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Apology not accepted – Virtual Facilitation #7
How many times are you hearing apologies for poor use of technology during online calls?
‘Sorry, I haven’t quite got the hang of Zoom’. Well, we don’t want to hear it – for at least three good reasons.
1. I reckon that you really should have the hang of it by now. If you are creating training or learning sessions, particularly if they are paid-for, you need
Encouraging constructive conversations online – Virtual Facilitation #6
If you put your participants into breakout rooms, you can’t expect great conversations online to break out automatically. They might, but equally might not. And this is an instance where you need to take even more care in an online world than when facilitating at a f-2-f conference or workshop event. In the latter, there’s…
What this disruption means for the future – two confident predictions
Many of us are discovering new possibilities in lockdown and also wondering what the future might look like. We’re questioning the ways that we have been used to working all these years. Whether work simply stopped or was conducted exclusively from home, there was a sudden and unavoidable disruption.
How to create engagement in virtual meetings – Virtual Facilitation #5
How do we create (more) engagement in virtual meetings with a group that’s still pretty unfamiliar with good Zoom meetings? And that likely means most of your participants. If you can do that, you’ll immediately stand out from the cavalcade of everyone and their uncle who are now offering online sessions.
Defusing dangerous dogma in improvisation
This week a group of us re-watched, via a Facebook Watch Party, one of the most impactful talks ever given at an Applied Improvisation Network (AIN) Conference. It was Pablo Suarez speaking about adapting what we know (i.e. improvisation) to the field of disaster preparedness.
Pablo, from the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, was with us to re-introduce his presentation…
How to warm up a virtual meeting – Virtual Facilitation #4
One great question to warm up a virtual meeting is, ‘What are you enjoying about the lockdown?’.
While that may seem paradoxical, there will be some things that people are benefiting from by staying at home, whether they have thought about them yet or not.
Here’s a sampling of answers from one recent call…
Online meeting etiquette – Virtual Facilitation #3
Online meeting etiquette actually isn’t as different from face-to-face meeting etiquette as you’d think, and you’ve probably been on enough online meetings by now to know what you like and don’t.
Have you been on those Zoom calls where the first 30 minutes (of 60) is taken up with elaborate introductions, and by the time everyone has described their new routine…
How to start your virtual meeting – Virtual Facilitation #2
Most virtual meeting systems offer a waiting room, where you can hold your participants until you are ready to begin.
It can put a lot of pressure on you to have to get straight into the substance of the meeting, precisely at the advertised time. So using a virtual waiting room can provide a gentle. You can let participants enter as they arrive…
Good enough tech skills – Virtual Facilitation #1
You don’t have to be a technology wizard to be a great facilitator of online calls but you do need to have good enough tech skills. You need to know just enough to ensure you don’t let technical shortcomings hamper…
Given basic technical competence, the art then is to exploit the difference in medium – to raise engagement, productivity or intimacy…
Virtual Facilitation: What works well online?
What works well online is not simply a matter of taking what works well offline and hoping for the best.
It’s not a bad idea for starters, as many principles and practices are directly transferable. But you also need to be aware of what’s possible – and not possible – in each medium. As the context changes, so do the interactions. I’ve been on virtual calls…
How to build the skills and confidence of your learners
Whether you are teaching online or off, there’s a crucial difference between building skills and pointing out people’s deficiencies.
Even if your approach is founded on developing what works, while alerting your learners to mistakes here and there, you may wonder what to do about students who believe you are not teaching them properly unless…
Facilitation: 10 tips on how to make the space safer
During a recent webinar on facilitation trends, I asked a group of practitioners for their tips on making space safer. Here are our top ten:
1. Articulate goals and expectations upfront and early, so everyone is clear about what we’re there to do.
2. To keep it constructive and relevant, ask ‘What needs to happen here today for it to be useful to you?’
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