How Do You Keep Eye Contact on a Zoom Call?

To keep eye contact on a Zoom call, bring the faces to the lens instead of chasing them around your screen. Pin the person you are talking to, double-click to make them full screen, then drag the small pop-out window of everyone else up beside your camera. And stop screen sharing if you can.

That is the setup Chris Schwager demonstrated live to the Video Confidence Collective, and it sits inside the wider guide to using video for sales and webinars. The video on this page is the full demonstration. The steps are below so you can try them on your next call.

Why does screen sharing lose the room?

Because the moment you share your screen, everybody's view changes and you shrink to a thumbnail. Chris showed it live: "Most likely what you're seeing is a tiny little version of me. And if I run a webinar for one hour or even longer, this is the view that most people are going to see, and it's not very engaging."

The people on the other end rarely know Zoom well enough to fix their own view, so they sit with it for the whole call. You are no longer presenting through the lens. Your slides are.

Ridge's answer is a video switcher, which is now standard with the premium Desktop Studio. It mixes your slides, laptop or tablet into your camera feed, so you stay on screen and decide what the audience sees. In Chris's words: "You control the action." If you have one, here is how to connect a device to your switcher.

How do you make one person bigger without losing everyone else?

This is the part of the demonstration a member asked Chris to repeat, so here it is step by step:

1. Pin the person you are talking to. That gives you a bigger image of them straight away, so you can see they are paying attention.
2. Double-click them. Now they are full screen. You can also use the three dots at the top left of the window and maximise.
3. Find the pop-out. Everyone else has peeled off into a small floating window. By default it is tiny and, as Chris puts it, "completely useless, really."
4. Drag it out. Grab that small window and pull it bigger, then move it where you want it. "You just grab it, pull it out, drag it out, and then you'll have everyone nice and big."
5. Remove the pin when you are done. Use the drop-down on their window. The layout shifts again when you do, so expect to move things around.

Chris's point is that you are not stuck with the view Zoom hands you. "Play with Zoom, because everything you need is right there."

Where should the faces sit so your eyes stay near the lens?

As close to the camera as you can get them. In Chris's setup the computer screen and the teleprompter sit side by side, which narrows the gap between the lens and whatever he is looking at. If the window he is watching were on a screen way off to one side, he would be talking to the audience in profile. "Nobody really wants to see my ear hole."

With a small group he keeps the gallery in a tight grid near the lens. That way he can see who is smiling, who is nodding off and who has just come back, without turning his head or disengaging from the people he is talking to.

One thing to remember while you rearrange windows: your audience sees none of it. "It doesn't matter what's over the top of this. It only matters what I'm sending."

How do you read notes on a sales call without looking away?

Chris runs his sales meetings with teleprompter text queued up in a narrow column, roughly five centimetres wide, sitting over the lens. Then he switches to gallery view and pulls the faces in right beside that text.

The result is that he can read a question or a bullet point with his eyes on the lens, and when the other person starts nodding or smiling he sees it with a very small shift of the eyes. He can still see most of the group just off to the side.

The text does come up small, which Chris flags for anyone who needs glasses.

Why do you look squashed on Zoom?

Chris spotted several members looking squashed at the start of the session. His fix: go into your video settings in Zoom, find the HD option and switch it on.

For the rest of how you look on a call, start with these free lighting upgrades for video calls.

Does it make a difference?

One member who had already tried it reported back in the same session: "I've got everybody sitting there in nice big images. I can see everybody. I can relate to everybody."

That is the point of all of it. When you can see faces properly, you can read body language and adjust as you go, which matters most when you are selling or running a webinar. Once your view is sorted, the next step is how to structure a webinar so people stay engaged, which Chris covered later in the same session.

If you want help showing up better on your sales calls and webinars, book a call.

Zoom eye contact questions

How do you pop out the other participants in Zoom?

Double-click the person you want full screen, or use the three dots at the top left of the window and maximise. Everyone else moves into a small floating window. Grab it and drag it out to make it bigger, then move it wherever you want it.

Does this work on Teams or Google Meet?

Mostly. Chris says Teams, Google Meet and Riverside each have their own quirks and limits, but they work in a similar way. You may not get the same functions, but you can still get what you need into the right eye line.

What if there are 20 or more people on the call?

That is where dragging the pop-out window bigger earns its keep. Chris keeps a small group in a simple grid, and says the enlarged pop-out becomes valuable once you have 20 or more people on a call.

Do you have to stop screen sharing?

Not if it is all you have. But know what it does: your audience's view changes and you become a small picture in the corner. Chris's alternative is a switcher, which keeps you on screen while the slides come and go.

Video transcript

Auto-transcribed from the Zoom recording of this session and lightly edited for readability. False starts and connection chatter are removed, member names are replaced with [member], and one aside about an individual member is omitted. Chris's words are otherwise as spoken. The video on this page may start or end at a slightly different point.

Chris Schwager: I've got my laptop going here just as a bit of context around Zoom and how I lay things out, so you can see what's happening. It is kind of overly complex looking, but what we really want to focus on is I've just got an iMac, and that's the equivalent of the machine you've got in front of you. And then I've got my teleprompter over here. That's to run an ordinary Zoom call.

What I'm finding is Zoom affects you if you don't know it and how to maximise it. But worse still, it affects the people at the other end that you're trying to attract, because they're most likely not knowing Zoom, and how they are affected when you do something like a screen share. Those that don't have the switcher, you're still having to screen share. So what I want to do is show you roughly what a screen share might do from my laptop.

Once I screen share, the platform itself will spin out and everybody will get a different view and a different way of looking at you. So I'm screen sharing my laptop, and all of a sudden everybody on this call, all their view changes. Most likely what you're seeing is a tiny little version of me. And if I run a webinar for one hour or even longer, this is the view that most people are going to see, and it's not very engaging.

Here's my slide. Let's assume this is the slide. I'm still this tiny little picture in picture. I'm still not able to convey through the lens like I would if I was to mix it in with the switcher. So this is part of the reason why the switcher was introduced as a standard, and we stopped screen sharing as a standard, to help increase engagement. And you control the action. You control the action.

So what I'm going to show you is how I then use Zoom to maximise my eye contact. I get so many people asking me, can I do this, can I do that, how do I get it where I want? I've got clients that will have 500 people on a call, and there's others just like me that do, say, a dozen. I've got a nice little grid in front of me here. This is pretty much how I see you guys, in a small grid, because I usually have less than 15, or even on the masterclasses less than 20. I can still pack them in here.

But if I'm ever struggling to see someone's detail, say it was between me and [member] and we're just having a moment for ten minutes, I want to be able to regulate this so that I'm getting what I need out of this call and I'm not subservient to this Zoom call, where it's difficult for me to see the detail and nuances of her body language. The more you learn Zoom and understand how you can manipulate Zoom, the more likely you'll get what you want, really on the go.

I'm not saying it's all going to happen at once, but play with Zoom, because everything you need is right there. Now, those predominantly on Teams or Google Meet, those have their own peccadilloes. Riverside, same deal. There's things that you can and can't do, but they typically work in the same way. Once you understand what the limitations of those applications are, you'll be able to work in a similar way. You might not get the same functionality, but you will get an ability to control and have what you need in the right eye line.

So for me right now it's all you guys. I want to see smiley faces. I can see right in front of me whether people are nodding off. I can see that without turning my head, without disengaging from you guys, without having to make any big adjustments to my body. It's all just here in front.

Now, if this does not suffice and me and [member] get into a bit of a ten-minute chit-chat, then I'm going to start playing around with Zoom. I'm going to first start by pinning [member], because I can see where she is, and that immediately puts [member] at a bigger image. Not the biggest version, but a bigger version, which is good. So we can interact. I can see she's paying attention.

If I double-click, then I get [member] full screen. What has happened in this situation? A little breakout has peeled off to here. When you first start up Zoom, I think it'd be pretty small, and it may actually be somewhere here, over the top. It's what's called a pop-up. And it's here, again, completely useless, really. I'm not seeing the whole group. But what I really need to do is acknowledge that I have control. I have an ability to get this out of here and onto my next screen.

And this is why we have the computer and the teleprompter close together, so that the eye lines are never drastic. I've got a screen all the way around to the other side here. It could at times be like that. Well, that's not very polite. Nobody really wants to see my ear hole. So that's why this setup, having the screen and the teleprompter quite close together, narrows that gap between the lens and the other areas, so I can cheat really nicely at focusing in on [member], but every once in a while maybe peel off to you guys. That real estate could be your chat window.

But let's address these guys, because this is too small. I can't see what I need to see. So I'm going to drag this out. Look at this. Now I've got everyone. I've just dragged that pop-up window and moved it right out, so that I get to see other people in more detail. This is going to be valuable where you've got 20-plus people on your call.

Now, say I want to put myself into the teleprompter, because I want to see what I'm doing as I'm presenting, and have all the other people broken out. I can also do that. I've just got to stop the pin on [member]. Go up to the little drop-down here on her, remove pin. It's going to change it again. This is why you need to be able to move things around as you need. I'm going to add the pin of myself, and it puts it back where it was. It might be a situation where, when I'm mixing in the slide deck, I want to see the slide deck here, right in front of the lens. Because don't forget, it doesn't matter what's over the top of this. It only matters what I'm sending. When I've got the slide deck here, the camera will still be focused in on me at this angle.

I'm going to go through a quick scenario of how I run my sales meetings, and really any situation where you are live and you want to run your teleprompter at the same time. I have teleprompter text already queued up here. You can see it's nice and narrow, roughly five centimetres wide. Up on the right-hand side here, you've got a whole bunch of variations for your different views. I'm going to go back to this gallery view, which puts all you guys here, and I'm just going to pull you in closer to that lens. So I'm in the prompter, but I'm just off to the side.

Now have a look at my eye contact. I'm going to look at the teleprompter text and read that. "So tell me about yourself, [member]." "Oh, that's great." I'm reading potential questions or bullet points or things that I need to cover, all with my eye contact directly over that teleprompter text. And then when [member] starts nodding, and she's smiling, I can also see it, just off. This is how far I'm going. It's very, very subtle. And I can still see the majority of you guys just off to the side here. So that's another really powerful way to utilise the entire teleprompter window.

I know it may come up small for some people, particularly those who need glasses or have difficulty with eyesight, but this is the type of thing you can be doing by understanding and playing more with Zoom. I'm going to check in at this point before we move on. Is everyone clear? Any questions?

Member: Chris, can you go through how you make that pop-up, the other participants pop out so you can move it around? I missed that.

Chris Schwager: Yep. I'll just go to speaker view here. I'll put you in here as an example. So there you are. In this particular window, it's not maximised. I can either go up to my little three dots on the top left and maximise it, or I can just double-click on you here. So I'm going to double-click, and that breakout by default won't look like this. You've got to drag it out. You've got to actually drag it out. I'm just going to minimise it, bring it back in. It's going to look more like that, this tiny little window. And you're going to be like, "Ah, what's this?" You just grab it, pull it out, drag it out, and then you'll have everyone nice and big. Is that clear?

Member: Yep, got it.