Virtual facilitation 101
This article is intended for those that have some experience with facilitation of onsite workshops or meetings.
I am an Experience Designer with a background in communication and journalism, so facilitation is one of my favorite things to do. I’ve been working remotely for the last four years of my career, so I had to adapt my facilitation skills to the virtual environment even before the pandemic broke.
Even though there are some shared things between onsite vs virtual facilitation, there are certain elements that one needs to pay extra attention to, but don’t worry… almost anything and everything can be transformed into a virtual session.
Facilitating virtually means that you have to watch out for non-verbal communication and energy levels via your participant’s camera transmissions or by paying extra attention to hearing their voices, and being on the lookout for those indicators. Therefore, you need to train to detect those gestures that would be easier to spot when in person, rather than through a video conference call.
Tools
Before we begin talking about how to facilitate virtually, I would like to acknowledge that you will need access to certain tools . First you need a “virtual room”, currently there’s a variety of videoconference software available: Zoom, Webex, Teams, Meet, Jitsi. Use whatever your company can provide, and if you have access to premium features even better. For most of my sessions I use Zoom and/or Webex. You’ll also need a computer with internet connection and a camera/microphone.
Pro-tip: I always like to send instructional videos and informational links about the tools needed for the workshop in advance so that people can have time to get accustomed to them, especially for those workshops with non-tech savvy people.
Cover the basics
I’ve read a while back that to ensure a workable relationship with peers, it’s key to manage other people’s anxiety. This can be solved by just addressing key pieces of information at the beginning of the meeting and helps promote a sense of ease and comfort. Once you start your session, go over the 5 whys: What, where, when, who and why. Being able to briefly explain what the meeting is about, who is involved, the schedule, and what’s the purpose for the meeting is key for gaining people’s engagement.
Pro-tip: Make sure you explain your meeting’s structure too, if you are going to have people participate or will require a certain homework, anticipate it.
Ground rules
After the introduction, I like to cover what I call “meeting agreements” to make sure everyone adheres to the meeting culture:
- Be present: This seems obvious but it’s not, a lot of people nowadays multitask, and workshops are not one for doing that.
- Avoid devices & notifications: To get the most out of the session, I usually recommend people remove any distractions from their working environment and disable any notifications.
- Be open and honest and turn on your listening skills.
- Respect others, everyone has an equal voice.
Accountability
I always start by turning my camera on, and trying to politely enforce camera sharing for the rest of the attendees. It’s important to explain to the participants why the camera is important. I found that explaining our thought process to participants was key to them engaging in turning their cameras. You can share that you need to see their faces to be able to facilitate the session better, and that they can turn off their camera if they need to step out to the bathroom or to look for a beverage. You can also make sure people are comfortable about this by sending them a message in advance to be “camera ready”.
Pro-tip: If you have to screen-share the whiteboard, and you have access to a big monitor or dual monitors setup, have the faces of people on the side to whatever you are sharing so that you can pay close attention to people’s faces. Watch out for eye rolling, or smiles, or even people not paying attention. It’s always easy to spot that person that’s multitasking when they are sharing their camera.
Online Whiteboard
Online workshops require a virtual space to share the information. That’s where tools like Miro or Mural take place. Make sure you setup and block everything in your board so that people only have to be moving what needs to be moved. Also, try and include some instructions in your board so that people can follow both your explanation and read those in case they forget.
Make sure everyone is already onboarded towards using this sites before the session. For those workshops where I know non-tech saavy people will participate, I like to create some fun “icebreakers” that incorporate the learning aspect for using the boards inside them. This way we make sure people understand how to do the basics like: creating a post it, editing text, creating emojis.
Pro-tip: If you are going to have a week-long workshop, we do recommend you have a separate meeting to cover the technology aspect. Having a quick 30’ meeting to train people on the tool will help ensure that when your actual workshop begins, everyone is already aware about how to use everything.
Also, it’s always a best practice to designate a copilot facilitator for the workshop to help on the side if any participant experiences any technical issues or to bring to front elements within the board. This way you don’t have to interrupt the session and lose momentum.
Screen sharing tips
- No moving up down, opening and closing different tabs. This will only cause people to stop paying attention and might also produce some motion sickness.
- If your screen sharing software has a “pause” feature, press it and move around in your whiteboard and then unpause.
- Mute all your notifications, I know this seems obvious, but it’s always distracting to see and hear. Also it looks somewhat unprofessional to be having a chat bubble popping up in the top corner of your screen while you are presenting.
Schedule
It might seem obvious, but when working with remote teams, make sure you are finding time slots that accommodate each countries’ time zones. For trying to work with USA’s Central time, East Coast and Spain’s timezone, I had to divide some long sessions into shorter 3–4 hour sessions that would work fine for all parties involved. For managing West vs East coast time difference, we reduced 1 hour day workshops to 5 hour sessions that would also fit both.
Also, think about how different onsite vs online exercises might be, and that an exercise that in person might last 5 hours needs to be condensed in a 3 hour session when translating it to the virtual environment.
I know there’s controversy on this topic, but I always recommend that if you have a workshop, everyone should share the same space equally. This means, not mixing onsite and virtual people in the same meeting. This always ends up in some getting distracted, or the people that are onsite talking to each other away from the microphone and making it hard for the rest in the call to engage. Before the pandemic broke, when we had to run a design sprint or a long workshop for a whole week and we had half of the team onsite and half scattered around the world, we determined that each person should stay at home or in a personal office space so that each person could participate equally.
Towards inclusivity
I think I could (and should) write a stand-alone article about how to run inclusive meetings, but in the spirit of just covering our basis I can mention that it’s important to make a habit of starting meetings by introducing yourself and sharing your pronouns to set as an example. This will open up the virtual floor for people to say their names and pronouns which will help everyone make sure they are respecting each other’s identities.
Another aspect that helps is making sure the language you speak is really understood by others. This means, try not to use idioms, or any language that divides and excludes. Not everyone is familiar with popular quotes, and nothing is self-evident to be honest, especially when working with international and multicultural teams. What might seem obvious to some, might be completely foreign to others.
Pro-tip: If you must use a buzzword, a phrase in a different language or a popular phrase, make sure you explain the meaning or add a translation so that everyone can understand it.
Bonus-tip: As a personal note, since this is one of my favorite topics to study, I would even say that you could try and be conscious about how you can make someone feel unseen with the use of words. Just like the UN suggests in their Guide towards gender inclusive language, people should “avoid gender-biased expressions or expressions that reinforce gender stereotypes”.
For example, if you are addressing a group made up of different genders but you only refer to them as “Guys”, you will probably make several people uncomfortable. This might also happen for instance if you have a group composed of people from different countries and you assume everyone is familiar with USA’s TV culture.
I know that some people might not think this is important enough, but language and the way in which we communicate is crucial. It’s one of the tools that build our reality, and therefore we should be aiming at reducing assumptions and ensuring everyone understands. This requires us to analyze each time we speak what we say and why we are saying it.
Make it fun
Last but not least, depending on the duration for the session, try and include fun icebreakers, or energiser exercises to break the seriousness of the meeting. Zoom fatigue is real, and people will get really exhausted if you conduct a 4 hours session without engaging with them. If you have been really concentrating on an exercise, ask everyone to stretch a little as well, or you can do some guided stretching exercises too with music, or even do a fun game to wake people up after lunch break.
I also, always like to do “Energy-check-ins” and ask around how everyone is doing or have them engage in the whiteboard by adding emojis or by using signs. This is crucial for you to know if you should have a break sooner than expected. Nowadays there are múltiple tools to do this, even Zoom and Webex have added emoji gestures into their software to ask live what’s the mood during the session.
Pro-tip: I always try and have an energy icebreaker with emojis on the board, it’s a quicker way to gain insight on how everyone is doing.
One of my favorite icebreakers for the beginning of the session are: Add a meme that describes your week, add the last movie/tv show you’ve binged, or something like: “If you could have any superpower, which one would it be?”.
Thanks for reading! Hope you learned something new. Have any questions on how to facilitate? Let me know ✨
