Remote Training & Facilitation

"The first thing we need to get out of our heads is that remote training and facilitation is a poor distant cousin of the face-to-face, on-site route"

A couple of weeks ago, I heard a seasoned trainer say this about online training: "....e-learning and online training is only for companies that want to tick a box..." Subsequent to this, I was tuned in to a live interview on LinkedIn about change strategies for trainers in the circumstances of Covid-19. The interviewee's advice to trainers was this: "....I wouldn't advise converting your programs or material to online or e-learning because when the lock-down is lifted and things go back to normal, your investment will become redundant...."

I think both of the above reactions were borne out a feeling of being overwhelmed by impending change. Speaking to a client who heads a large global MNC based in Bangkok, he shared how they experienced a successful, remote global conference for the first time. This in turn, has led their Board to question the need for frequent (and expensive) executive travel. Conversations in a similar vein will be taking place the world over. Lock-down or not, business, as we know it now, is going to change forever. So too, with online training.

I remember my first experience with facilitating a team development program around trust with a regional marketing team based in several countries. It was daunting. Not just the technology, but the wealth of options made it all feel overwhelming. On-site, this would have probably been run over 2 days. Facilitated online, it was run over 4 two hour sessions. The first session was "okay". My co-facilitator and I still leaned a lot on over-preparing our material on slides. The second session was better because we engaged with the participants individually BEFORE the session to preempt their roles and prepare them with relevant material. We also gave them a heads-up of cues to contribute a point of view. We facilitated the third session by writing a hypothetical, humourous case study about trust depicting the participants themselves as the characters. You can imagine the engagement that this generated! Again, this was sent on before the session with roles and responsibilities for sharing assigned before-hand. By the fourth session, we were experimenting with diagnostic tools (and pets!) to create engagement.

That forced first experience was probably the 'push' that we needed. With the same client, now, their preferred mode of facilitation with us is remote. For trainers and facilitators who feel daunted by these changes, I have some lessons to share from this and our subsequent experiences:

1. Preparation: a lot more time should be spent engaging with participants BEFORE any remote session. It makes a significant difference doing this because online, learning truly become a shared responsibility between facilitator and participants
2. Facilitate: in remote training, your facilitation skills become more valuable than your ability to present alone. The less you speak as a facilitator in an online setting, the more successful the session tends to be
3. Use activities and diagnostic tools: this is probably the part that most trainers struggle with. There are a variety of games and activities that lend themselves to remote facilitation. Use a little bit of imagination! A simple exercise would be: 'go into your kitchen and come back with a kitchen tool that represents who you are. Share with us why you chose it.' I have also found the use of diagnostic tools with a facilitated debrief to be particularly effective in keeping participants engaged
4. Less is more: plan your remote sessions for no more than 2 hours per session (shorter, more frequent sessions probably work better in on-site, btw). Be absolutely ruthless in cutting the number of slides that you use. The rule of thumb is that in remote sessions, you should, as a facilitator, speak less and ask insightful questions
5. Change how you view remote facilitation: this is the key to it all. The question to ask yourself at every step of the way is: "how can I make this even better than if I was doing it on-site?"

That's the bottom line really. Remote working and learning is here to stay. Learn to embrace it as the new 'normal.'

Pete Pereira has crafted and delivered leadership and organisational culture change solutions for the the past 18 years with Aspire Consulting Sdn Bhd. He is now working extensively to create facilitated online training solutions for organisations and to coach effective online facilitation techniques