Camera Anxiety Secrets Revealed: What Executive Coaches Don't Want You to Know

Camera anxiety for senior leaders: why most coaching makes it worse

If you feel tense the moment the camera light comes on, you are far from alone. Studies suggest that well over nine in ten senior executives in UK professional services feel significant anxiety when they appear on camera. Yet many executive coaching programmes are quietly turning up that anxiety rather than calming it down.

There is a reason. A large part of the coaching world is still built on broadcast techniques from the nineteen eighties. It trains leaders for podiums, television studios, and one way performance. It largely ignores decades of neuroscience that explain why those methods fall apart on video calls where your face sits a few centimetres from someone's laptop.

The uncomfortable truth is this. Traditional "executive presence" coaching was built for a world that no longer exists. In the close, unforgiving setting of HD video, performance based habits tend to fire up the very fear they are meant to remove.

Now let us look at what is really going on, and what to do instead.

The mirror effect: why self view works against you

Here is what most coaches will not tell you. The biggest driver of camera anxiety is often not the camera. It is the screen. More precisely, that small window where you can see your own face staring back at you.

When you watch yourself in that box, your brain shifts into "Objective Self-Awareness" mode, a state first described by Duval and Wicklund in nineteen seventy two. Instead of staying with your message and the people you are talking to, your attention splits. Part of you is trying to think, listen, and respond. Part of you is busy judging how you look and sound.

That loop of self checking becomes harsh very quickly. Research shows that people who can see themselves during video calls rate their performance lower than outside observers do. Their head fills with tiny questions.

"Is my tie straight"
"Do I look tired"
"Am I nodding too much"

Each of those micro checks burns a little more of the mental fuel you need for complex thinking. In high stakes conversations, that cost is heavy.

For UK leaders in "Magic Circle" law firms and the "Big Four" consultancies, this effect hits even harder. These are people who live in environments where perfectionism and reputation management are almost a religion. Constant self audit on screen is not just tiring. It is draining at a deep level.

The fix is not to force more confidence or better posture. The simple, practical move is to turn off self view while keeping your camera on. That one setting frees up attention for what actually matters: the person on the other side of the call.

The polish trap: when "perfect" kills trust

Many executive coaching programmes still teach leaders to remove every "um", memorise scripts, and hold a fixed, upright posture. On paper this looks tidy. In practice it clashes with how people actually build trust.

Human beings read each other through small, natural signals. Mirror neurons fire when we watch someone who looks genuinely engaged. When a leader appears over rehearsed on video, those signals almost vanish. People see a neat talking head. They do not feel a real person.

Video technology already strips away part of what we rely on in person. It smooths body language and flattens the energy in the room. It acts like a low pass filter that blurs the subtle shifts in expression and movement that help us feel close to someone. To compensate, you need a little more visible feeling, not less. This does not mean acting, or playing a part. It means being a bit more open in your language, your face, and your hands than you might be around a board table.

The steady, heavy "gravitas" that works in a formal meeting often comes across as distant and cold through a webcam.

There is a growing body of evidence that speakers who work from clear bullet points and allow natural disfluencies, the "thinking words" like "um" and "ah", are judged as more intelligent and more trustworthy than those who read tight scripts. Those small hesitations show that you are working with live ideas rather than reciting something you decided days ago. They signal presence rather than performance.

The UK factor: tall poppies and video shame

British executives have another layer to deal with that many international coaching firms miss. There is a strong cultural habit of cutting down anyone who looks like they are trying too hard. Tall Poppy Syndrome is not just a phrase from the newspapers. It lives in offices and on calls.

For many leaders, a proper video setup feels like showing off. Good lighting, a clear background, and a decent microphone can feel like you are staging yourself as a media personality. That is the last thing a lot of quietly ambitious professionals want.

This creates a nasty choice in their head. If they put care into their setup, they risk being seen as vain. If they ignore it, they show up in dim light with fuzzy audio, and their authority leaks away. A surprising number of people choose the second option. They undercut their own presence on every call by refusing simple upgrades that would make them easier to hear and see.

In regulated sectors such as financial services and law, there is another layer of tension. Leaders are rightly worried that one casual phrase on a recorded call could brush against FCA or SRA rules. To protect themselves, they slide into stiff "corporate speak". Sentences become safe but lifeless. The very tone that used to protect them in written memos now blocks any sense of human connection.

A more helpful way to see this is to treat visibility as an act of service rather than as self promotion. When you show up clearly on video, you give your team direction and calm. When you speak in plain language about real issues, you help clients and colleagues think better. When you measure your setup against how well it helps other people, rather than how it makes you look, the anxiety starts to soften. You are no longer putting yourself on display. You are making it easier for people to work with you.

The science of digital trust

There is another piece that rarely shows up in executive coaching sessions. Trust on video is not just about what you say. It is also a biological response to how sound and image arrive in the brain.

When audio and video drift out of sync, even by a small amount, the brain flags it as a possible mismatch. Research into the McGurk Effect shows that when what we see in lip movements does not line up with what we hear, we unconsciously downgrade the speaker. They feel less persuasive, less competent, and, importantly, less honest.

A delay of a couple of tenths of a second in your audio will quietly do more damage to your authority than a slightly loud jacket or a bookshelf that is not tidy.

There is a clear order to trust signals online. Audio quality sits above visual polish. A leader who sounds rich, clear, and in time with their lips will be trusted more than someone with studio lighting whose voice cuts out or lags.

For many executives, the highest return investment in their "on camera presence" is not more coaching on hand gestures. It is a wired internet connection, a reliable microphone, and headphones that stop feedback.

Technical setup and your state of mind

Stanford researcher Jeremy Bailenson uses the phrase "Non-Verbal Overload" to describe what happens to our brains on busy video calls. When you have several faces on screen, your mind is constantly scanning for social cues. The problem is that the cues are blurred and flattened, so the scan never really resolves. You stay in a low level state of alert that eats into your energy.

Standard advice such as "maintain eye contact with the camera lens" often makes this worse. Holding your gaze on a tiny circle of plastic for long periods raises cortisol and mental load. It also means you are not actually looking at the people you are talking to on your screen, which can leave you feeling oddly alone while technically surrounded.

The classic "talking head" format, where you sit rigid in a tight frame, also works against how the brain likes to think. Research on embodied cognition suggests that gesture and movement are not add ons to thinking, they are part of it. When you pin your body in place, your thoughts can end up feeling pinned as well.

Simple physical changes can help.

Stand up for key calls. Give your hands space to move. Look slightly below the camera so you can still see faces while appearing to look toward the lens. Small shifts like this often bring immediate improvements in energy and fluency.

The diversity problem in "executive presence"

Many older models of executive presence quietly assume a narrow template. "white, male, tall, and deep voiced" has been treated as the safe default in more boardrooms than people like to admit.

For women and ethnically diverse leaders in the UK, this sends a clear but unspoken message. To be seen as a safe pair of hands, you have to move closer to that template. That means extra monitoring of clothing, hair, voice, facial expression, even the background of your home office. That is a lot of extra load to carry on every call.

Research suggests that women feel higher levels of video fatigue than men, in part because of constant pressure to look polished. Leaders from non white backgrounds may also feel pushed to change their natural speech patterns or play down parts of their personality to fit a narrow picture of "professional".

This pressure does not just hurt them. It deprives teams of the very qualities that are often most helpful online. Many diverse leaders bring strong listening skills, sharper awareness of different cultures, and a natural ability to read the room. These are strengths that matter more on video than a booming voice or a perfect chin line.

The digital environment often rewards warmth, curiosity, and clear explanation more than the old command and control style. Trying to squeeze everyone into one shape is not only unfair. It is bad for results.

What actually helps: practical moves that work

To move past camera anxiety, leaders need a shift from performance to presence.

Instead of acting like a leader, focus on being with your audience. Treat each call or recording as a real conversation, even if you are the only one speaking in that moment.

Start with the basics that hold your nervous system together.

Get a stable, wired internet connection where you can. Use a microphone that gives you clear, steady sound. Sort out lighting so people can see your face without harsh shadows. These are not vanity purchases. They are tools that bring your outer image in line with how you see yourself. When that gap closes, a lot of background tension eases.

Practise what we might call "strategic disfluency". Let yourself use normal thinking words. Pause. Take a breath while you search for the right phrase. These are not flaws. They are tiny proof points that you are present and thinking with the people in front of you.

Normalise looking away to think. Breaking eye contact to process a question is something we accept in person, and it reads as honest. On video, you can look slightly below the lens to see the other person, look off to one side to gather your thoughts, then come back. This breaks the "robot" feeling without losing connection.

Use a "Two Hat" approach when that helps with compliance and authenticity. Say out loud when you are speaking as the regulated expert and when you are giving a personal view. For example, "From a compliance point of view, I have to say this," followed by, "As a human who has worked in this space for twenty years, what I see is this." That small distinction reassures regulators while inviting genuine connection.

Bringing it together

Camera anxiety is not a sign that you lack courage. It is a natural reaction to a strange set of conditions. You are being asked to think deeply, read weak social cues, and stare at an image of your own face, all at the same time. The coaching industry's habit of pushing performance, scripts, and rigid polish onto that situation often makes it harder.

The leaders who will do well in a digital first world are not the ones who look flawless on screen. They are the ones who are willing to show a slightly rough edge, let people see their thinking, admit what they do not know yet, and speak in human scale language.

The camera is not your enemy. It is simply another room where real conversations can happen, if you let them.

If you want to work on an executive presence that actually builds trust, start with these small shifts. Turn off self view. Sort your audio. Stand up and move. Let yourself sound like a person, not a script. Then build from there.

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