer simply about knowing how to operate Zoom, Teams, or Meet. It is about knowing how to communicate effectively through them.

And those skills are observable.

Eye Contact. Lighting. Sound. Background. Gestures.

L&D leadership can assess these behaviors across a team, identify where people are losing effectiveness, and coach the specific skills that need improvement.

For organizations with 300, 3,000, or 30,000 employees, that turns “being better on video” into something far more useful:

A trainable workplace skill.

09/01/2026

I am hosting a live Q&A on September 16.

The topic is your team's online engagement skills.

Bring your hardest on-camera question, and I will answer it live. The setup that never looks right. The presenter who loses the room. The habit you keep seeing but cannot name.

Wednesday, September 16, 11 AM Eastern. Live on LinkedIn and YouTube. Cannot make it live? RSVP for the replay.

What would you ask?

Most training still treats speaking on camera as something people s...