Online AND intimate connection? Yes, that’s possible

Online events can achieve similar and sometimes even better results than in-person meetings. How we achieve those results is different. Part of this change is letting go of the expectation that intimacy will feel the same.

This article explores two ways to deepen engagement: Improving essential skills, namely listening and leadership skills, and rethinking the way the events are designed.

We can combine High Tech AND High Touch

I have worked with a lot of consultants, trainers, and facilitators in the last 3 months. Their common challenge is to transfer their presence, in-person way of working into an online format.

Many of them had not taken that step before Covid-19, because of a persistent belief. That working online means abandoning intimacy and going deep with their clients.

It is true that social interaction is different. But when we rethink how we create intimacy, trust, and connection we can get similar results. I have seen many examples over the last 15 years of this. People can feel safe to be vulnerable and have deep personal interactions online.

Radical Inclusion is a consulting company, which I helped found over 10 years ago. We have been 100% remote from the start. I have not seen the other 2 managing partners in the flesh for almost 3 years, one of them for even longer. And yet, I call them my friends. We do know what is going on in each other’s life and business beyond Radical Inclusion and we confide in each other when we have challenges.

Our training courses run over 5 to 8 weeks. Many of our participants give us the feedback that they miss the group and the interaction after the course is over. They did not realize how close they had gotten to the others in the group. This is true for open training groups, who did not know each other before. In groups that did know each other, participants are often surprised to learn something new about their colleagues or friends.

We have done interventions and one-off sessions during this crisis as well as before. In these, participants have opened up and started resolving some deep-seated tensions or conflicts they had.

How to create deeply-engaging events full of intimacy and trust?

In online environments, it is easier to focus on tasks than on relationships. We always have to balance the demands of our local context and of the event reality. A lack of technical skills and knowledge and complex processes can overwhelm participants.

These factors undermine social closeness, which is essential to build trust and foster safety and openness.

There are 2 areas we can work on to create more social closeness: Skills and Design.

Skills: Listening, Leadership, and Posture

We need to learn new listening skills

A key ability we can always improve is our listening skills. Online we cannot see body language, posture, and mimics. Instead, we can fall back on things like chat messages and being more purposeful and clearer in the questions we ask.

Another tool we have at our disposal is to train our ability to sense the other through our hearts. We do not use this ability much in in-person settings, especially in a business context.

We can train this ability with an exercise from MIT’s uLab called Mirroring. It teaches us to listen for images and metaphors, for feelings, and for gestures that arise in us as we listen to someone else talking.

Finally, practicing Non-Violent Communication is great training to separate facts, feelings, and interpretations. It also helps us better understand our own needs. This enables us to see the world from the perspective of others. And to be more intentional in our own communication.

We need to find the right balance between structure and autonomy

Online tools create transparency and stimulate self-governance. It is easy to delegate all responsibility for the process and outcomes of a meeting to the participants. After all, “the tools allow them to do it all by themselves”.

But often participants face technical problems (connectivity but also lacking tool-use skills). What's more, the different possibilities present in the virtual environment may be overwhelming:

• Which communication channel should I choose for what?
• How can I use the tools in the best way? Or how to get more comfortable with the tools?
• How do I filter through the noise to find what is really important in a discussion?

Besides, in large bureaucratic organizations, we find employees, who lack the skills, knowledge, and willingness to assume a stronger leadership role required for self-governance.

For facilitators, this means to strengthen and deepen their own leadership skills. We need to learn when to give structure or direct support, and when we can foster autonomy and rely on the self-organization of participants.

Your inner posture is essential

The key to creating and holding safe space is the same as in an in-person event. It has to do with the inner posture or stance of the facilitator or trainer. Can you be present, open, appreciative, and vulnerable?

Improving our listening and leadership skills, we also become more and more present with our participants. This is the basis for integrating high-touch and high tech into a great online event.

We have to change the way to design interaction.

In a 3-day in-person event, we can afford to spend 3 or 4 hours to create a joint space and a safe atmosphere and to connect participants with one another. Experienced facilitators can go deep after creating such an atmosphere and hold that space for the rest of the event.

In most online workshops, we have 2-3 hours per session. Even in workshops designed to last a full day or more, we compete with the local context of each participant all the time.

Their kids or spouse may interrupt. They get email or phone notifications. We even have to reconcile differences in biorhythms: someone in India might be hungry wanting to eat dinner or getting tired. The North American participants, on the other hand, have just had breakfast and are full of energy.

What's more, comfort levels and skills to use tools can be very different.  This can make it a boring event for some and a highly challenging one for other participants.

Most online event organizers react to these challenges by restricting interaction. They relegate participants to passive listeners, who are only allowed to interact through chat.

There is another way. You can organize the work through a lot of small group interaction. This reduces technical challenges and lowers the bar for people to connect and meaningfully engage with one another. When small group work is done right, it creates intimacy and helps people connect. It also activates participants turning them into protagonists instead of passive listeners.

Online intimacy feels differently

We can achieve similar, sometimes even better results in online events, but how we achieve those results is different. We also need to let go of the expectation that intimacy in an online environment will feel the same as in person.

In this article, I shared two paths to deepen engagement in online formats. Improving your listening and leadership skills and working on your posture, and rethinking the design of your workshop or event.

What has worked for you to create successful online events? What skills do you use in online workshops that you have not used in in-person contexts?