Facilitating hybrid team setups

Full transcript

Intro

Jim: Our concern is, okay, so then how are people gonna collaborate in this new world? But it's not gonna be a, we made through the pandemic, let's just go back to the office and everything returns the same. That there's gonna be a shift that people have to deal with.

Jay: In 2016, remote collaboration was barely a topic for me and the rest of the working world. Then in 2017, remote suddenly became a topic I was greatly interested in, because of a project that I was asked to lead where the stakeholders would be remote and distributed. Still it was barely a topic worth mentioning to the rest of the working world.

Then enter 2020, and remote was now on everybody's minds. It jumped to the front of the line in terms of problems to be solved. But now in 2021, as vaccines roll out and we start to think about the end of the pandemic, we're also thinking about the return to work and what's gonna be different and new, including how we collaborate together.

Over my journey of learning and practicing remote facilitation techniques, I've met Jim Kalbach and some of the folks inside of MURAL, and always appreciated the insights that Jim and team have shared and expressed to help people like myself and the rest of the workforce plan for changing work environments. Today we're lucky to have Jim Kalbach, who is the Chief Evangelist at MURAL, join Facilitators Q&A, where he's gonna help us unpack how facilitation will change when we're working in hybrid setups, that is mixed, in-person, and remote.

Today’s question

Jay: A few years ago when you and I met at Google, actually, I remember us sitting and having lunch one day and you were asking about how I facilitate some of the things I do when not everyone is in the same room. And I was like, "Yeah, that's kind of important, but most of the time the groups that I'm with are together." And then, sure enough, I think a few months later I reached out to you because I was working with Rosetta Stone and their stakeholders were gonna be in different parts of the country, and you gave me a license to MURAL, and I started kind of like working through it, and I ran the session and it was great, and I had all these aha moments that went off for me. And I was like, "That was good," and I was curious to do more of it. And then over the next few years I had more opportunities to do that. And then COVID hit. And then that became all of the opportunities that I was doing, of course.

But now I'm starting to see that friends are going back into the office. So I'm curious what, because you're, you know, at MURAL and you're seeing all these trends and all these companies are shifting, what are you seeing in terms of trends of people going back in to work?

Jim: Yeah, we are starting to hear a lot of our customers they're asking us directly and, you know, of course there's articles out there that, you know, talk about what is going to be the new normal for an office, for office collaboration, you know, post vaccine and then even long-term, you know, post pandemic. Our concern is, okay so then, how are people gonna collaborate in this new world? But it's not gonna be a, we made through the pandemic, let's just go back to the office and everything returns to the same. That there's gonna be a shift that people have to deal with.

Jay: Yeah, so like, you know, in the reverse scenario, when I was thinking about most of the people being in the office and maybe me being remote.

Jim: Right.

Jay: Because they don't want to pay me to fly to wherever they were, or maybe two people that couldn't be there. My golden rule all the time was, we're either all together or we're all separate, but we're never gonna mix the two.

Jim: Okay, yes.

Jay: So it sounds like the world that you're starting to paint here is that we're gonna be hybrid and we've got to figure this out.

Jim: I think a hybrid is kind of a buzz word for what workplace collaboration is gonna look like in the near future and then probably for years, you know, years and even after that as well, too. I think when we go back to the office, it's going to be, the balance is going to be even more on the remote side. So you're going to have a few people in the office, but actually most people are gonna be dialed in.

And the hybrid situation brings challenges with it, inherent challenges with it. It's basically around an imbalance of interaction because the people who are co-located sitting there face to face in a room, they can talk at a quicker pace. Turn-taking is completely different. You can see somebody raising their hand or taking a breath and you can have a pace of a conversation that outpaces what the remote folks can do, right? So what you end up having is a here-and-a-there situation. There's a conversation here, you know, on location, and there's other people who are there, right? And they struggle to get into the conversation.

And maybe you've experienced this in your career, Jay, too, where, you know you're in an hour-long meeting and the remote person either doesn't say anything, or at the very end, they go, "Hey, before we hang up, Jay, did you have anything to say?" It's like, "Yeah, an hour ago I had something."

But I think several things are gonna happen. One is there's going to be a heightened awareness of the remote condition. And you're going to start seeing a different pattern in behavior, instead of saying, "Hey, are there any questions in the room," it's going to be, "Hey, are there any questions? Let's start with the people online," right? So you're going to have this kind of reversal of priority of the voices, or at least a better balance of the voices.

Our rule of thumb is, if one person is remote everybody has to think like they're remote. Even if they are sitting face-to-face in the office, you have to think, "Oh, I'm working with a remote team." 'Cause you are. You're working with a distributed team. You just happen to be sitting face-to-face with your colleagues. And what that means is, everybody has to have their own device, because guess what? If you turn to a whiteboard and draw something, you just locked everybody who's remote out of that information, right? So it's gonna have to be digital.

You're gonna have to think about turn-taking, you're gonna have to think about collecting input. You're gonna have to think about how you do that in, "Okay, I'm sitting here face to face with you, Jay, but half of the other people are on the call. How can we get everybody's idea?" So facilitation is gonna change, not just technology. It's also how you think about facilitating, is going to change.

Jay: So if these are all the challenges that we're starting to see as groups, but also in particular as the facilitator, whose job it is to get everyone in the room and have the good conversation. What do you think are the most important things for them to pay attention to as we move back into this hybrid setup?

Jim: A kind of principle that we'd like to talk about is thinking and acting digital, what we call "digital first." And what that means is planning your collaboration with a digital set of tools that you know will scale up or down in terms of, you know, size of group, but also the situation, the shape of the team. If you're all together, great. If you're all remote, great. If you're hybrid, great, you can still work across those, right? And if you're thinking digitally first, you're kind of already thinking about not only how am I going to get everybody to see the same thing and contribute in this same level, but what's going to happen with that content with the output of my collaboration, what's going to happen with it afterwards? And if you make that part of your inputs, your plans, then you're going to be thinking digital first.

Jay: Yeah, any last tips about the facilitator? I know that the world has been shifting more digital, but any last tips that you can give the facilitator whose company is still kind of like a little bit of a laggard with thinking digitally first? What can they do to prompt that?

Jim: I think, you know, build in some rituals. Not only reinforce, you know, digital first, but also reinforce the behaviors and the facilitation approach that you need to take. One of them, you know, I just mentioned it. I think one of them is, everybody has their own device, right? Because if you're trying to collaborate with folks and some are in the room and some are remote you're going to need to be on par with chat or with communicating or sending files or whatever it might be.

I think another big one is turn-taking and doing a roll call-type of a conversation that when you put out a question or you want to collect feedback, make sure you cycle through everybody on the call, regardless of where they are. They might be on an airplane on their cell phone, they might be at home, they might be sitting right next to you, but you need to you need to think about turn-taking in a way that's very inclusive. Looking at the name of participants or doing the popcorning method, which I think is really great for building rapport as well, too, where the last person that goes, picks the next person. 'Cause then you've got to pay attention to who's there and also who just went and who didn't go, right? Those kinds of turn-taking mechanisms.

Jay: It also makes your job as a facilitator a little bit easier, because you don't have to call on people.

Jim: Exactly, right, yeah.

Jay: Keep them on their toes to be paying attention.

Jim: Yeah, and the other thing too is about popcorning, is it breaks those silences. One thing that, you know, on a remote call, particularly if it's all remote, when a facilitator says, "Does anybody have any questions?" What happens when a facilitator says, "Does anybody have any questions?" Nobody raises their hand, and that's because when you're remote, it's hard to jump. You don't know who's, "Wait, am I talking first?" So there's always this super, super awkward moment when you just toss out a question like that and you have remote folks. So you need to just account for that, and say, "Jay, I'm going to pick you and you get to pick the next person," right? 'Cause then the rhythm, you know, you set up the rhythm and the contribution and things like that are there You know it's little rituals like that will help you build the behaviors that you need.

Jay: Yeah, these are great, Jim. I mean, like, I know that we've been through a lot of change over the last year or so, and it's probably going to be all so awkward and different going back into some kind of new shape and formation. So, like, these tips are super helpful. I think they're going to become even more relevant as the workforce continues to shift. So I appreciate your time and all your insights.

Jim: Yeah, well thanks for having me, I hope it was helpful.

Jay: Yeah, thanks Jim.

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