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.