Distributed Workforce

An experiential coaching workshop to help you facilitate and lead a creative and effective distributed workforce.

Running a distributed team requires much more than just working remotely and using Zoom. You have to change your paradigm around traditional collaboration. If you are able to, a team that can execute asynchronously can do things a traditional team can’t. In this fun, fast-paced, hands-on class, you’ll sharpen your facilitation and leadership skills through practice and peer feedback. Our facilitators will lead you through various virtual facilitation methods and distributed team management, teaching why and how they work.

You’ll practice tips and tricks so you can incorporate these jedi techniques into everyday distributed team workflows like a pro. You’ll end the day with a new way of looking at facilitating work online and the confidence to approach it with renewed energy and optimism. It’s not just about a bigger toolbox, but developing a new paradigm that you can draw on to be a master leader for a distributed team that collaborates virtually.

Date

September 23, 2020

Time

11am - 3pm CT​

Location

Live Online

Interested in hearing when this workshop will occur next?

Interested in a private cohort for your team?

What to expect

What to Expect

Getting good work done is hard enough in person. In a virtual context, it requires even more attention to detail. How do you keep all teammates engaged during virtual meetings and how do you distribute the work in an asynchronous manner? It takes a pro-level toolkit and mindset to leave virtual meeting participants excited about the next virtual meeting. In this workshop, you will find many tools to get the most out of a team’s distributed intelligence.

What You'll Learn

We will coach you how to leverage new paradigms like asynchronous project management, capturing virtual team intelligence in a virtual meeting, how to pivot when virtual challenges come your way, and drafting the correct narratives as the backbone of your distributed culture. Lastly, we will show you how to capture feedback so that each member in the meeting is leveling up, regardless of where they are.

How You'll Learn

The class will be activity-based with facilitation simulations and collaborative sessions. You’ll have the chance to try new facilitation approaches and frameworks in a safe space. We won’t just talk at you — you’ll learn through doing, work with other participants, and get feedback. There will be plenty of time for Q&A, so you can learn from our experience running hundreds of workshops at some of the world’s largest enterprises.

Agenda

Deep Work Session 1

The different levels of virtual work

Deep Work Session 2

The frameworks to decentralize command and distributed contribution

Deep Work Session 3

The tools to foster creativity and capture virtual room intelligence

Deep Work Session 4

Level up the team with ongoing feedback like a pro

Who Should Attend

Professional Facilitators

Who want to hone their virtual facilitation craft.

Scrum Masters

Seeking to improve virtual planning, grooming, and retro sessions.

Design Thinkers

Looking to add new tools and concepts to your virtual tool belt .

Leaders

Coming to the realization that facilitated leadership in the virtual landscape is the future.

Key Takeaways

How to make asynchronous & synchronous work for your team in a virtual environment

Go from a manager to a maker - learn digital tools and how to build vs. talk

How to leverage a remote, diverse mix of strengths and personalities

Lead group synthesis of complex data in virtual meetings

This event has ended

Interested in hearing when this workshop will occur next?

Douglas Ferguson

Douglas Ferguson is an entrepreneur and human-centered technologist with over 20 years of experience. He is Founder and President of Voltage Control, an Austin-based facilitation agency that specializes in helping teams work better together through participatory decision making and design inspired facilitation techniques. He has helped transform teams from U.S. SOCOM, the Air Force, Adobe, Dropbox, Fidelity, Vrbo, Liberty Mutual, Humana, and SAIC.

Douglas is a thought leader and master facilitator of Design Sprints, Innovation Workshops, Team Alignment Workshops, Transformations, Meeting Systems, and Culture Workshops. He is also the author of three books: Beyond the Prototype, How to Remix Anything (co-authored), and Start Within (co-authored).

Motivated by a mission to rid the world of horrible meetings and offer meaningful meetings in their place, Voltage Control is calling upon fellow facilitators to transform meeting and innovation culture. From free weekly community meetups to Control the Room–the annual facilitator summit, Voltage Control is building a community of facilitators to change the world.

John Fitch

John is an entrepreneur and business coach. He is Chief Product Officer of Voltage Control, where we prototypes tools to help people facilitate better meetings. He enjoys designing technology through unlearning and the generous act of sonder. Prior to Voltage Control, John was Entrepreneur in Residence at Animal Ventures where he advised Fortune 100 leadership on their prototyping practices and led distributed software teams at the intersection of machine learning, robotics, and decentralized computing. John also worked directly with Google Ventures running Design Sprints and now coaches organizations how to develop rapid prototyping practices within their culture.

John is a co-author to two books with Douglas Ferguson: How To Remix Anything and Non-Obvious Guide to Fucking Awesome Meetings. He is finishing his third book Time Off – a look at how modern society is burning us out, why time off and creativity will be a crucial component to the future of human work, and the solutions to help us all prioritize our “rest ethic.” John spends his leisure time farming, hosting dinner parties, and practicing Jiu Jitsu. He graduated from University of Texas at Austin and is a proud alumni of Seth Godin’s altMBA.
What People Are Saying

I realized my entire role is facilitation. I have to do a lot of lateral influencing. So I use these skills even if it is not a super-structured workshop. Our product team has micro meetings all the time, and these methods help us get the most of those moments. My team can lean on me to facilitate. You will redesign the way you have conversations. I can’t believe every college student doesn’t have to take a class like this. This is how you collaborate. It is the underpinning of the future of work.

Savannah C.

PRODUCT DESIGNER @ TAILWIND

Apply for a Diversity Scholarship

A key part of our mission is to support diverse facilitators from different methodologies, backgrounds, races, genders, sexual orientations, cultures, and ages. If you are a part of, or serve, a traditionally underrepresented group and feel that this scholarship would allow you to amplify this mission, please apply now.

Photo Disclaimer

Please note that photographs, video & audio recordings will be taken throughout this event. These will be used by Voltage Control for marketing and publicity in our publications, on our website and in social media, or in any third-party publication. Please contact us via email if you have any concerns or if you wish to be exempted from this activity.​

The Books

Bring Your Ideas to Life

Innovation can seem complex or reserved for the exceptional. But we believe innovation is for everyone. We’ve set out to illuminate a path for you to generate bold ideas, visualize and share them, overcome obstacles, and turn them into reality. Our books are equal parts guidebook and stories from years of experience helping companies adopt an innovation mindset and culture. They’re practical & actionable, so you can get started now. We hope they’ll help you on your journey to realizing your biggest, boldest ideas.