by Leadership Accelerators | Oct 7, 2021 | Leadership Learning, Leadership Training, Training, Virtual Meetings
“No learning agility without training agility”
The impact on engagement and commitment of participants of Covid19 was fascinating. And it told me a lot about how leaders have to adapt their leadership style to their given working environment. Even though most of us used virtual platforms before Covid, making the change to 100% virtual had its consequences.
Participant Preparation
A lot of time, I have experienced that participants sent to training received a limited explanation for the activity by HR or L&D. Trainers spent their initial time trying to get buy-in from their attendees due to a perceived lack of value in training.
What I have been missing most of the time was the briefing of managers to let their direct reports know why they should attend a training and what their immediate benefit will be from it. A short announcement delivered by the superior would have directly impacted the level of engagement and commitment of their direct reports.
Purpose and Outcome
As a trainer and coach, I see that managers are looking for sophisticated tools to become better leaders; meanwhile, easy, fast, and free ones would make their life, the life of their team members, so much easier.By sharing the purpose of training and a few details about why the company chose, it would immediately impact the buy-in. Through that, participants would feel that their managers CARE about them, understand their needs, and support them. During the three main phases of Covid related to participants’ level of attention and confidence (medium, high, very low), direct reports would have needed a completely different communication delivered by their supervisors/managers.
What are you considering when sending your team members to trainings? What do you do if global HR sends your people to workshops that you don’t have influence on? What tools do you use to get the buy-in of your direct reports to be engaged and committed to a behavioural change in the world of training?
Need help building out a Learning Journey for your Managers? Contact Us
by Krisztina Lorinczi | Jun 23, 2021 | Leadership Training, Training, Virtual Meetings
Krisztina Lőrinczi
Covid forced us to spend most of our time in the online world. A lot of us had to learn how it works by trial and error. No organization or human being was fully equipped with tools and techniques in mid-March 2020 when Covid-19 changed our life from one minute to the other. Let me share with you what I have learned about how to be successful in virtual interactions.
Do you remember your last face-to-face interaction before the announcement of the lock-down when you did not think your life would change radically? Do you remember your first frustration when you had to run an important meeting in the virtual world and there was a lack of engagement even though you were well prepared?
As a trainer, I first thought that soon everything will return to normal, I was happy to have a little “break” when the lockdown was communicated on March 13th. Fortunately, I appreciated having less work (at that time I traveled 2-4 times a month), and I enjoyed having more spare time than usual. Soon reality kicked in and I saw that Covid-19 was here to stay for a while. My trainer colleagues and I had to unlearn, relearn and learn some new ways of teaching, training, and facilitating workshops.
I had a terrible experience during my first training in which an internal training manager wanted to control the way I was running the program. She did not want to have any breakout sessions and she wanted to limit the individual reflection time of the participants to two minutes. I had 22 participants, which is a large group in the virtual world. Since I was just learning how this works, I gave in and accepted her “rules” and it did NOT go well. I felt terrible. After having a lot of brainstorming calls with my wonderful colleagues about how to run workshops efficiently, we created our own set of tools and best practices which we are happy to share with you.
If you are interested in learning about what I consider as best in the world of virtual training, keep reading.
I have learned most of my tools from the evaluations and verbal feedback of my participants. They absolutely LOVE the work in smaller groups called “breakout sessions”. They feel much more confident sharing their thoughts when they are not together with 20+ other colleagues but rather with only 4-5. The engagement becomes very lively and afterward, they are happy to share their main points. It is beneficial if they know beforehand that they will be asked to do so. This means that selecting a spokesperson is an additional task for them that should be communicated before sending them into their subgroups.
I learned from a dear friend of mine that in the online world you always have to transmit energy, enthusiasm, and clarity. You cannot expect the same from the receiving end, your participants. Sometimes you have to wait until the end to get some recognition. Under clarity I mean you have to be 100% clear about what you want to share. The likelihood that people will ask questions in case they don’t understand is low, much lower than in the face-to-face world.
Using different devices such as a flipchart, annotation on your screen, a lot of open-ended questions like “On a scale from one to ten, how clear is this exercise to you?” or “What would you prefer, a break now or to finish sooner?” is key. Involving participants is even more crucial than in the “real world”.
Another important success factor is whether you are standing or sitting while you are talking as the facilitator. (Which is better, standing or sitting? What are the impacts of standing or sitting?) All this counts a lot when you do what, and why.
A lot of our clients could not imagine that a real leadership development program could be run in Zoom or on any platform. Our internal research tells us that participants are not just fully engaged and committed, but they are finding that an additional advantage of the program is that they can spend quality time together. Since Covid-19, most team members are working individually from their homes, so virtual training where they can see each other is a unique gift that is even increasing their loyalty to their team and organization. They feel that they are listened to and cared for.
If you want to hear more tips, contact us, and we will be happy to discuss virtual learning further with you.
