Virtual Facilitation: What We Now Know

Preface: This article reviews core elements Knowmium’s Certified Virtual Facilitation course, which are the same fundamentals we recommend to any facilitator who needs their participants to build skills and retain content. Here's the TL;DR (too long; didn’t read) list:

1. Interaction is a must if we want to develop skills

2. Multitasking is a killer, so kill it

3. Have excellent virtual stage presence

4. Complete tasks offline

5. Be flexible both as a facilitator and with participant styles

6. Link content and activities

7. Experiment: test and try new things

Introduction

After returning from a winter holiday in February 2020, a long-time client called me and said, “We are immediately closing our office and need to schedule our spring workshops. What experience do you have running virtual sessions?”

“Years,” I replied.

When the pandemic hit, Knowmium’s schedule and plans were disrupted like many other businesses around the world. Along with this disruption was a silver lining: the ability to help others excel virtual facilitation and remote communication. As the core facilitators at Knowmium, Joshua and I each had a variety of virtual learning experiences spanning over 15 years. Our experience ranged from producing online content, to running blended programs with a mix of in-person and online sessions, to facilitating interactive virtual workshops. It was our pleasure, almost a duty really, to help others keep their training and learning alive regardless of physical location.

Joshua composed a book, Radically Remote, and made a self-paced course to capture the go-to practices for virtual facilitation. I churned out dozens of online activity guides and tech tool videos to give immediate steps for online interaction. All these materials are free here and here.

However, not all was well. The world was being inundated with one-way webinars. These webinars, regardless of the topic or speaker’s ability, were largely listening exercises. Or rather, they were background noise while attendees completed their emails and checked their friends’ daily social media posts. Knowmium had compounded tasks: make interactive virtual workshops and actually get attendees to interact even if they expected virtual sessions to chances to half-listen while they completed other work.

That’s what concerned the long-time client that called me in February 2020 as they said, “Will there be activities? We aren’t looking for webinars.”

“Absolutely,” I replied, and that’s been a core focus for Knowmium over the last 18 months. The end of interactive virtual workshops is nowhere in sight, and we continue to climb this mountain of virtual possibilities making more discoveries.

Over the last summer, we launched Knowmium’s Certified Virtual Facilitator course: a multi-session virtual workshop where participants practice the interactions we profess and hone their online delivery skills with their personal styles. The program details are here.

So what do we know now after a year and a half of virtual engagements? These are the fundamentals we use in our virtual programs and used to construct our Certified Virtual Facilitator program.

1. Interaction is a must if we want to develop skills

Anyone can watch a full season of cooking show starring a top chef and fail in the kitchen. Watching skills does not transfer to having skills. If someone wants to cook, they must use their own ingredients, taste their dishes, and adjust their recipes.

Interaction is key, and one of the world’s most experienced virtual facilitators, Cindy Huggett, pointed this out well before the pandemic in 2018, “Many would say this is the fundamental challenge of virtual training—how to effectively engage participants and keep their attention throughout the class” (161 Virtual Training Basics).?

Although this presents a challenge to people forced to facilitate over restricted platforms, there are many possibilities for interaction even when doing traditionally one-way webinars. If a facilitator is using a platform that allows two-way communication, the possibilities are…(sorry)...virtually unlimited.

To avoid going into a long exposé listing all the possible interactions, have a look at the end section of our Radical Toolkit for interactive software recommendations walkthroughs. There are many ways to foster interaction with online platforms:

-emoji reactions

-chat and Q&A boxes

-polls

-whiteboards

-visual cues (for example, a thumbs up)

-verbal engagements (including the uncomfortably long silences that prompt people to reply)

-3rd party apps and websites (which open dozens of new ways to engage)

In the end, even if speaking to 500 people that aren’t on video, as long as one tool is available, any facilitator can get people involved.

2. Multitasking is a killer, so kill it

If we are going to talk about interaction, we have to talk about multitasking, why it’s so bad, and how to prevent it. Only 2% of people are able to multitask efficiently. Psychology Today told us this back in 2012.

Here are our quick tips on preventing this killer of virtual learning:?

a) Create interactions during the session every 10 minutes or more (see #1 above)

b) Prompt participants in advance about opportunities to interact and (when available) be on video especially when they are conversing. Interactions can attract more people to attend, and those who attend will be ready to leave their daily emails unopened during the session.

Prompting participants with program expectations is easy over email and with the workshop objectives. Even better is making a 2-minute introduction video so participants can see the facilitator on video explaining expectations.

c) Make people participate. Depending on the facilitator’s level of authority, whether inherent or relayed through the participants’ managers, requiring participants to actually participate and (again, when available) be on video works wonders. Motivation and prompting people to interact (volunteer) is almost always better than forcing people to participate (“voluntold”). We are continually surprised by and happy to help with our clients’ L&D managers who want to make mandatory requirements. Some examples:

i) Being on video is required. If someone isn’t on video, they go back to the waiting room and can send a message or email when they are ready to be fully present. Of course, there may be bandwidth or personal reasons video isn’t available, and these can be arranged in advance.

ii) Giving answers and input is required. If there’s a list of names (and there is in the Participants?box), everyone is asked to contribute. Check-off people’s names as they speak up and call on people who haven’t.

iii) Call on people at random, or use the handy Wheel of Names to decide. If someone isn’t responding, it’s off to the waiting room. This isn’t a new idea in skill-building workshops: if someone is on their laptop or phone for a while, ask them to leave and come back when they are ready to be part of the group.

iv) Continue the workshop when a certain percentage of people have replied. Whether a poll, a chat box, or another type of engagement is used, give a standard rate of participant at 75% or 90% before moving on. This is even better when people’s names are attached to replies. Let cohorts call out their colleagues.

3. Have excellent virtual stage presence

Whether facilitators are in a one-way webinar (and of course with interactions, yes?) or a small-group meeting, covering some basic hardware and software fundamentals is cheap and easy. It’s safe to assume by this point facilitators have their video on during virtual sessions. Persuading people to interact, be present, and be engaged is easier when we can see who we’re talking to. Zoom relayed us this one year before the pandemic in their blog [link] about persuasion through remote channels. The question now is how is the facilitator perceived online.?

Answer “yes” to these questions all for great virtual stage presence:

• Is the facilitator using a camera placed at or near eye-level? Back up plan: put a laptop on a shelf or stack of books
• Is the camera 720p or better? Back up plan: Use a traditional camera or smartphone as a webcam
• Are earbuds, a headset, and/or an external microphone being used?
• Is lighting front-facing? Back up plan: unscrew lights in the background or cover background windows
• Are physical backgrounds free of distraction? Back up plan: Put up a curtain or divider to block walkthrough traffic
• Are virtual backgrounds used to present content so the presenter remains a large video box instead of becoming a thumbnail??
• Are energy and emotion in voice and body language turned up a notch to attract and keep attention when speaking?
• Is the facilitator speaking toward the audience by looking at or near the webcam?
• Is the facilitator using fast internet through a wired connection (or if needed, the fastest wireless connection available)? Back up plan: change locations for important sessions, like a friend’s home or a hotel room

4. Complete tasks offline

Pre-session activities make in-session time more valuable. It’s fun and effective to interact when everyone is together online, so finish personal processes in advance. Here are quick examples of what attendees can do online before sessions start:

-Check tech using test links (like https://zoom.us/test and https://www.speedtest.net/)

-Onboard 3rd party software (create a sample link for people to test especially if firewalls could be active)?

-Complete online assessments

-Submit questions and answers online

-Submit ideas, images, and personal videos online or on sites accessible by groups

-Contribute content to online whiteboards (like https://miro.com/)

-Read an article or case study in advance for both content discussion and to get attendees thinking about how the topic applies to their life and work

Anything that can be done pre-session can also be done post-session and between sessions. How can we keep people engaging with each other and practicing their workshop skills on their own??Consider these arrangements:?

-Upload content of skill demonstrations (like presentation videos or negotiation planning canvases)?

-Form cohort groups to demonstrate skills and give each other feedback (lunch sessions are awesome)

-Get managers involved in follow up by providing key takeaways and action plans

-Schedule short live follow-up sessions to recap core learnings

5. Be flexible both as a facilitator and with participant styles

Aside from creating and requiring interaction, flexibility is a top necessity. Being flexible has a few components:

First, expect the unexpected. Have back-up plans. If something simply doesn’t work (for one person or the whole group), what will happen next? Write down the steps and test them in advance. This goes for technical malfunctions, software problems (especially on the participants’ side), confusing instructions (even if they were clear to the facilitator), and running out of time.

Second, plan for more time. Online interaction takes more time. Compared to face-to-face sessions, it takes more time for everyone to arrive, people to speak up, people to hit the unmute button, people to access 3rd party sites, and of course people to start paying attention again because they were mid-sentence in composing an email despite all previous efforts to prevent them from multitasking.

Third, once we get engagement, it’s hard to stop people from engaging. Involved individuals love to keep doing and keep talking. There are times to cut them off and move on, and there are times to let it ride and extend the activity. Remember, we have post-program possibilities through a variety of platforms and processes, so create more follow-up to cover what couldn’t be covered in-session (yes, this is more work for the facilitator, so adjust schedules and rates as needed). ?

6. Link content and activities

Joshua loves to call this creating a daisychain (kids connect daisies together to make bracelets, headbands, etc.).

In short, make sure content builds on itself instead of being separate, isolated activities. What was learned in the first activity? Use that in the second activity and build on it.

This also applies to multi-session programs with a blended approach (pre-session and in-session activities). In his book Virtual Facilitation & Meetings, Kevin McAlpin asks his readers this question: “Can you break down the programme into modules so that participants view it as a journey?” (64). Whether breaking down activities into different days or simply into different sections of the same session, completing steps, checking in, debriefing, and then building on the previous content keeps participants’ focus, engagement, and ultimately their ability to use the content back on the job.

7. Experiment: test and try new things

Over the last year, I’ve enjoyed attending a variety of experimentation and practice sessions hosted by software companies and learning communities. The goal: try out something new. Though we don’t need to wait for an organized event. Play with new softwares. Download new programs. Get friends together and make a game out of new activities. Run a free session to try new interactions. Watch videos to see programs and software in action (might as well plug our free resources again). Attend other people’s session and benchmark (but don’t copy) their processes. Set up a spare computer, connect like a participant, and make video recordings to see what participants will see. Let everyone know that we are all in this together, meaning we are all adjusting to this new way of learning and working, so grab a coffee (or a beer depending on the time of day) and have fun.

Whatever someone’s level of virtual experience, every chef can improve a dish and every facilitator can improve a virtual session. Seriously, grab a coffee or beer and play around. If you are ready to improve a of elements at once and get to the next level of facilitation, become certified in our CVF course: https://knowmium.com/cvf