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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
The covid-19 crisis accelerated virtual collaboration exponentially, creating an instant need for virtual facilitation skills. People and organizations have started on this journey, but do not yet have the experience and competencies to use this medium for effective and energetic collaboration. Virtual Facilitation will show you how to have successful virtual events, virtual meetings, virtual workshops and training. Packed full of tips, insights and real case studies, the author's practical approach to virtual facilitation will show you how to effectively learn the skills needed to suceed. This book will also cover: * The role of the facilitator, and what is expected * The design of the process * How to avoid common mistakes * Implementation and influencing behaviour Virtual Facilitation will show you how to plan for virtual events, how to develop skills to be able to host virtual meetings, virtual courses, virtual training, virtual workshops, and virtual larger events to meet 21st century needs.
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Seitenzahl: 403
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Foreword
Introduction
What is virtual facilitation?
Putting the human back into the digital world
Sharing the ‘How’
A blend of expertise
Diving into the digital world
Use our online platform to get materials and the newest inspiration
Create a personal training program for you as a virtual facilitator
I: The Core of Virtual Facilitation
1 An Introduction to Facilitating Sessions
What is a good virtual meeting?
Virtual interactions always need a facilitator
What happens when there is no facilitator?
What does your meeting culture look like?
Why have meetings?
The difference between a meeting, a workshop and training
The Five Levels of Involvement
Put your session into context
Start working on your virtual sessions
2 Going Virtual with Your Session
We forget the essentials
How do people behave in virtual meetings?
Similarities between physical and virtual meetings
How are virtual meetings different?
Understanding the advantages of virtual facilitation
The four barriers in virtual meetings
The international retail store
The medium-sized company
Build capabilities for virtual collaboration
Applying virtual meetings to different situations
Note
3 The Virtual Facilitator
Developing the skills for virtual facilitation
Key traits of good virtual facilitators
How to separate the roles and responsibilities
Knowing your ‘dances’ in virtual facilitation
Self-assessment: How skilled are you as a virtual facilitator?
4 The Tech Setup (General)
Removing the entry barrier
Top tips for introducing new technology
Which platform(s) (software) to use?
How to choose a video conference platform
Why use a virtual whiteboard platform?
How to evaluate virtual whiteboard providers
Why use virtual polling tools?
How to evaluate polling tools
Advice for using virtual polling tools
Suggested setups for a facilitator's hardware
Think about your background
Your setup as a participant
Setting participants' expectations
5 Wrapping Up the Before Part
II: Before – Designing for Effect
6 Designing Virtual Meetings and Workshops with Engagement and Effect
The Design Star
The five Ps of the Design Star
How long does planning take?
The five Ps are interdependent
Aim for effect
What happens if you don't plan?
Note
7 Purpose
Define your purpose
Don't assume everyone knows the purpose
How specific do you need to be?
Define the success criteria for your session
Define your sub-purpose
Refining many purposes into one
8 Participants
Who should participate?
Contribution vs attendance
Less is more
Know who will be in the virtual space
Understanding your participants
9 Platform
Selecting a platform
Top tip: Use what you have and can already use
Questions to help you select the right platform
Always stipulate one person per device
Don't forget the physical
10 Process
Why mindset is important
How can you create the right mindset?
What kind of session serves my purpose?
Set your corner flags
Where are you in the decision house?
Examples of different processes
Examples of processes to encourage engagement
Design your process, then your slides
Design the before phase and follow-up too
11 Partners
What parts does the facilitator play?
Do other people need to change parts?
Do you need experts?
Do you need breakout room facilitators?
Invisible partners
How long does each part last?
12 Planning the Session
Using the Design Star in practice
Creating your agenda and playbook
Creating your playbook
How much time should you spend planning?
The importance of a clear playbook
Do you always need a playbook?
Factor in time zones
13 Wrapping Up the Before Part
III: During – Running a Good Virtual Meeting
14 Be On Top
Be on top of the process
Be ahead as well as on top
Revisit your playbook during the session
Do you need a second facilitator?
What if you can't have a co-facilitator?
Be on top of tech
Be on top of content
How to be on top of time
15 Engage the Participants
Know the attention span
Make your session relevant
The importance of effective questions
Tell people when they can ask questions
How to encourage your participants to open up
How to deal with ad-hoc questions
How to engage your participants in exercises during the session
Using micro-involvements
16 Manage the Energy
Reframe your mindset about what energy feels like
How to sense the energy in a session
Adjust the energy to match the session
Creating the right energy from the start
Using music in sessions
Think about your appearance
Be strategic, yet authentic
Use humour to own the energy
The importance of breaks
Using energisers
Note
17 Create Clarity
Create a shared idea of how you will work together
Use the agenda actively during the session
Be clear with your instructions
Remind people of the instructions
Be clear about how you take decisions and what they look like
18 Connect the Dots
Answer the ‘Why?’ question (a lot!)
End sessions on a high
Note
19 Wrapping Up the During Part
IV: After – Start Implementing
20 Feedback and Evaluation
How to gather feedback and evaluation
How to get the most from feedback
Giving feedback to the participants
How to share feedback with others
Note
21 Follow Up
Design for follow-up
What does a good follow-up look like?
When to follow up
Don't forget about the benefits of smaller touchpoints
22 Wrapping Up of Part IV
V: Deep Dives Into Specific Virtual Formats
23 Virtual (Recurring) Meetings
Before a recurring meeting
During a recurring meeting
24 Hybrid Meetings
Before a hybrid meeting
During the hybrid meeting
25 Virtual Workshops
Benefits of virtual workshops
Before a virtual workshop
During a virtual workshop
After a virtual workshop
Things to be aware of
26 Virtual Training
Before a virtual training session
During a virtual training session
After a virtual training session
What has the greatest effect on the transfer of training?
Notes
27 Virtual Large-Scale Events
Before a virtual large-scale event
During a virtual large-scale event
After a virtual large-scale event
28 The Final Word
We can all learn something new
Start small – continue to build your skills
About the Authors
About Implement
Acknowledgements
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Illustrations
Chapter 1
Figure 1.1 The Five Levels of Involvement
Figure 1.2 The Corner Flags model
Chapter 2
Figure 2.1 How people behave in virtual meetings
Figure 2.2 The four main barriers in virtual meetings
Chapter 3
Figure 3.1 Separating roles and responsibilities
Figure 3.2 Knowing your dances as facilitator
Chapter 4
Figure 4.1 The small setup
Figure 4.2 The medium setup
Figure 4.3 The large setup
Figure 4.4 Help your participants get ready
Chapter 6
Figure 6.1 The Design Star
Chapter 7
Figure 7.1 Always start with the purpose
Chapter 8
Figure 8.1 Who are the right people for the session?
Chapter 9
Figure 9.1 Consider the platform and the setting
Figure 9.2 Ensure overlap between capabilities and platform(s)
Chapter 10
Figure 10.1 Select and design the right process for the session
Figure 10.2 Processes to encourage engagement
Figure 10.3 Summary of some different ideas to foster involvement
Chapter 11
Figure 11.1 Partners for the session
Chapter 12
Figure 12.1 A sample agendaSource: Implement Consulting Group
Figure 12.2 Our template for the playbook
Figure 12.3 Example of playbook
Chapter 14
Figure 14.1
Chapter 15
Figure 15.1
Figure 15.2 The attention span during virtual sessions
Chapter 16
Figure 16.1
Chapter 17
Figure 17.1
Figure 17.2 Examples of ground rules
Figure 17.3 Give clear instructions to the participants
Figure 17.4 Taking participants through the whole process
Chapter 18
Figure 18.1
Chapter 20
Figure 20.1
Figure 20.2 Keep, stop, start
Figure 20.3 Example of a feedback model
Chapter 23
Figure 23.1 A simple action list
Chapter 26
Figure 26.1 A sample learning journey
Guide
Cover Page
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
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Virtual Facilitation
Create More Engagement and Impact
Henrik Horn Andersen
Iben Nelson
Kåre Ronex
This edition first published [2021]
© 2021 Implement Consulting Group
This work was produced in collaboration with Write Business Results Limited. For more information on Write Business Results’ business book, blog, and podcast services, please visit their website:
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Andersen, Henrik Horn, author. | Nelson, Iben, author. | Ronex, Kare, author.
Title: Virtual facilitation : create more engagement and impact / Henrik Horn Andersen, Iben Nelson, Kare Ronex.
Description: Chichester, West Sussex, United Kingdom : John Wiley & Sons, 2021. | Includes index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020041520 (print) | LCCN 2020041521 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119765318 (cloth) | ISBN 9781119770572 (adobe pdf) | ISBN 9781119770565 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Virtual reality in management. | Group facilitation. | Business meetings. | Virtual work teams. | Employees—Training of—Computer-assisted instruction.
Classification: LCC HD30.2122 .A53 2021 (print) | LCC HD30.2122 (ebook) | DDC 658/.0568--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020041520
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020041521
Cover Design: Wiley
Cover Image: Implement Consulting Group
Background: ©Eakachai Leesin/EyeEm/Getty Images
Foreword
In March 2020 London Business School, as many other organisations across the world, faced a severe challenge due to the Covid-19 pandemic. A large part of our business (executive education) stopped abruptly, as people were simply unwilling or unable to fly to London. The crisis required us to rethink many fundamental aspects of our business – our view on teaching and learning, on how we collaborate with others, on what exactly people value from a business education – and to do it extremely quickly.
Normally London Business School is a melting pot of bright people, joining MSc and MBA programmes, seeking a state-of-the-art education, and building networks with other like-minded people from all over the world. But in March, with the Covid-19 situation escalating across the world, it was clear that we couldn't deliver on that value proposition in the same way as before.
Our first priority was to ensure that our Masters degree students could continue learning, take the necessary exams, and graduate on the agreed timetable. Which of course meant moving all teaching online. At first, there was scepticism and resistance to this move, but we persevered and it quickly became clear that ‘classroom learning’ can be recreated quite effectively in Zoom, and sometimes even for the better. Student ratings and exam grades suggest that this wholesale shift to online teaching has been a success.
To be sure, I still have some reservations about online learning. One problem is lower levels of student engagement. My experience in the classroom is around 70% fully engaged and participating in the case study discussions, 20% disengaged (sitting at the back, probably on Facebook) and 10% absent. The comparable numbers for online classes is around 40% engaged, 30% disengaged, 30% absent (and hopefully watching the recording of the class later). So while there is still a decent level of learning achieved by everyone, I think the number who get full value out of the session is much lower. Another challenge is you need a different mindset and focus as a teacher, since you don't get the same quality of feedback from the students. In a classroom setting you often adapt ‘in the moment’ and you can speed up or slow down, depending on the body language and the questions. But teaching over Zoom you don't get that same quality of insight into what the students are thinking, so there is little scope for deviation.
These reservations aside, online teaching actually works pretty well, at least in terms of building cognitive understanding in the students. But the relational and behavioural parts of learning are much more challenging in a virtual setting – they require more planning and deliberate design, which this book clearly demonstrates and provides inspiration for.
If the teaching part had been the only challenge back in March it wouldn't have been so bad. But of course London Business School is much more than just an educational institution – we also see ourselves as a platform for developing and sharing new business insights on a global basis. So in thinking about ways to make the best of the challenging circumstances, we launched a free live webinar series, initially called ‘Leading Through a Pandemic’ through to May, and then shifting to ‘Beyond the Crisis’ from June onwards. In total we had 26 webinars, roughly two per week, on topics ranging from macro-economics through strategy to personal resilience. I hosted the series, and each webinar featured one or two faculty, applying their research insights to the challenges facing businesses in that period of lockdown. The reception was very positive – between 1,500 and 5,000 registered attendees for each webinar, and around 15,000 unique attendees in total. Some were LBS alumni and students, but many were executives who had never interacted with us before, so the PR benefits to the School were huge. To gain additional value out of these webinars, we then pulled them together with some additional pre-recorded materials, readings and assignments, to create an online course ‘Building Organisational Resilience’ which we made available for purchase even before lockdown was over.
What about the internal challenges of managing the business school during that time? As part of the leadership team, I was putting in long days with back-to-back Zoom calls, trying to tackle all the strategic and operational challenges of reinventing the business for this new, highly uncertain world. And we made our share of mistakes. For example, we were conducting online meetings with the various formal decision-making bodies in the School, and through the usual chains of command, but we did not spend enough time informally socialising our ideas with others outside of these groups. We weren't deliberately keeping people in the dark – but without the short corridor conversations or informal lunches, many people were becoming increasingly frustrated. After a few months we realised that we needed to act differently, and we put in place a series of open sessions for people to join if they could. We established a couple of advisory groups to get input into our redesign of our organisation. Slowly we got the organisation on the same page as the management team and learned a valuable lesson on change management and on virtual collaboration.
It was a rough ride, with a lot of uncertainty, lots of mistakes and learnings along the way but we are now in a much better position with the business and the quality of our offerings and the quality of our virtual sessions. However, I would have appreciated having the input from this book during the process. Luckily there is still a lot to learn for us and a lot of practical tools and ideas in the following pages that we have yet to use. Our ambition is to keep on learning and developing our service on this area in the years to come.
Enjoy reading!
—Julian Birkinshaw
Professor and Deputy Dean, London Business School
Introduction
How often have you been in a virtual meeting and felt as though it was all about one-way communication? Have you found yourself wondering why the person running the meeting couldn't have just sent you an email or a screen recording? Do you find yourself reaching for your phone or checking your emails so you can ‘multitask’? Do you make affirmative noises just so it looks as though you're listening? Do you wonder how engaged the other participants are? Our research shows that 60% of participants do other work-related tasks and 47% even have tried to go to the toilet during a virtual meeting!
If you can relate to this scenario you're certainly not alone. We've all been there – and not only in virtual meetings, although virtual meetings have now gained a new level of importance. The Covid-19 pandemic definitely accelerated the use of virtual technology within business. However, the trend towards virtual working had already emerged prior to 2020. In fact, its popularity has been rising for several years.
Firstly, the climate crisis has encouraged, and in some cases even forced, companies to evaluate their carbon footprint and explore more environmentally friendly and sustainable ways of doing business. It's clear that changing global business practices will be vital in helping fight the climate crisis. Turning to virtual sessions that require less travel and therefore generate less pollution, as well as bringing teams from around the world together, will be essential if we are to have a positive impact on the planet for future generations.
Secondly, we live in an increasingly globalised world. Collaborating across physical boundaries has never been more relevant. Businesses can have employees based all over the world, or work with partner organisations around the globe. Communicating and collaborating in a virtual environment has become more important than ever.
Thirdly, there are cost benefits to virtual working. Businesses can reduce the amount they spend on travel.
Finally, virtual working allows organisations to tap into expertise that may not otherwise be easily accessible to them.
Virtual working is all about speeding up processes and bringing the right people together at the right time. In this book we will zoom in on virtual facilitation as an important part of virtual work.
What is virtual facilitation?
In its purest form, facilitation is about helping a group perform better, whether that's helping them reach an outcome more quickly, more efficiently or even going further than they thought possible. We take this concept of facilitation, of improving the process, and bring it to the virtual world.
The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the shift to working in a virtual space. There's also pressure for businesses to be more efficient, which is adding to the need to work in virtual environments. But what we've noticed is that, while many businesses are embracing these virtual opportunities, many also lack the skills, knowledge or insight to get the most out of them. The sudden need to adapt working practices to virtual environments means that there has been a steep learning curve, and many are finding it difficult to realise the full potential of their virtual meetings.
We have heard people saying that they feel as though they're losing momentum in their business, that they're seeing employee engagement fall, and that there is a lack of energy within the company. Businesses are aware that there are problems, but they don't know how to address them effectively in this new, predominantly virtual world. On the other hand, we have also seen very effective meetings, high productivity while working from home and employees that value the flexibility of virtual meetings.
Throughout this book we will share our extensive knowledge on virtual facilitation, based on a wealth of practical experience that provides you with the tools we use ourselves: to ensure high-quality sessions, ideas and inspiration on how to get more out of your virtual meetings, workshops and training.
When you facilitate a meeting effectively, you'll see a number of benefits. Attendees will be actively engaged and contributing to the meeting or workshop, rather than just being ‘present’. People will be more motivated, they'll take ownership of the decisions made in the meeting and there will be a more positive energy, both in the meeting and beyond. All of these elements will have a positive impact in terms of what happens after the meeting.
For employers, this is an opportunity to create a real buzz in your organisation and to make employees feel valued. We all know that people leave jobs because they feel undervalued by their manager. If you're increasingly working in a virtual environment, you need to make sure that your employees know they're valued and are able to contribute in that virtual space.
This is about future-proofing your organisation. Businesses don't just need their employees to put the hours in. Efficiency isn't enough any longer. The winning formula that you need for future success will involve being efficient, but it will also require you to tap into the creativity, engagement and motivation of your employees.
The advantages of virtual facilitation
There are many advantages to virtual facilitation, which we'll explore in greater detail as we move through the book. They include:
The ability to bring the right people together.
The opportunity to introduce experts.
Making training more accessible.
Providing more frequent touchpoints.
Enabling more effective sessions.
Better data access during sessions.
Easier documentation of the process and outcomes.
More equal contributions from all participants.
Putting the human back into the digital world
We're not advocating for entirely digital workplaces. We understand that, for many people, going to work is as much about the social interaction with colleagues and clients as it is about doing a specific job. But there is no need to choose between the physical or the virtual. You can have both.
Our aim is to help people to have more meaningful interactions. We want to help businesses understand how virtual spaces can also be social, without making a meeting less efficient or productive. There are many benefits to operating in a virtual world, but there is still a place for physical meetings and events. Based on your knowledge of physical and virtual sessions you should decide when the situation calls for a physical or a virtual meeting. Our approach is about making sure that when we are together, we're together in a more meaningful way
Humans are social creatures who need to connect and build relationships on a personal level. In the following pages, we'll not only cover the positive business impact of a good virtual meeting, but also the positive people impact of a good virtual meeting.
Our aim is to share our knowledge and expertise to help you create a productive and engaging meeting culture at your organisation, where you take full advantage of the virtual space in your ongoing collaborations. We want to put a human element into the digital world.
Sharing the ‘How’
We want to use our knowledge, skills and understanding of virtual facilitation to help businesses of all sizes, and across all industries, to raise the quality of their virtual sessions. Our purpose is to help you and your teams to spend your time more wisely and create an even greater impact.
Through this book, we want to help you make sense of the virtual world. We're not just going to talk about the technical aspects of virtual facilitation – we're bringing our years of experience in human behaviour to combine humans with the technical possibilities that lie before us.
This book is a practical guide to facilitating effective and engaging virtual sessions – from practitioners to practitioners. From January to May 2020 in our company, Implement Consulting Group, we hosted 33,731 Teams sessions with internal or external participants, been part of 4,152 Zoom sessions either as facilitators or participants and hosted 161 Zoom Webinars with a total number of 62,634 people attending these Zoom meetings.
Based on our extensive experience facilitating small and large virtual events for companies across the globe, hosting webinars and training of more people in virtual facilitation this book reveals what really works. We'll share small and easy steps that you can take at every stage, helping you to change the world, one session at a time. Most of the solutions we present in this book are scalable. They work for sessions involving 5 people, 50 people and even 500 people.
With our practical tools you can have a positive impact on virtual sessions immediately, whether you're responsible for facilitating large or small virtual sessions. These are some of the questions you'll find answers to:
How do I plan virtual sessions with impact and engagement?
How do I engage people in a virtual session?
How can I get my message across and connect with many people in different places?
How can I use virtual facilitation to drive change at my organisation?
We want to open your eyes to what is possible with today's virtual technology and to show you where opportunities lie for your business. As we have said before, this book isn't just about what is possible, but about how you can get there. This book is designed to be one that you can dip in and out of as you need to, where you can find practical advice about facilitating virtual meetings, workshops and other events as well as tools that you can use to improve the quality of your virtual sessions immediately and create value for you and your business.
A blend of expertise
Henrik is one of the best facilitators in Denmark. He started his career conducting analysis and producing reports to inform organisational change. However, he quickly realised that strategic analysis alone isn't enough to deliver meaningful change. He started exploring how to engage organisations with the strategies he was developing, which resulted in him conducting a substantial number of workshops, and training others in facilitation. He has worked at Implement Consulting Group for 16 years and has also co-authored the book Facilitation – Create Results Through Involvement with Cecilie van Loon and Line Larsen, which was published in both Danish and English.
Iben is a learning expert. She specialises in the field of learning and facilitation, training internal consultants as well as clients. She has extensive experience within facilitation, designing and executing leadership training, workshops, and larger events, as well as a passion for helping professionals learn and grow. She enjoys the challenge of a steep learning curve and takes a practical approach to learning, whether she's working with MBA students, Implement consultants or corporate clients. She is currently exploring how new workspaces will look as the virtual and the physical environments are combined.
Kåre is a qualified school teacher with a Master's degree in Positive Psychology. For many years, his focus was on not only achieving the learning objectives he needed to with his students, but on ensuring that what he was teaching them stuck. How to make learning stick, how to spend time wisely and how to get the most out of time spent together are questions that he's spent years focusing on. His combined knowledge of technology, psychology and facilitation make his approach to virtual facilitation unique and led him to Implement Consulting Group.
Although we are all on different journeys, we share the belief that everyone can learn to host better meetings, if they understand the dynamics and have effective tools at their disposal. Our work at Implement Consulting Group is just that: implementing tools and techniques to have a positive impact and deliver meaningful change within an organisation.
What unites us across our various disciplines is that we have a passion for driving change, but we also bring a human perspective to our work. In this book, we'll share examples and case studies relating to everything from the supply chain and sales projects to digital and commercial transformations. We're sharing the knowledge that we have among our 900 consulting staff with you in this book.
For two years running, Implement Consulting Group has been named as having the best consultancy company culture in Europe. We have consistently outgrown the market and work with our global network of trainers and consultants to help businesses all over the world improve the quality of their virtual meetings, workshops and events.
In April and May 2020 alone, we hosted over 45 unique webinars and trained more than 5,000 people in virtual facilitation.
Diving into the digital world
We've broken the book up into five parts. In Part I we'll explore the core of virtual sessions and how to facilitate them.
Part II covers the preparation before your virtual session, including how to design and plan high-quality meetings. In Part III we explain what to do during a good virtual session, providing useful tools and techniques that you can introduce to keep everyone engaged. Part IV is all about what you do after your virtual session, including how you evaluate a session, collect feedback and follow up with participants.
In Part V, we'll delve into specific workshop and meeting formats to give you additional tools to use in certain scenarios, and practical advice to help you facilitate better meetings.
Throughout the book we'll provide you with examples to inspire you and show you how the tools and techniques we share can have a positive impact.
We have designed this book to be a guide that you can return to time and again. Don't expect to implement everything we discuss immediately. What we hope you'll do is to get inspired, introduce one or two techniques initially and, once you master those, return to the book to broaden your knowledge further and find new areas where you can develop your skills in facilitating virtual sessions.
Use our online platform to get materials and the newest inspiration
We have deliberately focused on general methods, tools and techniques for facilitating the human element of virtual sessions. We aren't offering a comprehensive insight into the available technology, because that would likely mean the book would be out of date before it was even published. Instead we have made an online platform for the book. You can find it here: www.implement.dk/virtual-facilitation.
We have already placed some items online to accompany this book, such as the templates we describe alongside some useful material for process methods. You'll find links throughout the book directing you to these relevant resources and materials. We have also provided extra content such as inspirational blog posts about the software we use. You can get in touch through the site, and we will continue to share news within the field of virtual facilitation and hope you'll use this resource actively.
Create a personal training program for you as a virtual facilitator
This book is designed to accompany your development. We want to provide practical advice that will have an impact and help you improve the quality of your meetings, both virtual and in real life.
There is a world of opportunities waiting for you. If you go into this space with an open mind, what we're about to share with you can have a significant impact and generate a great deal of positive energy. We want to open up the world to you and your organisation. There are many people working in a virtual environment at the moment, but very few have mastered it. We're here to help you take the right steps towards mastering virtual facilitation.
A very practical suggestion to help you grow and learn as a virtual facilitator is to take notes as you read through the book. Mark the things you think would benefit your sessions and note what and where. It could be on a piece of paper, using Post-it notes or with dog ears and a small note in the margin.
After you finish the book, your notes can help you to review the things that really inspired you or were specially useful for you. That way you have your own little virtual facilitation program, right at hand. Ready to train, test and learn from. Start with the most important thing, experiment, get feedback and learn to master it before you move on to the next thing.
Good luck reading, training and facilitating.
Happy reading!
IThe Core of Virtual Facilitation
In this first part of the book, we're going to dig into the basics of the good virtual session, whether it is a meeting, a workshop or training, explain what virtual facilitation is, and how it can result in a good virtual session. This is about cultivating the right mindset for your virtual sessions, and understanding the essentials – including how to set the scene for the session, what it means to go virtual, what a virtual facilitator actually is and preparing yourself with the right technological setup.
1An Introduction to Facilitating Sessions
Let's begin by defining what we mean when we talk about facilitation. The word itself comes from the Latin word facilis, which means to make something easier or to move freely. This is the first of several ways of looking at facilitation, which are all interconnected. As well as making things easier and free flowing, facilitation can be described as the process of channeling the energy and communication of a group working on a particular matter to deliver a better outcome than if they were working on their own. At its core, it's about helping groups to do better. A facilitator is a person doing the facilitation.
Facilitation is a way to create ownership and impact by involving participants at the right level. The aim is to ensure that, in each session, we move forward with whatever tasks we're discussing. Virtual facilitation is very much built upon traditional facilitation. Many of the tools you would use in a physical meeting still apply – you simply need to transfer them to a virtual environment.
In this chapter we'll cover several models, including:
The Five Levels of Involvement: When do you need to tell? When you need to sell? When do you need to test? When do you need to consult? When do you need to co-create?
The Corner Flags model: Once you know the context of your meeting and how you want to involve people, you need to be very specific and transparent about what you will and won't discuss. You're defining what is inside the corner flags and what is outside of them.
What is a good virtual meeting?
As we mentioned in the Introduction to the book, a good meeting is one where we are focused on the result and where we are involving participants at the right level. That means we're bringing in the participants that we need and starting with a firm purpose. Having a clear purpose is essential as this defines why you need to spend time on something and ensures that, during your meeting, you achieve it.
We believe a good meeting should also create ownership and involvement among the participants. If you need your participants to contribute to the creation of impact and solutions after the meeting, you want them to be engaged and to follow along and possibly even contribute in the future. A good meeting will move people in the direction that you want to go in and get them involved in the project or task.
Virtual interactions always need a facilitator
In a virtual space, it's even more important to have a facilitator than in a physical meeting. When participants aren't in the same physical space, they often hold back and it can be harder to get everyone to work together. You need someone who can make it easy to participate – someone who will pass the ‘ball', tell people when it's their turn to contribute and then bring the ‘ball' back and pass it to the next person. It's important to have a facilitator to prompt the participants to offer their opinions. A facilitator is essential to good meetings in the virtual space.
What happens when there is no facilitator?
How often have you finished a meeting or session and then heard phrases like:
‘It was so hard for us to settle on something concrete.'
‘It was really hard to reach the target.'
‘I'm not sure what we actually decided in the meeting.'
These, and similar phrases, are a strong sign that there was no facilitator in that session. That means these sessions aren't as effective or useful as they could be.
It's important to own the role of facilitator. Before every session you could ask the question: ‘Who will facilitate this session?' This helps to cultivate the mindset of having someone who owns that process.
What does your meeting culture look like?
Every business has a virtual meeting culture. This culture could be that they never make decisions in meetings but just log into a virtual space, discuss things and see what comes out of it. The culture can also be defined by the types of meetings you have. They might always be one-way communication from the organiser, uncontrolled group discussions, or involve jamming on a virtual whiteboard with no real follow-up or impact afterwards. However, by using the right kind of meetings at the right time, with a clear purpose and follow-ups to ensure impact and effect, this meeting culture can look very different.
In many large organisations, you could describe the meeting culture as one where people aren't engaged. People arrive late, they aren't prepared, no agenda is set or sent out in advance, and people don't use their camera.
For us, a good virtual meeting culture is one where the participants and facilitator are prepared for the meetings they go to, have thought about what will be discussed and why the session is taking place, with all participants actively involved in the meeting. Also it's about planning for before, during and after to ensure impact. And it's about having the technical requirements in place using video with good lighting and proper sound. Finally, it's about keeping people engaged to ensure ownership and action afterwards.
Don't wait for the entire culture at your organisation to change. You can start with your own sessions and make sure they are well run so that you're getting the most out of the meetings that you facilitate and attend. In terms of physical meetings, many organisations already have a settled meeting culture. However, this is different in the virtual space. This meeting culture is still emerging and has yet to be defined. This presents an opportunity for you to shape it into a valuable one, where you avoid the pitfalls and create good virtual meetings.
Why have meetings?
As a facilitator, or host, you should only have a meeting if there's something to discuss. As a participant, have you ever tried to decline a meeting because it didn't make sense for you? There should be a real reason to gather people, namely to create an impact or change. This impact and change should continue beyond the meeting. Our approach is very much about creating impact and change through ownership and involvement, in order to create understanding, acceptance and behavioural change to move an organisation in a certain direction. This approach means it is your job as a facilitator to make your meetings relevant for your participants. Sending an Outlook invitation with a link to the session isn't enough.
The difference between a meeting, a workshop and training
We're not only going to talk about facilitating virtual meetings in this book, but all kinds of virtual sessions. It's therefore important to understand the difference between a meeting, a workshop and a training session. As a broad term for all we will use the term ‘session'.
A meeting is often something that reoccurs. It might be a weekly departmental status meeting, for example, or a regular update meeting within your organisation. Meetings are often focused on knowledge sharing, planning or sharing the status of progress.
A workshop will usually be more interactive. You'll use workshops when you're at the start of a process, where you need more input from participants or where you're creating something new or generating ideas. They can be small (from five participants) to large (1,000 participants).
A training session is usually focused on building up the participants' knowledge from a trainer and giving them opportunities to apply it through exercises, as well as to receive feedback on their progress.
Of course, elements from meetings can be part of workshops or training, and vice versa. Most tools we'll explore later in the book can be applied in any virtual setting.
The Five Levels of Involvement
When we plan at a session, one starting point is how we want the participants to contribute (Figure 1.1). Do we need to involve our participants to a lesser or greater degree to reach our goal? This affects the participant’s ownership to the solution as well as the facilitator’s control over the content.
Telling is where you have greatest control over the content and the solution. As you climb that ladder, you as the facilitator have less control. But what you lose in control you gain in ownership of the solution among other people at your organisation. The higher the level of involvement in reaching a solution, the higher the level of ownership because people feel part of the solution.
Figure 1.1 The Five Levels of Involvement
When to use the different levels of involvement?
Tell: This would most commonly be applied in an information meeting. For example, if there is going to be a big change in your company and you want to tell your employees about it, you will inform them. Employees aren't going to be highly involved. You might ask a question at the end, but the main purpose is to share important information and typically that would be in a meeting format, rather than a workshop. You might have a telling element to a workshop where you set the scene and put the purpose in context, but this wouldn't comprise the majority of the workshop.
