virtual team facilitation workshop Archives

During a recent two-day Virtual Team Facilitation workshop, one of our attendees Lisa created several visuals that demonstrate the activities we present during this 2-day workshop.

Find out what TeamCatapult shared in this Virtual Team Facilitation workshop on Day 1 of this Virtual Facilitation Workshop, here.

The Use of Slack Channels During Virtual Team Facilitation!

Slack is a useful tool for all remote teams. As a facilitator of virtual meetings, Slack can be your go-to tool to get conversations going and to keep them going.

Use a Slack channel for checking in
Lean in to listen
Hear every voice
Check in after breaks

The Mental Model and Decision Funnel!

When asking questions during a remote meeting, here are some things to keep in mind.

Know in advance what type of decision the team is aiming for:

Consensus?
Majority?
Other?

Once a decision is made, it can be tempting to revisit it. You might need to remind the team of how and why they reached a decision. This is a good time to consider that the decision-making process needs to be reviewed and revised as well.

Evaluation vs Decision Making in Virtual Team Facilitation

Distinguish between evaluation and decision making.

Tools to Evaluate

Dot voting
Announce evaluation
Use affinity mapping before dot voting

Do not rush through evaluation and remember that silence does not mean agreement! As the facilitator, you are there for support and to help the team reach agreement, ask questions like:

Would anyone like to push back on…?
What would you advocate for?
Who would follow?
Is there another move you’d like to make?

Decide

In Mural, evaluate by color coding sticky notes against the criteria of the topic’s issues
Consider using a grid sorting template
Use gradients of agreement

These tools can help uncover what is holding people back and if necessary, generate a revised proposal that addresses concerns.

Virtual Team Facilitation Tips for Leaders

Here are three additional practical tips for leaders new to virtual team facilitation.

1 Transparency

Be transparent when something isn’t working as it should. Calmly accept and adapt and tell the attendees what is going on.

2 Ask WHO

Do not ask ‘Does anyone’ but instead ask

WHO… needs more time?
WHO… can push back?

3 Facilitator Assistant

Have one facilitator watching for participants who might get disconnected. Offer help in Slack or via email, text or whatever alternative means you’ve chosen to communicate.

More Virtual Team Facilitation Help is Available!

We are grateful for Lisa’s willingness to share these visuals with you, our audience, to provide you with a glimpse into the world of Virtual Team Facilitation

Whether it is you, your leadership team, or your company that needs help with Virtual Team Facilitation, TeamCatapult is able to lend a hand.

Please contact us today for more information for both private and public Virtual Facilitation Masterclass workshops.

Leaders, is your team scattered across the nation, or the globe? Are you struggling to keep your team focussed, cohesive and productive? Whether your team is virtual due to the recent coronavirus pandemic or had been a virtual team by-design, facilitating a team remotely is easy in concept, but more challenging in reality.

Fortunately, TeamCatapult has been in the remote work and remote team facilitation space for a long time! We have experience in this space and have been conducting Virtual Team Facilitation workshops for years.

While attending a recent workshop, attendee Lisa from Get The Picture created this incredible resource for virtual team leaders. This is what was discussed and learned on Day1. At first blush, it’s probably hard to land on a starting point. We’ve outlined some salient points that touch on the flow of the workshop.

Getting Started With Virtual Team Facilitation

The first thing to do when facilitating a virtual team meeting is to reduce distractions. We recommend that attendees do one or all of these:

Silence their phone
Shut the door
Close their email tab

While your team members take care of these things on their end, you as the facilitator should take care of some business as well!

Tips for the Virtual Team Facilitator

1 Display a Welcome Screen

This assures everyone has come to the right place. This also makes everyone feel welcome.

2 Use a Slack channel for Parking Lot

Be sure to clear it out by the end of the day! If you are unfamiliar with this term, the ‘Parking Lot’ is where you post follow up questions and discussions that might lead you on a path away from what you are teaching at the moment.

Noting the responses and answers about any of the items and ‘clearing’ them at the end of the day validates the importance of questions without cutting into the formal workshop time.

3 Use a Virtual Circle in Mural to Open

You can use photos of attendees, and invite people to ‘sit next to someone’. Once everyone is seated in the circle (virtual) take time for everyone to introduce themselves. Again, this helps new attendees feel welcome and wanted.

4 Use Breakout Rooms in Zoom

Ask people to reach you in Slack if you are needed during the breakout session. Zoom breakout rooms are a great way to have small group discussions among attendees. We use these rooms so teams can work on simulations while capturing notes in Mural.

Timezones, Technology and Ground Rules

There are things that can go wrong when using technology, from the challenge of varying time zones, to not being able to connect, to having unstable Wifi. Expect these issues, but be sure to set ground rules!

Set and Scribe Ground Rules

Be in a quiet place
Be off mute
Be on video
Be on time
Pay attention

Ask: ‘What do you need of me?’ and ‘What do you need of each other?’

Include ways to handle collisions. For example – be clear how you will handle two people speaking at once. It does happen so have a plan in place from the beginning.

Low Stakes Virtual Team Facilitation

Often times meetings can get into a “high-stakes” atmosphere, where there are, simply put, conflicts within the team on an issue. The question for a facilitator is how will you slow things down and make it feel low stakes and safe to continue on with the conflict?

Here are three solutions:

Narrate
Chunk instructions
Normalize

Use Question Prompts to Incite Curiosity

Get people outside of their normal ways of thinking about their work! Using question prompts gets attendees to open up and participate and move beyond what’s may have them stuck on how to talk about and resolve a topic.

Virtual Team Facilitation Design Tips!

Here are 3 design tips that might help you organize your next virtual meeting.

Resist the urge to jump to tools
Test… is a meeting actually needed?
Use offline time to do work!

Learn More About Virtual Team Facilitation!

To find out more about Virtual Team Facilitation, check out what Lisa learned on Day 2 of the Virtual Team Facilitation Workshop!