Starting 2018, I had the opportunity to coach agile teams, scrum masters and product owners fully remotely.
It was an enriching opportunity to work with teams from different cultures, geographical locations, time zones and just adapted my coaching to be able to deliver value not only in person but remotely as well.
After coaching remotely, I also adapted the agile trainings I used to provide onsite to be able to provide the same trainings with the same quality fully remotely.
Now, the workplace is hybrid, and some coaches still find themselves coaching teams or individuals remotely all the time or part of the time and more and more trainings are provided online.
I computed the below check list in my initial article written in 2020 and then updated it today April 9, 2024 with the experience I gained both coaching and training teams online fully remotely.
- Prepare your material or content in a visually shareable way.
- Make sure to have an alternation of knowledge sharing and activity sessions.
- Make sure a remote session is not too long, I used to day 2 hours maximum, now i would go for 90 minutes.
- Take into consideration the number of attendees and prepare interactive activities accordingly. The bigger number of attendees the more challenging the session will be.
- Test the remote tools you will be using. Yes, test them, try all what you expect to do during the session beforehand specially when using new technology.
- A co-facilitator might be needed. A co-facilitator is really helpful during remote sessions. If you are two or more to facilitate a remote session make sure to agree on your respective roles as part of the preparation.
- Prepare a plan B, if a remote tool didn't work, think about having an alternative when possible.
- Finally decide if the session will be fully remotely or fully onsite, based on experience hybrid session can work, and i tried them (having people onsite and people remote) yet the attendees online will not get the best experience so I started having either a full remote session session where all the attendees are online or a full onsite session were everybody is onsite.
- Make sure all attendees have decent audio and visual experience
- When introducing a new tool for example a new white board, make sure to give the attendees few minutes to learn how to use that tool. Once in a training for agile teams I asked them to use Miro without and introductory exercise to make them familiar it, I thought they will find it easy to use, but discovered that it was challenging for them and caused frustration. since then I make sure the attendees are familiar with the tools I am going to use before the session.
- Agree on having video activated for everybody or video turned off for everybody.
- Make sure all participants are engaged and can actively participating in the session.
- End your session by a return on experience from the attendees let them assess the session and give you feedback
- Create a shared space between you and the team or individual you are coaching to keep the discussed information, what was done and what is planned for the next session
- Send a follow up email to attendees
- Act on the feedback you got and improve for the next session
- Coaching, Collaboration or any work with people need to have some solid foundation, Trust, Empathy and Respect are 3 important values that we need to keep when working remotely
- Building trust through the screen is key specially when you have a long term work to achieve remotely with a team.
- If you are a coach, you can feel the room, if you are a remote coach you need to feel the virtual room and create empathy virtually both with the teams and the individuals you are collaborating with.
- Finally respect, as long as you respect human being at the other side of the screen you can build a respectful environment that enable everybody to thrive in a virtual environment.
I hope this article is helpful. Have fruitful remote coaching, remote facilitation and remote work.
Note: I wrote initially this article in 2020 and I am updating it today April 9, 2024 with more tips based on the experience I have gained since then.
