Remote work, hybrid workplace, working from home, virtual meetings. Although not net new ideas, these themes became much more common within the last year. Even as more and more people plan to return to work in person, the concept of a distributed workforce will be the new “normal” for many, and companies and employees will need to learn to adjust accordingly. Distributed workforce best practices will need to be applied to be successful in this new landscape. There are new ways of working across the board – this includes a combination of remote employees, physical offices, and working with colleagues and team members in other locations and time zones (even if they are in another physical office). 

The Voltage Control team has always been remote (outside of our in-person workshops and events) so this shift to virtual work and the distributed workforce wasn’t new to us – we’ve documented best practices for remote teams, and even assembled a toolkit that allows our remote team to facilitate virtual meetings that are as, if not more, effective than traditional face-to-face interactions.

Many large corporations are making the decision to offer permanent remote work options for their employees, including Twitter, JP Morgan, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft. A distributed workforce, when directed by effective systems and processes, can and will be successful with adjustments and best practices.

Employees have demonstrated the ability to work productively in a distributed and/or remote fashion, in large part due to available tools and technology. However, it will take more than simply downloading Zoom and a good Wifi connection (though they are both very important) for a successful distributed workforce. We outline 5 distributed workforce best practices below.

Distributed Work Best Practices

1) Implement recurring check-ins and meetings 

Communication is key. Ensure communication flows between all team members, regardless of physical location. This is increasingly important as workers become more spread across different time zones and locations. Consider daily standup updates on Slack, end of day status emails, all hands/town halls, check-ins with direct reports, and virtual meetings–with video when possible–to include everyone on the team. This isn’t to say you should have a million meetings just to have them by any means. There should always be a clear purpose to avoid wasting time (among other Meeting Mantras). Keeping an open line of communication through all levels and team members will help align and push forward projects and initiatives in a distributed workforce setting.

2) Utilize the best tools and tech

These tools played an obvious role when the majority of office workers were forced to be remote. They will continue to be critical to keeping everyone aligned and organized as the virtual, remote + in-person worlds merge into a distributed workforce. Some of our favorite tools for a distributed workforce include: 

• Asana – Project management tool to help teams organize, track and manage their work.
• Basecamp – Real-time communication tool to keep track of everything you’re working on in a shared space. 
• Doodle – Calendar scheduling system for time management and to easily coordinate one-on-one and team meetings. 
• Focus To-Do – Pomodoro time and task management app that helps you perform tasks efficiently. 
• Google Docs – Smart editing and styling tools support joint teamwork to flow smoothly and easily and keep ideas in one place. Teams can work on different pages or in different docs accordingly. 
• Google Slides – Interactive work templates with multiple pages to allow individual and collective work.
• Google Sheets – Collaborative spreadsheets to organize and update tasks and information. 
• Google Drive or other cloud storage – Drop all assets and work content into a shared space for easy access for all team members. Use different folders to organize information. 
• Harvest – Time tracking software with multiple integrations and extensions.
• Loom – Screen recorder that allows you to capture video screen messages instead of sending long emails. It’s also helpful for sending team members visual directions if you cannot screen share in real-time.
• Process Street – Make checklists for your team to help you remember and keep track of all of your to-do’s. 
• SessionLab – Dynamically design, organize and share workshops and training content.
• Slack – Team messaging platform that is a smart alternative to email. It allows the team to have a shared view of work progress and purpose
• Trello –  A place for assigning work and tracking work progress using a Kanban-style list-making application.
• World Time Buddy – World clock, time zone converter, and online meeting scheduler to coordinate and plan across different time zones.
• Zoom – Videoconferencing platform with breakout room capabilities.

3) Establish and define clear goals for everyone

The success of a distributed workforce depends on meaningful goal-setting. A distributed workforce provides flexibility, in the sense that employees aren’t held to the same confines of a traditional workplace. However, this also means goals and tasks need to be defined even more clearly since the full team won’t be together in person and important details can get lost in translation. Set reasonable goals then make sure that all team members are on the same page so you can accomplish them as a team. Many companies and employees use SMART goal setting:

• Specific: Make your goals specific and narrow for more effective planning.
• Measurable: Define what evidence will provide you’re making progress.
• Attainable: Make sure you can reasonably accomplish your goal within a certain timeframe.
• Relevant: Goals should align with values and long-term objectives.
• Time-based: Set a realistic, ambitious end date for task prioritization.

4) Track projects and productivity

With any team, but especially a distributed one, tracking projects, and productivity is important. You are unable to stop by a team member’s desk to check in like in-person offices so you need a way of making sure that everyone is on task. There are many ways of doing this even if you are not together in person, such as Asana or Trello for project management, and Harvest for time tracking. Team members are able to see what everyone else is doing, what stage a project is in, and coordinate with one another in real-time. Monitoring responsibility online leads to more productivity and collaboration. It also saves time being able to view the status of all projects across all team members, in one platform.

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5) Promote team bonding 

Host offsite/virtual social events so remote workers can get together in person or via video conference for team-building and socializing. The specific events will depend and differ based on location and circumstance. Virtual happy hours or game nights are a fun way to bond. Connection is often more elusive online, so setting aside time for your team to relax or have fun together when distributed is more important than ever. These sorts of social events can have a big impact on your distributed team’s morale.

Numerous experiments have shown how employees are much more productive and engaged when they’re given flexibility on where, when, and how they’ll get their work done. A distributed workforce can boost not only productivity but also retention. Turnover is 25% lower at companies that support remote work environments. The evidence is clear: Remote and distributed employees have great potential to be highly productive and extremely engaged, as long as you know how to engage them. Testing the distributed workforce best practices outlined above is a great place to start.

At Voltage Control we are exercising and sharing the best tools and techniques needed for teams to thrive in the hybrid and distributed workplace, through productive meetings (in-person and virtual), remote work team collaboration, considerations for return to work, facilitation skills, virtual events, meeting culture, Magical Meetings and design sprints.

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This article is based on our downloadable Remote Design Sprint 101 Guide. Check it out!

A lot has changed over the last year and a half, but not our ability to collaborate, creatively solve problems, and design impactfully. While some are beginning to return to physical offices, many companies and employees are opting for a hybrid work model resulting in the shift to a distributed workforce. With the right practices and technology, we can still have meaningful virtual meetings and remote workshops. Namely, remote Design Sprint workshops are an essential tool to utilize during these transitional times. They’re more important now more than ever, as companies adjust to survive and thrive in the pandemic-impacted world – from solving big business challenges quickly, to refining company processes to launching innovative ideas.  

A Design Sprint is used for validating ideas and tackling business problems, guiding teams through a design-thinking-based process to uncover insights, prototype an idea, and test it with users. We at Voltage Control have successfully adapted our tried-and-true Design Sprint model for remote work and documented everything in our Remote Design Sprint 101 Guide. This comprehensive guide is for anyone who wants to plan and run their own remote Design Sprint. Some of these ideas were also featured in The Sprint Book‘s Remote Design Sprint Guide, written by the inventor of the Design Sprint Jake Knapp.

In this article, we’ll review some of the benefits of running a remote Design Sprint in your organization and how to lead your own in the virtual landscape. Let’s continue to work and create together! 

Remote Design Sprint Purpose & Benefits

Before we jump in, let’s recap some reasons you may want to run a Design Sprint. Design Sprints have multiple benefits, including:

• Aligning a team around a shared vision.
• Answering critical business questions.
• Discovering the essence of a creative challenge or problem.

Some excellent times to run a Design Sprint are:

• When kicking off a new initiative.
• When looking for new breakthrough features for a product.
• If you want to test divergent solutions.
• When you’re prioritizing potential business opportunities.
• When you need to switch gears or iterate on a current product.
• When you haven’t talked to your users enough.

Remote Design Sprints are not the same as in-person design sprints in many ways, so we must treat them differently. Read on to find out how you can successfully run your next remote Design Sprint.

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5 Tips to Run an Effective Remote Design Sprint

1. Move slower

We are often asked if we facilitate a remote Design Sprint in the typical week-long format of an in-person sprint. In general, we believe that the pace of the Design Sprint needs to be slower in a remote setting. While technology can indeed speed us up, it can also slow us down. That’s because remote workshops account for many factors that we don’t face when we’re connecting face-to-face, such as time zone differences or Zoom fatigue.

For example, you don’t want remote participants to spend more than four hours at a time on Zoom, as being chained to a desk and laptop for any longer can stifle focus and participation (learn more about tips on how to get rid of Zoom fatigue and energize your remote team here). Another consideration is the limited ability to read the virtual room intelligence to ensure that everyone is on the same page. The physical separation makes it difficult to notice if someone is distracted, struggling, or falling behind. Keep in mind the need for team connection, which is especially important in a virtual setting. If you do manage to detect that someone needs help, it takes extra time to stop and catch them up. Simply put, things take longer online. There are inevitably delays and extra processing time needed to get everyone on board no matter what tools you are using (more on that later). Account for extra buffer time to set up and field mishaps during the remote Design Sprint. You’ll need to prepare to support those that are less familiar with the tools you’ve chosen or having trouble with their internet connection. 

Another factor to consider in a remote Design Sprint is that participants are more likely to get distracted online. An effective Design Sprint ground rule to increase productivity is to ban the use of personal devices. However, it’s impossible to eliminate the distraction of screens during remote Design Sprints because laptops and tablets are the means for connection. In short, you have to wrangle the cats more. That’s because each participant is in their own physical environment. Natural external factors of working from home are also at play, such as pets or children. Facilitators will have the most success when they allocate extra time and are prepared to assist participants through these distractions (note: if you are looking for other general ways to improve remote team alignment, see here). 

2. Tweak the schedule

Running any successful remote workshop (especially a remote Design Sprint as it’s more complex than other remote meetings) requires adjustments to a typical in-person one, as fostering the same spirit of focus and connection can be a major challenge. However, this doesn’t mean that any remote workshop or remote Design Sprint is doomed to fail. With the right perspective and a little bit of tweaking, your remote Design Sprint can provide all of the value and human connection of an in-person one.

Because things move slower virtually, we request our Design Sprint participants commit to a series of mini-workshops rather than asking them to commit to the five full days (which is the typical length of time for an in-person Design Sprint). Between each mini-workshop, we assign homework and set the expectation that they will present their work at the next group session. Setting the expectation that the participant will present creates social pressure to encourage participation and ensure the work gets done. In the Design Sprint tradition of working alone together, participants do work alone offline in addition to the moments where everyone will be on the Zoom call at the same time. 

These mini workshop sessions build chronologically one after the other. This sequence could happen over the course of four days, or even eight if needed. Combined, they create the complete virtual Design Sprint calendar. Designing around the in-between times is powerful and an opportunity that in-person doesn’t support. 

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Another crucial aspect of scheduling a remote Design Sprint is considering different time zones, which isn’t a concern when everyone is in person in the same place. Time zones present a serious challenge and should not be ignored. It is important to be conscientious of all participants’ time differences. For example, it is unrealistic to invite someone to a workshop that would occur at 2:00AM their time. We use Worldtimebuddy and Calendly to easily select times that are convenient for all participants.

The extra headache of aligning time zones is well worth the benefits of connecting a globally diverse team, which is something we don’t get with in-person Design Sprints.

This shift to virtual and hybrid work has required us to see what is possible and has exposed new workshop designs. For instance, you would never fly someone from China to Austin, Texas to have a two-hour workshop on Monday and another one on Friday. It’s just too expensive, even if that was the perfect design for the content and the arc of decision-making. This is now possible because the logistics are different.

And because you will likely be dealing with different time zones in your remote Design Sprint, there is no standard schedule like when you meet at the same location in a physical sprint. You will have to adjust your Virtual Design Sprint schedule for each virtual sprint team so that it is reasonable for each participant’s given time window. We make a bespoke schedule for each virtual Design Sprint that follows the schedule principles mentioned above.

Now that we are immersed in them, we realize that remote workshops offer some incredible things that you CAN’T do in person. 

3. Set the stage and make sure to debrief

PSA: Virtual Design Sprints require more prep!

Remote Design Sprints need more planning because there are more outside factors to consider including the best tools to use and adjustments that need to be made for timing and methods to optimize engagement. At Voltage Control, we’ve developed multiple virtual workshop tools to help individuals, teams, and companies build the skills they need to design and run exceptional virtual workshops and remote Design Sprints. We also put together a Virtual Work Guide highlighting how to set up and facilitate productive virtual meetings to make them just as purposeful and successful as in-person meetings (if not more so). 

First and foremost, participants need to understand the tools, the process, what is expected of them, how things will unfold, and why they are doing all of this in the first place. This is much different than doing a Design Sprint in person. In-person, it doesn’t take a participant very long to properly acquaint themselves with the sticky notes and a whiteboard. That’s why we make sure to spend enough time getting everyone acquainted with the new digital tools and processes so they are set up for success. 

One way we properly set the stage is by investing a lot of preparation time into our Design Sprint MURAL board. This is the digital space where both individuals and the group will participate in most of the Design Sprint exercises. The more prep we can do in the MURAL board, the less headache for the virtual participants. We can’t expect them to be as savvy with our virtual facilitation tools as we are. So we create videos of us walking through the MURAL board, the exercises, and the key features they will be using. And just in case someone didn’t watch the videos, we schedule boot-up time at the beginning of the sprint so everyone can understand this new paradigm.

Another helpful preparation that aids in the process of training up participants is to set expectations before the workshop. Create an agenda that optimizes the remote attendee experience – set clear objectives for why you are running the remote Design Sprint and what your team needs to accomplish by the end of it. Outline the objective for each day of the remote Design Sprint and the activities participants will be engaging in. Remember to pad your agenda to account for potential technical difficulties, clarification, distraction, and other hiccups.

Send a checklist and supplies list ahead of time so participants know what to order and are ready to go. It’s also incredibly helpful to make sure all participants know what their deadlines and deliverables are from the get-go so everyone can successfully accomplish them. As a facilitator, you demo the expectations and process for everyone else, field questions, and then let them go off and do their individual work. You don’t want to surprise anyone or embarrass them. The goal is to have everyone on the same, productive page. 

Schedule cleanup time after each day is over. This should be in addition to the official debrief or retrospective (which should be held after the remote Design Sprint is over). Purposefully dedicating time for both the “cleanup” and debrief is important to provide opportunities that may be otherwise missed in a remote environment, and also ensure everyone is on the same page for next steps.

4. Pick the right tech

The transition to virtual means choosing the right tools and platforms that best support your goals and needs for the remote Design Sprint. Here are several tools we use and recommend:

Zoom

The virtual meeting platform gathers everyone into a main meeting room. Note: ask everyone to turn on their video! It’s crucial to foster the missing element of physical human connection when working remotely. Zoom also has built-in rooms that you can use to assign participants to breakout rooms. We’ve found this especially helpful during storyboarding. The feature to automatically route participants in and out of breakout rooms and back to the main meeting room makes the virtual facilitation experience much easier. You also have the capability to mute all participants at any time (cancels out everyone’s individual background noises) which is helpful when giving directions or speaking to everyone all at once in the main meeting room. 

MURAL 

Imagine a Design Sprint wall of post-it notes, then make it digital. That’s the essence of MURAL. It is a virtual whiteboard tool that supports complex group work and allows teams to virtually share and collaborate on digital stickies. Miro is another option for virtual collaboration. We prefer MURAL for our Design Sprints because it has the most features to support facilitators. For example, you can use a super lock feature to identify elements that can only be unlocked by users with Facilitator Superpowers. It’s a nice feature so that a curious participant doesn’t accidentally mess up your template and confuse the rest of the team.

When working with a dynamic group, MURAL’s ‘Summon’ feature really comes in handy during all of the different activities within a Design Sprint. This helps the facilitator draw focus and attention throughout the sprint. And if summoning isn’t your cup of tea, MURAL also has a ‘follow’ feature where you can request that participants follow your screen. Get acquainted with how to use MURAL with our MURAL Cheat Sheet. By adding the MURAL app to Zoom, attendees will be able to collaborate without leaving Zoom.

Figma

Just like how MURAL allows our team to collaborate in real-time on a Design Sprint digital board, Figma allows the prototyping team to collaborate in real-time on a digital prototype. Whether you are prototyping a mobile app concept, a website marketing page, a software feature idea, or other forms of digital collateral, Figma allows many designers to rapidly create, assemble, and then present a believable prototype facade that a test user can interact with and react to. One pro tip is that we recommend embedding GIFs into your Figma prototype if you need to create video explanations or interesting animations to compel your test user. 

And to pair well with the Figma prototyping, we built out a MURAL template to help the prototyping stitcher to more effectively coordinate with the team on prototyping day. 

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Pen & Paper

We still like attendees to do some of the Design Sprint activities locally before sharing them on the MURAL board, and we have learned that you cannot assume that they have the basic supplies with them. So, you can either drop ship pens, paper, and stickies to the attendees, or you can confirm that they have something equivalent before the sprint begins. And if you can’t send them supplies and they don’t have any, we recommend discussing digital methods for them to do solo work on their tablet or computer before surfacing it on the MURAL board. 

Finally, we also curated a guide for all the hardware you need to run virtual magical meetings here.

5. Engage a Professional Facilitator

Depending on your specific situation, it may be beneficial to hire an outside facilitator (especially when making big decisions). It’s also beneficial to have an outside facilitator when you don’t feel confident that someone internal can do the job effectively. The facilitator is the key ingredient to the Design Sprint process; it is critical that they be confident in their role and have a deep understanding of the design thinking process. If you are wary or unsure whether an internal facilitator will lead your remote Design Sprint participants to excellence, it may be best to bring in an expert from the outside. This will also allow internal team members to see expert facilitation in action and may give them the insight they need to successfully lead a Design Sprint in the future.

Working remotely certainly has its challenges, but it also has great potential. Now more than ever we have the opportunity to connect and collaborate on a global scale. This shift to virtual is shaping the future of facilitation in ways that will benefit us for years to come. Instead of waiting to be in person with your team to reap the benefits of a Design Sprint, adapt it to the virtual landscape and run a (just as effective) remote Design Sprint. 

We offer virtual facilitation services.

Voltage Control facilitates virtual design thinking workshops and Design Sprints, virtual innovation sessions, and virtual transitions. Please reach out at info@voltagecontrol.com for a consultation.

The post How to Run Remote Design Sprints appeared first on Voltage Control.

The Voltage Control team has always been remote (aside from our in-person workshops and events, which were put on a pause due to the pandemic), resulting in our team constantly learning about and improving upon the best and most efficient ways to collaborate virtually. Effective remote work collaboration for teams relies on having the right tools in place. As experts in remote work, our team put together a Virtual Work Guide documenting our learnings for you to more easily navigate work with a distributed team. The past 18 months have also provided additional opportunities to refine remote meetings and develop virtual workshop tools. To succeed in today’s virtual and distributed workforce, all remote teams will need to implement the right tools, processes, and methods to optimize how they work together.

Virtual workshops require careful planning and preparation, as there are various factors to take into account that you don’t need to consider for in-person ones (including Zoom fatigue, scheduling across multiple time zones, and maintaining human connection in a virtual landscape). By nature, digital tools are necessary for virtual workshops to run smoothly and effectively. Improve your next virtual workshop with 10 of our top curated tools: 5 tools we’ve created here at Voltage Control through our own experiences with virtual work, and 5 additional tools we recommend you test out for your next virtual workshop.

The following tools were developed by the Voltage Control team to help individuals, teams, and companies build the skills they need to design and run exceptional virtual workshops.

5 Voltage Control Virtual Workshop Tools 

1. Design Sprint Guide

This guide provides an overview of everything you need to run your own remote Design Sprint, and outlines everything we’ve done at Voltage Control to successfully adapt our tried-and-true Design Sprint model for remote work.

2. Workshop Methods & Activities Templates

A collection of tools to inspire methods and activities for your next workshop, spanning facilitation frameworks, design thinking, improv, active learning, idea generation, prototyping, and more.

3. Workshop Design Template for MURAL

Use this MURAL canvas to design your workshop, meeting, training, or course for lasting growth and transformation. The best workshops are impactful learning experiences. We created the LXD Canvas to introduce learning experience design principles to facilitators who haven’t considered them and to help everyone apply them more effectively in your facilitation to maximize participant potential.

Unfamiliar with MURAL? Use our MURAL Cheat Sheet to learn how to use it.

4. Workshop Design Workshop

Our Workshop Design Workshop is a 2-day virtual experience where you learn techniques on improving engagement, retention, and participant commitment during and after your workshop. You can expect to learn and practice the principles and tools to drive lasting change.

5. Control Room App

This tool helps you run virtual workshops and is for anyone wanting to run magical meetings. We custom-made this tool based on our own facilitation experiences to help you facilitate exceptionally good meetings and events. It includes20 free activities and premium features that allow you to maximize meaningful connection and productive work amongst your attendees. This simple tool is filled with meeting activities that keep your team engaged and captures feedback so you can constantly improve. Check out our videos to learn more.

We utilize the following tools side-by-side with our own to run effective virtual workshops and meetings. Try these out in your next virtual workshop or event if you haven’t already.

5 Virtual Workshop Tools We Recommend

1. Zoom

This video conferencing tool is a must for almost any virtual meeting, but especially important for virtual workshops due to its breakout room capabilities. They even have an Events solution to better host virtual experiences, with features including branded event hubs, customizable registration and built-in ticket options, and analytics to help you understand your event performance and improve your virtual events.

2. MURAL

MURAL is a digital whiteboard with collaborative templates for visual collaboration including planning, brainstorming, and designing. We personally like MURAL because it’s a customizable virtual whiteboard that supports interactive and collaborative work with a remote or virtual team. Everyone can work together in one visual space, and you can create your own templates to support your specific needs. Check out our MURAL cheat sheet for a quick reference on how to use MURAL.

3. Figma

Collaborative design platform to design, prototype, and gather feedback in real-time in one place. Companies like Spotify, Netflix, Nike, and digital innovators have been using Figma to design their next mobile app, marketing website, or proof of concept. We use Figma in almost every Design Sprint process.

4. World Time Buddy

One benefit of virtual workshops is that people can join regardless of location. However, this also means multiple time zones need to be taken into account. This tool is a world clock, time zone converter, and online meeting scheduler to coordinate and plan across different time zones.

5. SessionLab

Dynamically design, organize and share workshops and training content. This tool helps you easily plan and create virtual workshops. It includes 150+ expert-reviewed remote-friendly facilitation methods (and a library of 800+ total methods) and helps ensure your virtual team is engaged and aligned while making changes in real-time.

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Make virtual workshops run seamlessly and get the most out of your attendees by incorporating the right tools and practices. If you are interested in learning about additional tools and best practices for managing remote teams, see here.

Run Your Own Virtual Workshop Successfully

Do you want to run a successful remote workshop but don’t know where to start? Voltage Control facilitates events of all kinds, including live online workshops, boot camps, summits, and meetings. Please contact us at hello@voltagecontrol.com if you have questions or would like to schedule a consultation.

FAQ Section

What collaboration tools does Voltage Control recommend for virtual workshops?
At Voltage Control, we utilize a wide range of collaboration tools, including Google Docs, Google Forms, and Google Drive, alongside other online design tools like Figma and MURAL. These tools enable efficient digital collaboration, allowing teams to work together in real time during virtual workshops and training sessions.

How can I improve team collaboration in virtual sessions?
Using advanced features of virtual workshop platforms and online whiteboards ensures effective online collaboration. These platforms support virtual offices and offer interactive sessions that enhance team collaboration, brainstorming sessions, and the overall creative process.

What are the key features to look for in virtual platforms?
When selecting a virtual platform for your workshop, key features include breakout sessions, video chat, audio calls, and online communication tools like Zoom or Google Meet. These platforms should also support virtual whiteboards and other tools that facilitate digital collaboration and the engagement of your entire team.

What are the benefits of using Google Workspace tools in a virtual workshop?
Google Workspace tools like Google Docs, Google Calendar, and Google Drive allow for efficient collaboration and communication within virtual workshops. These tools facilitate document sharing, scheduling, and real-time editing, making them ideal for organizing collaboration sessions and workshop activities.

Can virtual workshops offer the same level of engagement as in-person workshops?
Yes, virtual workshops can be just as engaging as in-person workshops with the right digital facilitation tools. A lot of platforms combined with the use of online whiteboards and engagement tools, allow for interactive and collaborative workshop activities. The virtual space offers flexibility while maintaining high levels of team engagement.

How do I ensure the success of virtual brainstorming sessions?
To succeed in virtual brainstorming sessions, use online collaboration tools like MURAL or Figma as we already mentioned, since they are perfect tools for visual and design collaboration. Google Forms can serve as a survey tool to gather feedback, while breakout sessions in Zoom or Google Meet help maintain team focus and productivity during brainstorming activities.

The post Virtual Workshop Tools appeared first on Voltage Control.

Here at Voltage Control, we’re passionate about educating individuals and companies about why facilitation skills are important. As the workplace shifts toward more remote work and a hybrid workplace, virtual collaboration training becomes even more important as leaders and facilitators won’t always have the luxury of having every team member present in a physical room. Virtual teams are becoming more common and the best leaders will need to adjust the way they manage and train their teams – just because all teams aren’t in-person anymore doesn’t mean they can’t be equally, if not more so, effective. 

The Voltage Control team has always been remote (outside of our former in-person events and workshops), so we practice what we preach of our extensive knowledge on this topic. The new virtual landscape unlocks many opportunities for collaboration and partnership that weren’t possible before. Now, we can connect with people around the globe via interactive virtual workshops, attend conferences, or productively collaborate with the team, all from a remote or home office. This is without the cost of travel, renting event room space, and provides more possibility to bring people together who would otherwise be unable to attend – collaboration and meaningful work are now possible with internet access alone! Greater diversity in collaboration is another resulting benefit. We have the power to solve problems and create collectively at a higher level than ever before. The question now becomes, how do leaders and facilitators train virtual teams to collaborate more effectively in the remote workplace?

Here are 5 ways facilitators can promote more effective virtual collaboration training:

1. Facilitate Productive Virtual Meetings

One of the biggest differences of working virtually is that screen time replaces face-to-face interactions. Remote facilitation skills are more important than ever with virtual meetings and teams. Always schedule with purpose – no purpose, no meeting. Identify the main goal of the meeting and distribute an agenda beforehand. When planning a remote meeting agenda, scale down expectations on how much time participants will invest (try to limit to no more than 2-4 hours/day). 

Another way to promote virtual collaboration training is to create homework and group work. Have teams read material as pre-work so they come to the meeting prepared and less time is wasted during the meeting itself to get the group in sync. During the meeting, consider assigning group work and splitting into small breakout groups to complete tasks or exercises. Then, the groups can finish their work on Slack, email or smaller video calls, leading to more productivity and less wasted meeting time. (pro tip: Try Zoom’s “breakout room” feature to organize people in separate spaces).

2. Adjust Design Sprints for a Remote World

Team standups or weekly check-ins are relatively straightforward, making an easier transition to the virtual world. However, complex meetings such as remote Design Sprints will require more virtual collaboration training. 

Typically, a Design Sprint is a five-day process for tackling a business problem. Here are some ways that we’ve adapted our Design Sprint model for remote work:

• Move Slower: The pace of the Sprint needs to be slower in a virtual setting, due to distractions, limited ability to read the virtual room, and other inevitable delays.
• Tweak the Schedule: Five full days in person is not equal to five full days virtually. People can’t be expected to be glued to their screens for long periods of time. That’s why we shifted our remote Design Sprints to a series of mini-workshops as opposed to five full days. 
• Set the Stage: Virtual Design Sprints need more planning because there are outside factors to consider. What are the best tools to use? What adjustments need to be made for timing? What are some methods to optimize engagement and interaction? Set expectations before the workshop so team members come prepared with all the right tools and know their deadlines and deliverables from the get-go. As a facilitator, you demo the expectations and process for everyone else, field questions, and then let them go off and do their work. The goal of virtual collaboration training is to have everyone on the same, productive page.                                                               

3. Promote Human Connection

As a facilitator and/or team leader, training your virtual team to collaborate more effectively also means promoting connection with each other. Without the possibility of in-person “water cooler” conversations or after work team happy hours, don’t be afraid to get creative. Team bonding is still very much possible in a virtual environment. Here are some ideas for virtual ways to connect:

• Randomly match up different team members for virtual “coffee chats” – this gives people who might not otherwise interact a chance to meet and get to know one another.
• Hold a virtual happy hour on a Friday afternoon for the team after a successful week.
• Have beginning of the week standup meetings where the whole team joins via video and discusses their goals, updates, and questions with the group.
• Prioritize 1:1 meetings with those on your team.
• Sprinkle in elements of fun and surprise – for example, start meetings with a funny or inspirational video, add funny GIFs to presentations, or try implementing Kahoot! (an online quiz tool and game-based learning platform) to fuel some friendly competition.

4. Utilize the Right Tools/Technology

Tools and technology are even more important for virtual collaboration training when a team is remote. Some of our favorite tried-and-true tools for virtual collaboration are:

• Zoom – Videoconferencing platform with breakout room capabilities.
• Trello – A place for assigning work and tracking work progress using a Kanban-style list-making application. Assign individuals to cards to create clear to-do lists and organize priorities.
• MURAL & Miro Templates – Use our custom templates to help teams collaborate virtually. 
• Basecamp – Real-time communication tool to keep track of everything you’re working on in a shared space. 
• Focus To-Do – Pomodoro time and task management app that helps you perform tasks efficiently. 
• Process Street – Make checklists for your team to help you remember and keep track of all of your to-do’s. 
• SessionLab – Dynamically design, organize and share workshops and training content.
• Slack – Team messaging platform that is a smart alternative to email. It allows the team to have a shared view of work progress and purpose
• Loom – Screen recorder that allows you to capture video screen messages instead of sending long emails. It’s also helpful for sending team members visual directions if you cannot screen share in real-time.
• Doodle – Calendar scheduling system for time management and to easily coordinate one-on-one and team meetings. 
• World Time Buddy – World clock, time zone converter, and online meeting scheduler to coordinate and plan across different time zones.
• Google Docs – Smart editing and styling tools support joint teamwork to flow smoothly and easily and keep ideas in one place. Teams can work on different pages or in different docs accordingly. 
• Google Drive or other cloud storage – Drop all assets and work content into a shared space for easy access for all team members. Use different folders to organize information. 

5. Reference our Virtual Guide

Finally, reference our in-depth Virtual Work Guide. Virtual collaboration training and facilitating with a distributed team is both an art and a science. We created this guide for you to build a foundation for promoting quality work in the virtual workplace, and it expands on the above topics in more detail.

The future of work looks different, but bright. Successful virtual collaboration training will take some additional work and planning, but will eventually lead to more effective teams in this increasingly virtual work environment. We look forward to helping teams transition to the new business landscape!

The post 5 Facilitation Methods for Effective Virtual Collaboration Training appeared first on Voltage Control.

A return to work is around the corner, but what will that look like? For many businesses, that will not mean “business as usual”. The adjustment to remote work has many people considering a hybrid workplace. However, hybrid work has become a blanket term used to meekly describe the dynamic that the future of work suggests. Hybridity in the workplace is much more than the location and time we work; it’s not that simple. The merging of in-person and virtual work will mean the emergence of completely new a paradigm for all workers. Just like we had to shift to different processes and systems for remote work in the virtual landscape, we must consider the full picture of what hybrid roles and hybrid workers will look like in order to be successful in a new kind of work environment.

First of all, returning to work in person is a question of who is comfortable doing so. While some people are eager to be back in a collaborative office space, others aren’t so ready for various reasons–be it health concerns, a preference for remote work, or a resistance to getting back into an in-person work routine. Make no mistake, getting back together face-to-face is going to be a transition. It won’t immediately revert back to how it used to be because too much has happened since then. We’ll have to readjust our schedules–like organizing care for kids and adding a commuting routine back in–and get reacquainted with social norms and behaviors that come with an in-person work environment. From seemingly little things like questioning, “Do I shake my co-workers’ hands?” to larger concerns about whether employees will start back full or part-time, returning to work will mean ironing out kinks and getting readjusted. You’ll also need to consider the configuration for your hybrid environment–will there be multiple offices? What does hybrid mean to your organization–does it mean Mondays and Fridays in the office and every other day remote? This transition will take time. 

As employees begin to reestablish patterns and norms, they will be faced with new and potentially unexpected thoughts and feelings. They may find this process difficult and unsettling. Make sure to listen to their needs and give them time to adapt. While many may be excited to rush back, we’ll need to support those that need more time. We also don’t want to rush into hasty decisions that don’t sere our long-term needs and unnecessarily alienate team members.

It is our responsibility as leaders to establish clear expectations and “new norms” while also holding space for team members’ needs so that everyone can transition as painlessly as possible. 

I was recently chatting with some of the facilitators in our community and they declared that there is no such thing as a hybrid workshop. Their point was that if you are seeking full and equal participation from everyone we need to ensure that the interface for everyone’s ideas has consistent and equal bandwidth. In order to do that, all of your in-person attendees need to join the virtual session individually, making them all virtual participants as well. 

There is currently no software specifically made for hybrid work; software that exists assumes for remote work. We will need tools and processes that not only seamlessly support the merging of productive in-person and virtual work, but that also make connection a priority. Perhaps the greatest challenge for remote teams is genuine connection. It’s the essential missing element of in-person connection that cannot be replaced by technology–no matter how innovative. There is no substitute for human interaction. That’s why many businesses are prioritizing physical togetherness for their employees even if they have the choice to remain fully remote. The value for connection–however you create and maintain it–is paramount to do meaningful work together. 

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The word of hybrid also ushers in new concerns around co-location and who is actually in the room. Many workers have relocated during the pandemic and may no longer be near an office. What are the lines of collaboration that have been severed locally? Co-location will impact our design choices and skew our perspective. For example: When designing hybrid meetings, workshops, and other gatherings, there will be a natural pull to group co-located individuals during breakout sessions. While this may work out sometimes, we certainly shouldn’t take it for granted.

Do you see room for hybrid work within your organization? If so, how are you preparing for the shift in the workplace? If you decide to support a hybrid workplace, how will meetings work with some team members in a physical room and others dialing in virtually? What will you need to do to encourage equal connection amongst dispersed and in-person team members? How will hybrid work change talent acquisition? Will in-person team members have advantages or disadvantages that virtual workers won’t and visa versa? What technology needs to exist to fully support an effective hybrid work environment? The intricacies of a hybrid workplace are vast, but it’s a puzzle that can create a full, functional picture. 

If you are considering a hybrid work environment, keep this in mind: at the center of productive work is the people who make it happen. Keenly focusing on your team members and what they need to thrive is essential, especially in a hybrid environment. There is definitely no one-size-fits-all approach to getting the best performance from individuals and creating the best experience for them to succeed in. Learn your team members’ strengths and create opportunities for them to utilize them. One person may work best in person, while others may soar when they’re able to buckle down and hone in on their duties alone in their chosen workspace. It may seem like a game of Tetris at first, but leaning into the specific needs and preferences of your team, paralleled with how everyone can work best together, will create the most effective and inspiring work environment for all. 

It’s important to remember that we are entering a new age of experimentation. While it may seem familiar, this is new territory, so everyone will have a different perspective and approach. We must find what works best for our teams while also merging with the methods and preferences of other companies and people we work with. For example, I’ve recently been asked to facilitate a session where I’m remote and everyone else is in person. Each experience we have in the hybrid workspace will be a prototype to help us build new and innovative ways of collaborating. 

This transition will be interesting and we’ll all have to decide for ourselves and for the betterment of our teams which approaches, systems, and processes create the most advantageous results. Stay curious and stay safe.

The post Exploring Hybrid Work Connection appeared first on Voltage Control.

As a student of how to make working together better, I’ve been reflecting on the work of past thought leaders who have influenced the business world we operate in. I find we can learn a lot when we revisit original ideas and mantras and apply them to our modern lives today. 

One such thought leader is Peter Drecker, a famous business coach and management mogul of the 1900s. He is in fact one of the original business gurus–considered as the founding father of modern management studies by common consent. Many of his ideas and thoughts on management are still used by managers worldwide today. He was one of the first authors to describe management as a distinct function and the role of a manager as a distinct responsibility; he understood and had sympathy for the challenges and demands that managers face. 

I’ve been thinking about his mantra: “What gets measured gets managed.” To me, it means that if we don’t track something and keep it top of mind, we’ll have no hope of improving or maintaining it. For example, if we don’t record the fact that we are always spending more money than we take in, then we don’t manage that problem, and we never fix it. 

His idea inspired my modern-day mantra of visualizing your thinking: “What gets visualized gets velocity”.  In other words, if everyone is not clear on the opportunity or direction, it’s very difficult–if not impossible–to get steady traction on collaborative work; and the best way to get clarity quickly is through visualizing!

One of the most effective ways to visualize your thinking is through a prototype designed to transform ideas into tangible, workable artifacts. Prototypes are visual representations of ideas and can take various forms. A picture is worth a thousand words, as they say, and a prototype is worth a thousand meetings.

The type of prototype depends on your objective. For example, a project manager may use a storyboard, written brief, or sample pitch of an idea to present to her team. A designer may use a mood board to portray his ideas, and a developer might code something to show her approach to other team members. To choose your prototype, think about how your idea can best be portrayed visually. 

This is critical for productive work because when we come together and just talk about ideas, we’re not truly doing anything. It can actually stop us from doing any meaningful work at all. So many times when a leader or manager asks for something and there is slow or no progress it usually because the team doesn’t fully understand the ask, and it’s hard to get motivated if you don’t understand the what and why. Creating a quick prototype that visualizes what you are going to do adds tons of clarity.

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Also, if we don’t capture ideas and input during meetings, it is likely they will be forgotten and participants might walk away with different interpretations of what happened. When we come together and prototype, we are able to see individuals’ thoughts and ideas and surface differences. Without the alignment and clarity from visualization,  teams get stuck in endless cycles of stopping and starting work, lose momentum, and eventually fall short of maximum acceleration. You are more aligned and able to execute in unison when you visualize and bring the thinking “together”. Using a prototype during meetings means nothing is forgotten and more is explored–achieving more velocity. 

Prototyping Tools

There are several excellent tools that help you construct, share, and collaborate prototypes. Here are a few of our favorites as Voltage Control:

1. Google Docs – Smart editing and styling tools support joint teamwork to flow smoothly and easily and keep ideas in one place. Teams can work on different pages or in different docs accordingly. Use comments and tags to work in real-time.
2. Google Slides – Interactive work templates with multiple pages to allow individual and collective work.
3. Google Sheets – Collaborative spreadsheets to organize, plan and update tasks and information. 
4.  Mural – Digital whiteboard with collaborative templates for visual collaboration including planning, brainstorming, and designing.
5.  Figma – Collaborative design platform to design, prototype, and gather feedback in real-time in one place.

The team at Voltage Control uses each of these tools every day to create prototypes and work together. Here’s an example of one of our MURAL templates used to brainstorm and get inspired around a new idea:

Find what prototype tools work best for you and develop a practice of bringing a prototype to every meeting. Doing so will provide clarity, direction, and actionable steps to help your team visualize for velocity and achieve more by doing the work in the meeting, together.  

The post What Gets Visualized Gets Velocity appeared first on Voltage Control.

By now, most of us have acclimated to a remote workplace, mastering the art of unmuting on video calls and staging our Zoom backgrounds to perfection. However, tools for remote meetings are constantly evolving, reimagining the way teams communicate and connect. While the in-person workplace may now feel abstract, company culture and employee engagement are experiencing a renaissance. These aspects of a team are an integral part of a company’s success. Poor company culture can be detrimental to a business. In fact, one in five Americans left a job due to poor company culture in 2019 according to a report by SHRM. Without the proper remote meeting tools, toxic workplaces can fester, even virtually. To cultivate engagement and achieve maximum collaboration leaders need to continue learning and leaning into new resources that support their remote teams.

Here are some of the best tools for remote meetings you need to know.

1) Scheduling Tool: Calendly

Meetings all commence in the same manner–by scheduling one. Simple enough. But synching various team schedules can be a nightmare, especially if participants live in different time zones or don’t share calendars. We’ve all felt the frustration of one key participant unable to attend and having to start the scheduling process from the beginning. To streamline this, companies can take advantage of the tool Calendly for all scheduling needs. Calendly is a free web-based tool that helps participants easily schedule meetings without redundant back-and-forth emails. 

Remember, the key to an effective meeting is to invite only the participants it requires to reach the meeting’s objectives. Leaders can easily fall into the habit of inviting everyone. But if someone attends that doesn’t provide value, it can actually be counterproductive to the overall efficiency of your meeting. Only invites who needs to be there and do it easily with Calendly.

2) Project Manager Platform: Asana, Monday, Basecamp, Trello, Etc. 

Many of us have already discovered and used a multitude of project management tools. These user-friendly collaboration platforms are designed to support communication and keep track of projects. They’re an effective way to stay organized and keep projects on schedule. Some platforms have more integrated features than others but most of them are relatively the same, providing a centralized location to submit pertinent project information and real-time status updates.

But beware, there is one significant defect that overlaps all of these tools. They must actually be adopted and used by the entire team to work.

We’ve witnessed many teams optimistically launch a project management tool to keep remote teams organized and communicative, only to have half the team active on the platform with the other half resistant to embrace the technology. These platforms won’t work if the entire team is not updating their tasks. Before implementing a project management tool, be sure everyone is on board and have every team member commit to the process. If you find this doesn’t work for your team’s workflow, don’t force this solution. Move on to another platform or system to better collaborate remotely across all skill levels and preferences.

3) Guidance: The Virtual Work Guide

For many teams, remote work was something they were thrust into. Newly remote teams were ill-prepared and lacked the skills and knowledge to make meetings a fully collaborative and effective experience. We created the Voltage Control Virtual Work Guide to help teams transition to the virtual workspace. It is a free resource that will help you understand how to best conduct virtual work meetings, virtual facilitation, remote Design Sprints, and how to keep and promote human connection in a virtual landscape. Well-designed virtual meetings will foster remote team alignment and fuel synergy.

4) Recognition Platform: Nectar

Recognition is important before, during, and after a meeting. Backed by science, we know that recognizing achievement is key to creating serotonin in the body. Thanking your team for their work and commitment does wonders for getting the juices flowing. Take recognition and team support to the next level with the tool Nectar. The platform allows remote team members to easily recognize and reward one another. Incorporating a healthy balance of positive reinforcement not only creates a supportive team, but it also cultivates a community.  

5) Website Feedback: Pastel

Collaborating on design and UX projects can be a challenge for remote teams. Shuffling through and implementing edits and feedback is a time suck. For website design, Pastel is the virtual collaboration tool you didn’t know you needed. Teams can leave comments, mockups, and copy suggestions across the website’s pages. This virtual collaboration tool makes exchanging feedback on websites streamlined and coherent.

6) To-do Lists: Focus To-do

Maybe an entire project management tool isn’t exactly what your team needs to stay on track. But you’d still like something to help organize and prioritize tasks, Focus To-do is what you need. This Pomodoro time and task management app helps teams perform and complete tasks efficiently. It’s an especially helpful tool to use to time your meeting’s brainstorm and breakout sessions.

7) Mind Mapper: Coggle

Remote teams may need more support for complex projects. Coggle is an excellent tool for remote meetings, especially when intricacy is involved. This diagram builder can be used for taking notes during meetings allowing teammates to contribute and edit your diagrams. The flexible mind-maps include multiple starting points, branches, and loops to represent process and workflow. Clarity is now just a Coggle away. 

8) Courses: Magical Meetings

Maybe you need a bit more than a guide for a renewed perspective on meetings and you’d like to discover even more methods and tools for remote meetings. To fully immerse yourself in meeting systems and better develop your approach, sign up for the Magical Meetings course. This comprehensive course will teach you how to make every meeting magical–from how to unearth valuable checklists and appealing agendas and getting the most out of your participants.

Virtual meetings don’t have to be met with eye-rolls or yawns. If designed with purpose and intent, they can inspire deep and creative thinking. Meetings can also draw teams closer, even at a distance. This requires the right facilitation skills that take time to master. To hone in on your technique, join us for our virtual community facilitation practices. These free weekly meet-ups help facilitators perfect their craft and improve meeting quality. You will practice your facilitation approach, discuss fresh trends, and connect with and learn from fellow facilitators. Exceptional meetings begin with exceptional facilitators. 

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The post 8 Tools for Exquisite Remote Meetings appeared first on Voltage Control.

“Using the other person’s words is the nearest thing that the FBI has to a Jedi mind trick, because when the other person hears their words coming back, what they think is that person is using words like mine, therefore, they must be like me, therefore, I should like them.” -Judy Rees

Judy Rees is a consultant at Rees McCann where she leads a community of trainers, facilitators, producers, and others who want to make online work better than in-the-room. She is also the author of the Web Events That Connect How-to Guide and co-author of Clean Language: Revealing Metaphors and Opening Minds.

In this episode of Control the Room, I talk with Judy about clean language, gardening, and contextual intent. Listen in to learn what subtleties can be uncovered in the words we use every day, through active listening and asking the right questions.

Show Highlights

[00:53] Judy’s Start
[08:57] Opportunities in Challenges and Constraints
[21:18] Linguistic Subtlety in Control the Room
[30:48] Similarity with Words in Communication
[44:20] Judy’s Final Thoughts

Links | Resources

Judy’s LinkedIn
Clean Language Questions
Rees-McCann’s Site

About the Guest

Judy Rees is a consultant that focuses on making remote work better than in-person. As such, her efforts in pioneering the virtual landscape of remote work have been noticeably fleshed out long before the pandemic and lauded by publications and industry professionals alike. With the emphasis she places on metaphors and language, Judy exercises a masterful hand in separating intent from perception and bridging the divide between parties to find an unlikely consensus.

About Voltage Control

Voltage Control is a change agency that helps enterprises sustain innovation and teams work better together with custom-designed meetings and workshops, both in-person and virtual. Our master facilitators offer trusted guidance and custom coaching to companies who want to transform ineffective meetings, reignite stalled projects, and cut through assumptions. Based in Austin, Voltage Control designs and leads public and private workshops that range from small meetings to large conference-style gatherings.

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Full Transcript

Douglas Ferguson:

Welcome to the Control the Room Podcast, the series devoted to the exploration of meeting culture and uncovering cures for the common meeting. Some meetings have tight control, and others are loose. To control the room means achieving outcomes while striking a balance between imposing and removing structure, asserting and distributing power, leaning in and leaning out, all in the service of having a truly magical meeting. Today I’m with Judy Rees at Rees McCann, where she leads a community of trainers, facilitators, producers and others who want to make online better than in the room for more of the people, more of the time. She’s also co-author of The Web Events that Connect How-To Guide and Clean Language: Revealing Metaphor and Opening Minds. Welcome to the show, Judy.

Judy Rees:

Nice to be here.

Douglas Ferguson:

So let’s start off with how you began. How did you get your start in this awesome work that you’re doing?

Judy Rees:

It’s a long story. But where I find myself now at the end of 2020, is I’ve spent 2020 mostly helping organizations take their in the room events online, mostly in the NGO world, so global organizations, UNICEF, Norwegian Refugee Council, World Health Organization, people who wanted to create events that really connected people to people, where relationship building was a critical part of the process. And webinars wouldn’t do the job for them. That sort of standard webinar process of 45 minutes of a presenter followed by 15 minutes of Q and A doesn’t do anything to build that relationships that get stuff done, or that keep donors attached to an organization, so that’s what we’ve been doing this year.

Judy Rees:

But I got into that pretty much by accident. I’ve been involved in a process called clean language, which is a precision inquiry methodology, a way of getting to understand what people really mean by what they say. And I wrote a book, co-authored a book about it, about 10 years ago. And we were trying to get groups of people together to learn it, learn the skills involved, but we couldn’t get groups together in the room. It was too niche, too difficult for people to find the money to train together in London here. And so we started teaching it online, and that was way back when it was thought that you can’t teach things online, particularly something as embodied, something as physical, something as metaphorical as clean language, you couldn’t possibly teach it online. But we found we had to, so we figured it out.

Judy Rees:

And first, we were doing that training over, I think it was Google Hangouts or Skype. And then gradually over the years, the tools got more sophisticated. And then about four years ago, 2016, I started creating an online un-conference, an open space like thing for the clean language community. And we’d get 100 and something people together for a whole day online over Zoom, and improvise an un-conference. And well, I’ve been doing that for a few years now, once or twice a year. And so when towards the tail end of 2019, the Greta Thunberg thing started happening, and people started saying, “Actually, we can no longer justify flying people all over the world.” Rees McCann was formed, and we started selling this ability to create online events that really connect people as a service. And we were teaching some fairly large global organizations just before the lockdown. And as the lockdown hit, they were immediately recommending us to people like UNICEF, or one of our early post lockdown clients. We were teaching the people in Italy, who were in some of the early lockdown stages, so that’s the kind of story, if that makes sense.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah. Absolutely. It’s really, really interesting that you were making the shift right as this wave came. We had a similar experience, and I can tell you I’m somewhat grateful for it, but it certainly still didn’t make it easy. I felt like I maybe had a posture of somewhat being ready, but man, it was difficult. It makes me feel very privileged because I think about all of my peers who weren’t quite so ready or anticipatory. So I wanted to just hear a little bit about your perspectives on that. And what are the kinds of things you’ve had to do to help kind of bring others along?

Judy Rees:

So I agree with you, I mean, I’d far rather be busy than the alternative. So many colleagues were just knocked flat, freelancers, freelance facilitators, and coaches and trainers, who had nothing for months, and didn’t know where the rent was coming from. I’d far rather be busy, but it was grim. We were working with organizations who were phoning us up, desperate. You can’t say no to The International Network for Education and Emergencies, when they’ve just been thwacked by a pandemic. But at the same time, I’m only human, and the business at that point was myself and my husband, who’s also my business partner, Rees and McCann.

Judy Rees:

So we were thinking, “Well, what can we do?” Well, we grabbed the people who were immediately around us and very quickly, very rapidly, taught them how to do some basic trainings that we were running. We sort of, we already knew they had training skills, and they understood at a basic level what we were doing. We showed them then more detail and said, “Go and deliver this for us.” And that was enough to get people started, to do things like: How do you actually set yourself up at the tools level, a technical level? How do you get lights? How do you get a headset? All those kinds of things.

Judy Rees:

And then to start them thinking about this is not just a technical problem. This is not just about the tools. This is also about the skills and learning how to use the tools, and the mindset that says, “Actually, in the room as educators, as trainers, we wouldn’t dream of talking at our students for 45 minutes.” Why on Earth do you think that’s okay online? Come on. Let’s rethink. Let’s stretch our heads a little bit. How can we make it work given the tools that we’ve got, given the constraints that we’ve got? And gradually, as things sort of settled down to some extent, people started to think more creatively about what they were creating, what they were designing, and to bring as many of those people together as we possibly could. We set up one of those online networks. Ours is called the Remote Together Community. We’ve got about 500 people there now, whose central theme, the central conceit, is that we want to make online gatherings better than in the room ones for more of the people, more of the time.

Judy Rees:

We don’t think that online gatherings can be better for everybody all the time, but we do think they have really significant advantages in terms of accessibility, in terms of obviously global warming and the traveling stuff. And conversations can happen online that really would never happen in the room. And some of the tools that are coming along for next year, things like the ability to do live captioning that’s already available in English, when that’s able to be translated cheaply and quickly, that’s going to make some conversations happen that we couldn’t dream of doing in the room without the cost being completely prohibitive. And live translation of an in the room event is ferociously expensive, very labor intensive. But look at what we might be able to do online. I’m really quite excited about that.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah. There’s tons of potential as we think about AI and hardware advances. I just personally picked up an Oculus. I didn’t realize that the price had dropped so much, and that they were self contained. It really blew my mind because I’ve been waiting for the moment where the hardware got ubiquitous, and I think we’re heading to that turning point pretty soon.

Judy Rees:

In some parts of the world. But a lot of the work that we’ve been doing is either focused on or includes some of the places where even a decent internet connection is beyond reach.

Douglas Ferguson:

That’s right. Yeah. You mentioned accessibility as a benefit for online, and it poses new problems too because now we’ve got accessibility constraints with the software. And we’ve got accessibility constraints with even internet. It’s kind of the have and have nots. Right?

Judy Rees:

Yeah. But for me, the potential is so big. We can’t let the current challenges stop us from moving forward. However, we do need to pay attention to what’s going on for people, and as far as we possibly can, not leave people feeling that they are being excluded, or they’re excluded forever, and instead, bring people along as much as we possibly can. And you get some quite remarkable people being willing to put some remarkable effort in once they realize that it’s worth it. In the event we did a couple of weeks ago, there’s an 87 year old lady who was very reluctant to come the first time around, this event. This time, she knew why it was happening. She knew she wanted to be there, and she’d spent enough time ahead of time to set herself up so it was going to work, and it did work. And she had a fantastic day.

Judy Rees:

Similarly, we’ve had people in various interesting parts of Africa who’ve, “Oh, I couldn’t possibly turn on my video camera, it just won’t work.” I said, “Just try. If it doesn’t work, that’s okay. We can do the other thing. But just try it and see what difference it makes.” And you’d be amazed how many people haven’t tried since it used to be Skype, and it never worked with Skype. So why would it ever work with Zoom? But Zoom does it differently, and it works.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah. It’s amazing too, how easy it is to get in those fixed mindsets. And when I see those behaviors, I often ask myself, “In what ways am I thinking that way?” And what are the things in my life am I saying, “Oh, the video won’t work”? Because it’s in us everywhere, and we learn things. It’s helpful, right? We have to create models and we have to commit things so that we don’t have to examine every little thing every time of the day. Right? Whenever I run into something like that, I try to have a ton of empathy and think to myself, “There’s got to be 10 things today that I did that are not serving me.”

Judy Rees:

Yeah. And mostly, we go through our lives just assuming that everything’s going to be the same as it always was, or else we wouldn’t get anything done.

Douglas Ferguson:

The more we’re finding ourselves in complex environments, the less and less that serves us.

Judy Rees:

And I think that’s why this year has been so exhausting for so many people because so many things have changed that we’ve had so little control over, that our heuristics broke at various stages.

Douglas Ferguson:

So I want to come back to clean language. And for listeners who have never heard of clean language, what’s the most important thing to know? What are the basics? How would someone get started?

Judy Rees:

Well, the most important thing for facilitators to know is that the underpinning principles of clean language are very similar to the underpinning principles of most effective facilitation. It’s not about you as the facilitator, it’s about them. It’s about creating a space for the other to express themselves clearly. So when groups and teams learn to use clean language principles in their interactions, they develop much richer curiosity about each other. Oh, I wonder why that person won’t turn on their camera, rather than, they won’t turn on their camera, they’re wrong. It becomes a curiosity. And we can use our precision inquiry technique, clean language, these questions, to find out more about what the person is thinking that makes it make sense for them to not turn on their camera.

Judy Rees:

And it’s particularly useful where people have a word, or an idea, or a thought, which superficially appears to be the same. But we can actually use clean language questions to tease out difference. So the example I tend to use in training is I get the whole group to think of a flower. Everybody think of a flower. And I’ll go around. What kind of flower is your flower? Oh, a lily. What kind is your flower is your flower? A sunflower. And eventually, we’ll get two the same. There’ll be two roses. And you ask a clean language question like: What kind of rose is that rose? To one person, and they’ll say, “It’s red.” What kind of rose is that rose? To the other person, they’ll say, “It’s pink.” And so on, you gradually tease out the distinctions between a similar word. So these questions are designed to elegantly tease out difference and diversity. And that can help a team or a group to become curious about each other, to become curious about what must be true for the other, for them to think like that.

Judy Rees:

Clean language has been quite extensively used in some mediation contexts. One colleague, for example, has used them in peace building in Northern Ireland, in South Africa, and in the Middle East, where he’s getting groups to effectively find ways to collaborate. Another mediator friend has used them with parties that are trying to negotiate in really difficult negotiations in business and in legal situations. So where you get a curiosity about the other, then you start to create a space where collaboration can happen. And clean language gets right in there. Clean language, which was created by this guy, David Grove, who died about 10 years ago, he designed it specifically to ask about people’s metaphors because he recognized that metaphor is the atom of thought, the negative language of the unconscious mind.

Judy Rees:

And by using these questions to ask about people’s metaphors, you can really start to discover stuff about people, and in a context where you want people, or where people want to change or get something different happening, the metaphors can be a very profound way of helping that to happen. But to go back to what I said at the beginning, the point is not that the facilitator is trying to change the person with the metaphor, or trying to deliberately shift the metaphors, the point is that the facilitator is there to facilitate, to enable something different to happen.

Douglas Ferguson:

And so can you give us some examples of types of metaphors, or maybe something you’ve seen in the past to help make that a little more clear to folks that maybe aren’t quite understanding how he’s working with these metaphors?

Judy Rees:

So in the sentence that you … This is where everybody starts to stumble over their words because if I start to draw attention to metaphors in what you just said, or in what I’m saying, I will trip over my words. So trip over in that sentence is a metaphor. I’m not literally tripping over my words, not literally catching my foot in my words and falling over. That’s a metaphor. Metaphors are used at a rate of about six per minute in ordinary English, depending which ones you count. So when you ask me, I’m not going to do this because it would end up being very silly, but when you ask me, “How could you make that clear?” Clear is also a metaphor. And one could ask, “What kind of clear is that clear?” Or is there anything else about clear like that?

Douglas Ferguson:

Sure. So it’s interesting. I would argue that you could use this for not only metaphor, but also jargon.

Judy Rees:

Absolutely. One of my favorite examples of it being used in business is a colleague of mine was working as a business analyst on a software project which involved two banks, one in the Netherlands, one in Belgian. They were collaborating on a big project, some system or other. And my colleague was quite a long way down the development path. He was doing a quick workshop to check some details. And he suddenly, there was something about the way a jargon word was used that prompted him to ask some clean language questions about it. And it emerged that the Dutch group and the Belgium group meant something subtly different by that jargon. And this case study is actually online. His bosses said that they credited the clean language questions with saving the project from being one of those classic: Oh, my God, how much money have we spent because of a mistake? It was a multi million euro project, and a few clean language questions to pick up the distinctions between jargon made a huge difference.

Douglas Ferguson:

That’s amazing. I ran into that once with a client. I mean, I see it all the time, but this one time, it was massive. And the word they were using was a word that’s very highly associated with their brand. And so there was an emotional connection. Right? And they were using this word for a new project, but they were using it in a different domain. So instead of applying it to, I’m making this up, but instead of applying it to cars, they’re going to apply it to tractors, or something. Right? And so it’s like a bit of a shift to where now people had to imagine what it means for this word to live in that different context. And so they all translated it differently.

Douglas Ferguson:

I was starting to pick up on some discrepancies on how they were talking about it, so I kind of steered the whole workshop to talking about that, even though that’s not what they brought us in to do. But that created way more value than … We still got to the other outcome as well, but they were kind of scratching their heads. Why are we spending so much time talking about this? And I just kept pushing and pushing, then it finally all just came unraveled. And they were just blown away. They thought, “Wow. We thought we were so aligned because we were restating the mission statement.” But they were all completely disconnected.

Judy Rees:

Yeah. Lovely example. It’s great because metaphor is not only really fundamental to the way people think, it’s also very fundamental to the way people communicate and the way people align. So by taking the workshop down that route to establish … One of my friends does a really interesting thing about agile because he’s in that software development space. And he’s done a whole thing on what kind of agile is your agile?

Douglas Ferguson:

Yes, I love it. As a reformed CTO, I can tell you that’s an issue. You’ve even got people that are like, “We’re big agile. We’re little agile.” It’s a flavor of the month kind of thing.

Judy Rees:

But yes, so that metaphor piece can be really, really rich.

Douglas Ferguson:

That’s great. So I wanted to also see if you could provide any examples of the types of questions you would use in clean language.

Judy Rees:

So clean language has got a set, a very limited question set. So if you go to cleanlanguagequestions.com, that should redirect to my website, where you can see on one page, 12 questions that are the core clean language questions. And of those questions, two are used 80% of the time. We nicknamed those the lazy Jedi questions because you can do all the Jedi stuff, but with just two questions.

Douglas Ferguson:

I love it. We have a book called Magical Meetings, and we talked about being the facilitator Jedi. And we also love the phenomenon of what we call it, being the lazy facilitator, which just means when you don’t have to lean in all the time. There’s an irony in the title of Control the Room, because we don’t feel that you should be controlling. But we have to bring some intention. We’ve got some tools we can use to control the outcomes, but we don’t want to stifle people. And so I love that you combine those two things that we love, which is the lazy facilitator and the facilitator Jedi into the lazy Jedi.

Judy Rees:

Can I share with you that I very nearly said no to doing this podcast on the basis of Control the Room?

Douglas Ferguson:

I get it. And I hear that a lot. And it was intentionally controversial. I wanted to make people think because I think a lot of folks come to facilitation with that mindset. And everything we’re talking about at all times is how we create space, how we lean back, and how the tools can help us be intentional. We certainly want to make sure that there’s some intention and we’re driving to some outcome, but we certainly don’t want to stifle people.

Judy Rees:

Yeah. So a way one might use clean language in this situation would be for me to ask you a few questions about what kind of control is that control, when control the room, because clearly, it’s not the kind of control that I was thinking it was when I got an out of the blue email saying, “Would you like to come on The Control the Room Podcast?” I’m going, “What? Why would I want to do that?” But of course, once you make a few inquiries, you think, “Actually, that can’t possibly be what he meant.”

Douglas Ferguson:

That’s right. And I love that it gets people thinking, and it gets some people really upset, which is, I don’t know, it kind of points at the work that you’re doing. Right? We’ve got to just drill layers deeper than just what we see at the surface.

Judy Rees:

And control, for me, that kind of control that I think you’re getting at is about placing some constraints on what happens in order to make it safe for people to have the conversations that need to be had. For example, the event I was doing the other week, which is called Meta Forum, we had a big discussion in the middle of it about the constraints that I, as the benevolent dictator, had put on the event, and whether they were the right or wrong constraints. And I love that kind of discussion because without the constraints, nobody shows up and nobody has the conversations they need to have.

Douglas Ferguson:

That’s right. And it can’t be a free for all. I like the garden metaphor. If we don’t tend the soil, if we don’t remove the weeds, if we don’t create the initial conditions, then the plants will never grow, but we can’t make them grow. Right? But we are exhibiting some control over this environment. We’re creating those conditions and we’re setting things up. So very much like, if we don’t go higher of space, if we don’t go research the software and decide we’re going to use Zoom, or Keeko Chat, or Teooh, or Spaces, or whatever it is, then it’s out of control, and we won’t get anything done.

Judy Rees:

And when control, in a garden like that, is there anything else about that garden for you?

Douglas Ferguson

Yeah. Gosh. I don’t know how far I’ve taken the metaphor per se, so this might be an interesting discussion just to see what evolves, but I think there’s … Well, often too, when I think about gardening, I might have … I work with my wife on the garden, so sometimes there’s different roles, and we participate and show up in different ways. So I think we’re both tending to these plants, but we’re looking at it, we approach it from different perspectives. Also, I like the notion that if the plants, if you leave them be and protect them from the birds and the rabbits, then they eventually bear fruit, and they do that on their own. It’s not like anything that I did. I created a spot for them and protected them a bit, and then magic came from them.

Judy Rees:

And I could ask you what kind of fruit, and I could ask you what kind of magic, and so on and so forth. And notice what just happened. By asking about your metaphor, we started to have a more interesting conversation because it’s almost impossible to not get interested in your own metaphor.

Douglas Ferguson:

You know what else I like about this, there’s so much depth to that, but there’s a subtle little thing over the top that I think is worth mentioning, which is, if you’re using this tool or this approach, then it’s sort of assuming that you’re on the lookout for metaphors. And if you’re paying close enough attention to detect if someone’s using a metaphor, then you can’t help but to active listen.

Judy Rees:

And there’s an even easier layer of it than that. So when you start with the clean language questions, each of the questions has a space in it where there’s an X. The X represents the other person’s words. So the most commonly used clean language question is: What kind of X? So in order to put anything in that X, you have to be listening well enough to remember at least one of their words.

Douglas Ferguson:

Okay. I’m ready to use this because I’ve been saving a word that you said earlier that I really wanted to understand more. I’m going to ask you: What kind of embodiment? So earlier, you were saying that it’s really difficult, or it’s almost like a wicked question that you pose, which was: How can we do this work online when so much of it, when it’s so embodied? And I was thinking, “That’s interesting.” So how is clean language embodied?

Judy Rees:

Well, it’s embodied because metaphors typically have a location, and the thoughts typically have a location, either inside one’s body or outside one’s body, particularly feelings, but not only feelings. If you ask the third clean language question, so the first one is: What kind of X? The second one is: Is there anything else about X? The third one we normally introduce is: And where is X? So one could ask something like: And where is control? And control will have some kind of physical location in or around the person being asked. And when David Grove was doing this work, he then got very interested in how human beings map out their inner worlds inside and outside themselves. The classic NLP thing about the past is behind you, and the future, in front, in Western societies, but perhaps different to that in other cultures, is one way of thinking about it.

Judy Rees:

Another friend has thought about it in terms of head, heart, and gut. If you think about gut feelings, they have a physical location in the gut. Think about love, all those kinds of heart things, they typically have physical locations in the heart. And you’ll put ideas at a distance. You’ll get on top of things. You’ll get under the weather. The spatial metaphors in our language are so fundamental, so embedded, that it’s almost as if, well, it is as if while all these other kinds of metaphors, agile and garden… are all very well. But space is at a very profound level in our thinking. And as facilitators, we’ve traditionally used spatial metaphors in terms of moving people around rooms, sitting in a circle. If you feel this, go to that side, if you feel the other, go to the other side, and so on and so forth. Well, those work because human beings think in metaphor, spatially. And the spatial metaphors in our language are hidden in the prepositions, often, on top, in control.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah. It’s fascinating. It makes me think of the mind palaces, and how that can be such a powerful way to remember things. So just that memory device of helping people think temporally, or kind of where or when can help people get some more clarity, provide more detail to around how they’re thinking and what they’re thinking about, versus: What do you mean? And it’s like, “whoops”. Plus, I love that these questions are softer. Right? They’re exploratory in a way that maybe would prevent someone from being defensive because they don’t feel under attack, or they don’t feel at a loss, because if they’re at a loss and they don’t know what to say, then that could be frightening, so we definitely don’t want people to be. And so I think that’s really fascinating. I’m liking what I’m hearing.

Judy Rees:

There’s something very, very interesting about using the other person’s words. Now Chris Voss, who is a hostage negotiating person who wrote a book called Never Split the Difference.

Douglas Ferguson:

I just interviewed his mentor.

Judy Rees:

Excellent.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, Gary Noesner founded the FBI group that Chris kind of came up through.

Judy Rees:

Brilliant.

Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah, great stuff.

Judy Rees: 

So one of the ideas that I got from Chris Voss’s book is to think about using the other person’s words because I’d been doing it all the while through clean language. And they, oh, blimey, Chris Voss says, “Using the other person’s words is the nearest thing that the FBI has to a Jedi mind trick,” because when the other person hears their words coming back, what they think is that person is using words like mine, therefore, they must be like me, therefore, I should like them.

Douglas Ferguson:

Right. The other thing too is if you’re listening that carefully, then you’re not going to miss the nuance. And the nuance is required to connect with people, so there’s so many levels of why that works, it’s just powerful. Even the verbs, I guess this comes back to metaphor, but if people are talking about I feel versus I think. For instance, if someone says, “It’s good to see you,” and you come back with, “It’s great to hear your voice,” that’s disconnected language, versus, “It’s great to see you too,” or, “That’s a lovely sweater.” Something, what follows that same thread versus disconnecting it, because if they said, “See,” then they’re talking about a sense of seeing versus a sense of hearing. And if we shift those, then we’re kind of disconnecting from them.

Judy Rees:

But it’s really hard work to track the sensory structure of what somebody’s saying, particularly if it’s different from yours. It’s really easy to track metaphor, because metaphor is multisensory. So if you think about space, so let’s say thinking about being in control, that’s a spatial metaphor. How do you know you’re in from a sensory point of view? Well, you can see some kind of container. You can possibly hear an echo, or sound differences that make it clear that you’re in a container. You can almost certainly touch the edges, so you can feel it. So the three most common sensory structures are all available at the same time, and that’s actually much closer to how human beings represent their thoughts internally, is they actually use multiple senses at once.

Judy Rees:

And as was observed all those years ago, people do often have a dominant sense that they use in their language, but it’s not consistent. You’re not a visual person in that sense because you’ll get someone who will talk all about their business, and I see, I see, I see, and then suddenly, when they’re talking about their family, they transfer to feeling words. So that’s hard work to keep track of that, whereas stay with the metaphor and appreciate that the metaphor is what they mean, it really is what they mean. It’s not so much the words, it’s the metaphor. The words are describing the metaphor, not the metaphor describing the words.

Douglas Ferguson:

Well, the other thing is jargon and metaphor, we use it as a tool to encode a vast corpus of knowledge or thinking. Right? We use it to be efficient so that we can just say something, but mean a lot. But the issue is that meaning gets lost, and so if we don’t slow down and unpack it, then we can’t get to what that meaning really is, and really connect with one another. And then there’s also the risk of how I decode it. If I innocently decode it to mean something else, and now we’re totally thinking different things, and then now you’re saying something else, and I’m layering that on top of another, on top of assumption, on an assumption, assumption, then we’re in bad territory.

Douglas Ferguson:

So these tools, they’re almost crutches, right, to help us have more efficient language, or to have a faster conversation? But I love that your tools slow it down because often, we probably do need to slow it down and really get to the reality.

Judy Rees:

Well, it slows it down to get to the reality, but it speeds it up in terms of not having to deal with all the consequences of misunderstandings.

Douglas Ferguson:

Most of my career, no matter what I’ve been doing, whether it’s agile and software development, or helping run design design sprints with people, or any kind of workshops, I often come back to, we need to slow down to speed up because if we don’t take the moment, if we don’t take that moment, then these mistakes are going to compile on top of each other. It’s like compounding interest.

Judy Rees:

And it produces all sorts of weird effects, so just by … And I’m not saying everybody needs to be absolutely crystal clear about everything, about everybody, all the time. That would be ridiculous. We’d never get anything done. Nothing would be fun.

Douglas Ferguson:

And we’d be boring too. Sometimes those mistakes are fun.

Judy Rees:

But particularly when we’re doing things that are important and where we’re about to take a step that matters, spending a little bit of time to understand what’s going on for each individual and also for the group as a whole is going to make a big difference.

Douglas Ferguson:

So I want to hear a little bit about … I know that you’ve been running an un-conference for many years. In fact, I think this maybe was the fourth one recently that just happened.

Judy Rees:

It’s the fifth one, but we’ve been running it for four years.

Douglas Ferguson:

The fifth one, wow.

Judy Rees:

So there was one year we had two events. So it’s called Meta Forum, and it started because I wanted to get the clean language enthusiasts together to inspire each other, gather information, and so on. But I was also really, really curious about whether we could do any kind of open space-y un-conference thing online. I knew people had done it with text and get people online to send messages to each other in text. But I didn’t know if anyone had done it using video conferencing. And when Zoom was commonly available at that point, and had breakout rooms, I thought we can make something out of this. We can make an event that will really enable a bunch of 100 or so clean language facilitators to connect with each other from wherever they are in the world. And we’ll have some decent conversations, inspire each other, and regroup.

Judy Rees:

As I said, David Grove died about 10 years ago, so this was sort of five years after he’d died, six years after he’d died. And the community was probably either going to sort of all go its separate ways, and we’d probably never hear anything from it again, and so on, so I thought, “Let’s give it a go.” And I was also very curious to know if it could be done and when it could be done. I assumed that people would then beat a path to my door to hire me to do other ones. Didn’t happen until the pandemic.

Douglas Ferguson:

So what have you discovered through all this work of running these multiple events? I’m sure each one looks a little different than the one before it. What sorts of discoveries have you been learning? And what are you seeing as far as possibilities for what’s next?

Judy Rees:

I think the big thing is this thing about: How do you put enough constraints in place so that people feel psychological safety to sign up to engage and to actually engage in reality on the day? When it comes to running an open space event in a room, everybody knows how rooms work. They know how sticky notes work. They know how chairs work. As soon as you put the same thing online, there’s a whole lot of confusion from a whole lot of people. There’s a small group of people, of course, who go, “Oh, great. It’s online. Let’s just bash straight in.” But that’s not inclusive. That’s not accessible to a whole bunch of the people that you want to include.

Judy Rees:

And thinking about pre pandemic, 2016, most of the people who were comfortable with video conferencing with things like Zoom were youngish white men with a techy background. The clean language community, though it includes some of those people, tends to be older and more female than the pure tech group, and even older and more female than the agile coach group, who have been some significant adopters of clean language in the last five years or so. But we want to include more, so I was thinking, “How can we do this?”

Judy Rees:

So the first time, I actually said, “We’re going to run a hybrid event. We’re going to have one track where all through the day, all 12 hours, all 13 hours of it, we’re going to have a really good speaker speaking in the main room.” But we still want people to run sessions in parallel. But of course, that meant that the parallel sessions didn’t get many people, didn’t really work. So we adjusted it. We tried things out. And this time, we kept the whole wall of sessions open, but we did beforehand, we put a set of Google Slides up beforehand and said, “Look, if you’re thinking of running a session and you want to talk to people about it, want to get some feedback, just let people know that you’re thinking of doing it at such a time. Pop a slide in this Google Slide deck.” And that turned out to be really, really, worthwhile.

Judy Rees:

People were using the comments to just plus one that they wanted to be there. People were using those slides to say, “I really would like to attend a session like this, but I’m not qualified to run it. Could somebody do a basic introduction to clean language? Could somebody do a basic introduction to metaphor?” And quite quickly, we could use comments to attract attention from the people we thought could help. And of course, behind the scenes with those particular two, I could approach some people directly and say, “I know you can do it,” or, “I know you have a student who can do that. Could you just give them a nudge?”

Judy Rees:

Because of course, people who are students of a subject, there’s always, if you get everybody together, there’s always a hierarchy, and the people who are newer in the field will be a little bit reluctant to step up and say, “Well, I can teach basic facilitation skills. But what if the boss shows up?” So there’s always a bit of nudging. And some of that nudging is different in the online environment. In the room, we could just sidle up to people in the coffee lounge. Online, we have to find other routes. But we have to find those routes without it feeling like we’re being deliberately manipulative, so there are some fine balances to be found.

Judy Rees:

One of the big controversies was around, at the beginning of the most recent one, which two weeks ago, we thought it was too difficult for participants to manage putting sticky notes on the wall of sessions. Again, we were using Google Slides, and it was a bit clunky. We chose not to use a different tool, which would’ve been simpler for a number of reasons. So we chose to use Google Slides, and it was clunky and it was horrible. So early in the day, we made a decision at our first opening of the space, we ran three opening and three closings, so each four hour chunk was a separate open space at one level.

Judy Rees:

First time we ran it, we got technical people to put the stickies on the board. But that felt really like we were controlling the board. Then next time round, we tried to reduce that. And then the third time round, people were in fact putting their own stickies on the board. But they learned the skill. They weren’t trying to master everything all at once. This year, of course, Meta Forum is not the only online un-conference that I’ve run. I’ve run small ones with 20, 30 people, bigger ones, where we’ve had again, un-conference sections within much larger events, spaces, for example, a worldwide network of engineers doing a solar energy, wind power, all those kinds of things. Those kinds of engineers wanted to get together 50 of them. They would’ve normally gone all together to Norway, but they didn’t. They did it online. We created spaces where they could raise the topics that they needed to discuss.

Douglas Ferguson:

Isn’t it amazing, the shifts? I mean, we talked about some benefit, some folks don’t, but really, the opportunity that is before us is quite large. And I think when we look at the connections that can be established that just wouldn’t have otherwise, it’s quite exciting.

Judy Rees:

I could talk a lot about any of these events because I just find them perpetually fascinating. The fact that basically, with each event that people attend, they learn more. They get more confident with any of the technical tools. And we’re starting to get to the point now where there’s a critical mass of facilitators, trainers, educators, who’ve experienced this, experienced it, done well.

Douglas Ferguson:

And I like the idea that even in the one event, you were moving people up that maturity curve. I think that’s really fascinating. And so to your point, the maturity is increasing across the board because people are attending more things. But you can design your event to welcome people early. And then by the end, they’re doing more sophisticated things. That’s pretty amazing too. So I want to stop us here there because we could go on for a really long time. Well, you have a natural place to stop because this is so much fun. But I’m going to have to close it out, so I would love to give you an opportunity to leave our listeners with a parting thought.

Judy Rees:

Well, I’ve talked about the potential of this thing. But so one of the potentials is to stay connected. Keep in touch with each other if we’re interested in this stuff. My invitation is to go to reesmccann.com. And on there, you will find a place to download our Web Events That Connect how-to guide, which is a really simple guide to doing these kind of things. But for the more sophisticated facilitators listening, signing up for that guide will also put you on my weekly link letter list, where I pull together a weekly selection of about 10 things from the internet, including things about clean language, things about online facilitation, things about how people think, that I think a lot of your listeners will find interesting. So do feel free to sign up for that link letter and stay in touch with me.

Douglas Ferguson:

Thank you so much, Judy. It’s been a pleasure having you.

Judy Rees:

It’s been really good fun talking to you. Thank you very much.

Douglas Ferguson:

Thanks for joining me for another episode of Control the Room. Don’t forget to subscribe to receive updates when new episodes are released. And if you want more, head over to our blog, where I post weekly articles and resources about working better together, voltagecontrol.com.

The post Episode 37: Clean Language, Clear Metaphors appeared first on Voltage Control.

A post-pandemic world is on the horizon, however, working remotely may be here to stay. Many companies have opted to remain in a remote workplace or evolve the traditional office into a modern hybrid model. Before moving forward, leaders need to reevaluate processes in order to improve remote team alignment. Prior to the Covid-19 outbreak, only 7 percent of US employees had access to a “flexible workplace” according to a report by the Pew Center of Research. Companies were catapulted into swiftly accommodating remote employees in order to abide by stay-at-home orders. 

A dip in productivity has always been a top concern for companies in regard to remote work. However, many employees have embraced the changes. In fact, 65 percent of employees wanted to stay fully remote after the pandemic, while 31 percent preferred a hybrid work arrangement according to a survey conducted by Flexjobs. In that same survey, 51 percent of respondents indicated that they have been more productive working from home during COVID-19.

But what about the other 49 percent? How can companies improve remote team alignment that will bolster employee engagement and overall productivity without being in an office? With a lack of office distractions and politics, is it truly possible for employees to become even more productive? To answer these questions, you must start with your current company processes and analyze how they support or hinder an effective remote workforce.

Make the following five changes to your company processes to overcome common management techniques and attitudes, and you will steer your organization toward a highly efficient, creative, and successful remote work environment.

1. No Unnecessary Meetings

To compensate for the lack of team proximity, many leaders rely on meetings as a method to keep employees engaged. But filling up employee calendars with multiple meetings a week can have the opposite effect. Zoom fatigue is real. Excessive and unstructured meetings can cultivate more chaos than calm, suffocating productivity. Meetings must have a clear objective. One of our mantras at Voltage Control is “No purpose. No meeting.” Teams need to work together to obtain a tangible goal. As soon as the purpose of a meeting is clear, you can create an agenda equipped with the necessary structure to achieve it.

Status updates or announcements may be better shared through asynchronous communication (such as Slack) or team huddles. Huddles offer teams a space to present challenges and seek input from their colleagues. But this is not a free-for-all discussion. Instead, these huddles should include special project updates or notable undertakings. This ensures that projects move forward and team members are supported throughout challenges. If it’s your first time building meeting systems for remote teams, you may feel overwhelmed. Consider turning toward outside resources like our Magical Meetings course for expert guidance and support.

2. Check In On Your Team

We need more empathy now more than ever, especially in the workplace. It’s easy to hide frustrations and personal struggles when shielded by a computer. Without regular watercooler run-ins, personal interactions can quickly dissolve within remote teams. These exchanges are still needed to grow and click as a collective unit. 

Don’t just assume everyone is okay. Make it a point to reach out and check in on the team’s personal well-being. Offer space for everyone to share and bond. If possible, add elements to simulate an in-office experience. For example, the team can listen to a shared radio station such as JBQX while they work together, apart. Create various channels of communication that encourage your team to remain virtually social. This could be a “water cooler” channel on Slack that allows for team members to share non-work-related topics. From their favorite binge-worthy shows to photos of their four-legged assistants, sharing personal moments will help keep everyone connected. 

3. Update Meeting Systems and Tools

The extreme shift in workplace structure due to the pandemic caused many organizations to quickly move in-office processes virtually. Many companies were ill-prepared to set up remote work environments that were both collaborative and effective. Now that fully remote or hybrid workplaces are becoming permanent for many organizations, leaders need to reevaluate their current processes.

Well-designed meeting systems need to be addressed and thoughtfully curated to align with a virtual setting. 

A key component to meetings that need to be updated is the technology and tools incorporated into meeting systems. Video should be used during virtual meetings because it builds connection, boosts communication, and breeds comradery. However, not every team member is enthused by the idea of turning on their video for every meeting. Encourage the utilization of virtual backgrounds or Snap Camera to make the experience more fun and engaging for everyone. Another tool that continues to evolve is OBS for video recordings and live streams.  Incorporating these new technologies to support remote workplaces will allow for a more collaborative and cohesive team.

4. Eliminate Siloed Work

Transparency is key to improve remote team alignment and creates a culture of trust. To curate a transparent work environment virtually, lean into sharing projects and assignments with other team members and even departments. Use a tool like Google Drive or similar collaborative cloud-based applications to keep work visible and also break down virtual silos that hinder communication. This isn’t a tactic to encourage micro-managing. Instead, it allows for everyone to be informed on one another’s projects and builds a united front. By discussing and addressing challenges, individuals are more likely to take initiative in finding a resolution together.

Transparency also lends itself towards a more organized workflow. It’s critical to ensure that all team members are on the same page when you’re not in the same office space. Communication is most effective when team members can work in sync with one another. Shared project management tools like Trello, Basecamp, and Process Sheet help to keep everyone on track and provides clarity on tasks.

5. Avoid echo chambers

It’s easy for leaders to get stuck in their echo chamber, especially in a remote workplace. To break out of their own biases and to cultivate a more inclusive work culture, leaders need to collect feedback from the team. Requesting feedback allows you to make necessary adjustments to your virtual workflow and meetings. After gathering feedback, you must develop a plan to address issues and realign the team with new strategies. When your team feels safe to share their sentiment, it will foster remote team alignment and fuel synergy.

Another way to break out of your echo chamber is to seek outside support. Ask for input from other leaders in your organization regarding your processes. To navigate through complicated processes, consider collaborating with design-thinking facilitators. They provide third-party perspectives that can identify gaps in your meeting systems and explore new communication methods.

Need help improving remote team alignment?

We can assist you! We have several services and resources to help you get the most out of your team. Let us lead you through our specialized Team Alignment Process or inquire about our other consulting services so we can best serve your needs. Contact us at hello@voltagecontrol.com.

The post 5 Ways To Improve Remote Team Alignment appeared first on Voltage Control.

It’s almost been a year since the switch to digital meetings and workshops. Digital events like remote workshops aren’t always guaranteed to run smoothly. Whether the culprit is a technical glitch, a family member who needs your attention right when you’ve started delivering your perfectly-crafted speech, or a nosy pet who is determined to spend the entire workshop trying to jump on your keyboard, fostering a spirit of focus and connection in a virtual meeting or workshop can be a major challenge.

This doesn’t mean that any remote workshop is doomed to fail. In fact, with the right perspective and a little bit of work, your virtual workshop can provide all of the value and human connection of an in-person event. Read on to learn about how you can craft a remote workshop that makes its attendees feel calm, comfortable, and connected — and has all the benefits of meeting in person with none of the risks.

Preparation is Key

One major key to hosting a great remote workshop is preparation. Give yourself plenty of time to determine when and where your remote workshop will take place. Set yourself up for success by selecting the virtual platform you want to use for your remote workshop. Make sure you understand how it works, and get comfortable with its ins and outs. Consider selecting a backup platform in case you run into issues as the date of your remote workshop draws closer.

But don’t limit your preparation to just yourself. No one wants to get emails the morning of their workshop and find themselves scrambling to download a virtual tool. Send out plenty of information in advance to your attendees about how to access the workshop. Add an itinerary of what you’ll be doing, and any materials they might need. Take the time to plan your remote workshop in advance to ensure you are more focused on your team.

Get Involved

A good in-person workshop should leave its participants feeling excited, inspired, and connected with their fellow participants. So, there’s no reason why a remote workshop should be any different! Instead of spending each section of your remote workshop delivering presentations or leading rote Q&As, think outside the box. Let your teams engage in virtual design thinking exercises or spend time in assigned or randomly generated breakout rooms. Don’t be afraid to break up the monotony of an endless string of Zoom presentations!

Little things can make a difference, too! While you’re waiting for your remote workshop to start or you’re enjoying a brainstorming session, play some fun, energizing music to make your remote workshop feel like a more open and welcoming space. Making the attendees feel excited, inspired, and energized is a great way to turn a remote workshop into a success.

Be Flexible

It’s nearly been a year since we made the switch to virtual meetings. Additionally, it’s still true that remote workshops are often more exhausting than in-person workshops. Adjust for this truth instead of trying to fight it. Shorten your sessions to allow people to remain 100% focused for the entirety of each exercise. Also, add numerous short breaks throughout your daily itinerary that will allow attendees to grab snacks or stretch their legs.

It’s also smart to consider making changes based on your specific participants. Furthermore, think about what would work best for them. For example, a team of young professionals might prefer to power through a full day of a remote workshop. Whereas, parents juggling working from home with providing child care may prefer two days of shorter sessions. Implementing the schedule that works best for the team will make them feel seen, comfortable and respected. Also, this can mean that they’ll be more likely to be fully engaged during the entirety of the remote workshop.

Schedule Cleanup Time

Cleanup time is the perfect way to keep your virtual workshop from being too rigidly scheduled or too free-flowing. Like Goldilocks’ third bowl of porridge, it creates a perfect balance that will make your remote workshop feel “just right”. Scheduling cleanup time involves letting your workshop participants hang out and relax after the workshop is over. Instead of abruptly ending your Zoom session or moving onto another segment. Why take the time to hang? Well, not only is it great for capturing the magic of an in-person workshop and letting attendees connect with each other in a casual, low-pressure setting, but attendees may even feel comfortable enough in a more relaxed setting that they casually ask that question they were too afraid to ask in an earlier, more structured Q&A session.

Help keep cleanup time low-key by not listing it on the agenda. However, be sure to generate some ideas for a semi-structured activity in case people want to stick around but feel unsure of how to get to know each other. Having a fun icebreaker in your back pocket, asking a silly question, or even encouraging everyone to introduce their pets is a great way to foster connection — even when everyone is miles apart.

Don’t Forget to Debrief

With shutdowns being extended through at least the next few months, it’s possible that this won’t be the only remote workshop you ever run. An easy way to make your next remote workshop even better is to collect as much feedback as possible. Debriefing is a great way to figure out what your attendees liked and didn’t like, as well as to encourage them to provide suggestions for improvements. Consider incorporating a session dedicated to gathering and parsing feedback into your remote workshop, or follow up with a detailed survey or questionnaire after the remote workshop for your participants to fill out. Soliciting feedback can be stressful for even the most seasoned workshop coordinator but the information it provides can be helpful for bringing your future remote workshops to a whole new level of excellence.

Run Your Own Remote Workshop Successfully

Do you want to run a successful remote workshop but don’t know where to start? Voltage Control facilitates events of all kinds, including live online workshops, boot camps, summits, and meetings. Please don’t hesitate to contact us at hello@voltagecontrol.com if you have questions or would like to schedule a consultation.

The post How to Run a Successful Remote Workshop appeared first on Voltage Control.