How should you adapt your facilitation for remote sprints?

Full transcript

Intro

In these talks I answer questions that I hear come up over and over again with topics ranging from big themes around innovation and design thinking to more specific frameworks like design sprints and problem framing, remote workshops and facilitation especially in this day and age and then of course, the ground floor of all those topics, which is the practice of facilitation. This is episode number two where I'm gonna be answering the question, "How should you adapt your facilitation when running remote sprints and workshops?

Today’s Question

Okay so today's question, again, is "How should you adapt your facilitation techniques and methods when running sprints and other workshops remotely?"

So look, it's 2020, a lot has changed this year we know it now. How work happens, where it happens has changed a whole bunch. We've heard this over and over again there's been lots of shifts and people talking about how they've moved their work from in-offices to these remote setups.

I don't want to belabor those points or talk about specific tools and frameworks that you should be considering using, there's a lot of other videos and articles and content overall that cover those things. What I want to zero-in on are the thing that have changed for us as facilitators, right? So, actually what hasn't changed, are the things that we're responsible for.

As facilitators, we're still responsible whether we're in an office in a, in a physical brick and mortar space or on a Zoom call or a Google hangout, we're still responsible for managing the conversation and the time, the energy, the outcomes, the outputs, a lot of the organization behind that, that's still our job, to make sure we have the right people in the room. All that stuff still applies.

What has changed, is the manner in which we do it and some of the visual cues and feedback, feedback loops and other things that we rely upon so that we can do those jobs.

But all and all I think there's four major things that have shifted that we have to be really aware of and that's the energy and the mood of the people in the room with us, the size of the teams that we're leading when in person and remote, the engagement that we have with those people and the space that we're operating within, so let's take these one at a time.

So energy and mood can go on both ends of the spectrum there we can have teams that are really happy and motivated and excited, they're curious they're totally leaning into the conversation and the process, the things that you're guiding them through and just one another and you can see it, you can feel it, you can walk around the room, you can see people smiling and deeply engaged in conversation.

And when you're remote, there's something, even with how the microphones on the tools that we use work, there's this, sort of, I'm sure there's a term for it I don't know what it is, but you can hear sort of like one person at a time. And that sort of creates this space between each person, this barrier between each person's voice and ideas. And so the conversation isn't fluid and you feel that.

So when people are laughing and smiling, you mostly hear yourself in the room that you're in laughing and smiling, you don't hear other people.

You certainly don't feel another person. No one's leaning on you laughing. You don't see the person across the room who might have tears in their eyes that they're laughing so hard. You have to actually peer and look at your screen to see the person smiling and engaged.

So that becomes harder and you don't have that feedback. The highs of your workshop might not be as high as an in-person workshop. And then what about the lows.

In this picture that you're seeing, what do you see? What I know, because I was there, what I know is happening is that half of these people are really struggling with the point in the conversation. Because one person was a pain-in-the-ass and pushed a few people out of the conversation.

And so people are feeling stressed and the woman at the board decided to take a stand and try to reunite the group and I stepped back and allowed that to happen because I could see it happening and I could see that this woman, really brave, wanting to take charge and wanting to rally the team to come back together.

And so because I knew that and could sense it I could step back, I didn't have to come in and stop and make sure that the team was still aligned. But when it's remote, it's harder to feel and harder to sense.

In this example, one of the people on this call was kind of cutting the legs out from the rest of the group and so people started to check out of the conversation and it took a lot more work and a lot more check-ins for me to rebuild that trust and say, "What's happening for you? How can I support you? What don't you want to see happen over and over again?" So much more work for me as the facilitator and harder for the team to rebound from because they can't just go for drinks and happy hour after lunch they have to just kind of like, trudge through the conversation, so harder.

Let's move on to #2 team size. So I've actually done a complete 180 on this.

I used to think that in-person should be small and intimate because there's, first of all there's a physical limitation for the number of people you can stuff into a room and still have them feel invited and creative and just energized. And then, I would totally limit the amount of people in my workshops and sessions and I still think that's really important, there should be a baseline number of people that you allow into the conversation.

And when it came to virtual workshops I thought well there's no physical limitation, right? Zoom lets me have 100 people, 200 people, however many I want so why even limit it? And what I learned is because of, remember I talked about sort of those physical or volume barriers between people as they're talking, because of all that because of the interruptions and flow, I've actually, the 180 I've done is that my virtual sessions have gotten even smaller than my in-person because the breakout rooms are clunkier than just pushing people into corners and having them talk.

The pauses in between conversations are more awkward and tougher to manage and so it requires a lot more facilitation and energy and attention from me the bigger the team size gets so really paying attention and really being very specific and very focused on keeping that team size even smaller when remote.

#3 was engagement, what is this team doing right now.

I can go over somebody's shoulder, I can go over Mark's shoulder right here and I can make sure that he's not on his phone or on Google or checking his inbox. I can be that guy, I can be that facilitator. Or I can just kind of step back and just know that the team is working on what they need to be working on and that nobody needs a break, nobody is starving or rummaging through the snacks on the table because I haven't taken a break for an hour and a half.

I can see that happening if I need to pause and get people re-engaged.

But when it's remote, I don't know what this team is doing. I don't know that they're doing the activity and having the conversations within themselves or among it each other that they should be having so I have to again spend more time checking in with them, do more energizers, break things up more and more, break full days down into half days be really intentional and really thoughtful about how a team remains engaged for the conversation because as soon as the engagement drops off then basically the day is done and so just really spending a lot more time checking in with folks and and keeping the energy up requires a lot more attention as the facilitator and so more ice breakers more check-ins more prompts more one-on-one chats all those things are really important.

And then finally #4 was space so in in-person I'm an insane person I line the whole room up to be perfectly organized, all my pens angled in the same direction so I really go to that crazy nth degree to make sure that the space looks perfect and beautiful because when I set people in motion I just want the space to be free and flowing I want people to know where they're going, if they're in the wrong space I can kind of redirect them quite easily, the more clean and organized the space then I can redirect them, good light, good energy I can sense that and I can get a feel for it.

When we're in these virtual sessions, I can still make the space look organized and beautiful but it's much harder for me to know that people are in the right part of the room having the right conversations and redirecting them to make sure that they get back on track and so making things more spread out in our virtual sessions is super important.

So again this isn't really so much about the tools whether you're using MURAL or MURO it doesn't matter it's really how you design, intentionally design the space that that conversation is happening in the tools to make sure that people understand it, they get it and that they're able to get through that conversation.

So net net what's changed is nothing when it comes to who you are as a facilitator and the job that you have but what's changed in terms of how you facilitate is everything it's just a lot more energy a lot more prep and involvement a lot more check-ins a lot more intentional one-on-ones with people just to make sure that they're still engaged that they get the conversation, that they know what's happening and that they're ready to keep moving forward in the conversation.

That's it for episode #2, in a couple weeks from now I'll do episode #3 and I hope you can make it for that one, alright, see ya then, bye

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