Can teams learn in a hybrid world?
How facilitators can create a level developmental playing field.
Three years ago, the UK went into lockdown, and like many coaches and facilitators, my professional world changed. In order to continue supporting clients without having to leave the home I had to upskill rapidly in the use of tools such as Zoom. I turned to the School of Facilitation, run by Kirsty Lewis, and signed up for her workshops and Community Pod sessions. Phil Walsh led one of these sessions on maximizing impact, with a focus on the technology. And at the time they were invaluable.
Leap forward to 2022/23 and we were being welcomed back to run in-person leadership programmes and team events. The excitement, for coaches and facilitators, was palpable. However, reality bit, as, for all good reason, overseas attendees couldn’t make flights to the UK. We were faced with the desire to ensure all participants could access learning, and, importantly, be a part of a cohesive developmental cohort.
But how can you create equal outcomes in an inherently unequal learning environment?
Knowing this was a technical challenge, from both an L&D and IT perspective, I shouted ‘help’ loudly, to the experts, Phil Walsh and Kirsty Lewis. Phil sat me down (via Zoom of course) and went through my in-person facilitation plan, pulled it apart and together we rebuilt it, biconically, creating a more watertight leadership programme.
As hybrid is a format that seems to be here to stay, I wanted to return to Phil to reflect on his learning through this period and to get a view on how hybrid is morphing again, as it beds down.
What are the benefits of hybrid, the downsides and his top tips on creating an effective learning space for all participants?
Caroline
It’s lovely to see you again, Phil and thanks for taking the time to share your insights on all things ‘virtual facilitation’. As you’ll recall, we met on some of the School of Facilitation Programmes during Covid.
Phil
Yes, that’s right, I hosted one of the School of Facilitation Community pods for Kirsty, plus I did some technical hosting.
Caroline
I got so much out of these sessions. I mean, they were basically invaluable.
And then we spoke again as I had a client that requested a leadership programme. They had the intention of flying people in from overseas, but as it got closer, several people could no longer attend in person. And then on the morning of the first session, several attendees logged in online; so used to having an option to attend virtually. So I had to think on my feet, using the skills I had picked up from the School of Facilitation. For the next module, knowing it was likely to be hybrid again, I wanted to proactively focus on everyone’s learning experience, and make sure that they feel like one cohort. I was particularly conscious that people online weren't native English speakers, so you could assume that they may already have a sense of being distinct.
And that's when I put my hand up to ask for advice! So, before we get into how you helped, just remind me of your background.
Phil
I've been working with the School of Facilitation for a few years, in a couple of ways. One, being part of the community, and one as an associate facilitator for the School of Facilitation. I’m grateful to be in that position because it's a community that I really benefit from as a member and being able to have my voice heard in that community. It’s delightful.
For me the pandemic was an incredible experience in many ways. Upfront I crashed hard. Early March 2020, I lost four pieces of business in a day, that were just cancelled, and this continued. I saw my month’s projects just disappear and I was not in a position where I could enforce cancellation clauses. And I thought, if that’s the trend, then what's going to happen? When are people going to start rebooking me? I kind of threw the toys out of the pram! That's the end of my business, eight years and it's finished!
Then I had scheduled to go into London for a School of Facilitation event but felt uncomfortable, so I dialled in. Kirsty had three or four people in a room in London and three or four people on the screen. And she held the space, and she asked questions, and we had breakout rooms and we had our first hybrid event by accident and right at the beginning of the pandemic.
One of the things we were talking about in that session was the emergence of how we were going to have to do things differently and how we were going to do things online, and Kirsty was really clear that it would be the same. People would still need events facilitating, people would still need meetings facilitated, people would still need training, facilitating. And therefore, we should get as upskilled as quickly as we can in how to do things online.
Caroline
So how did you upskill so quickly?
Phil
I was really lucky. I'd been working with a social enterprise a year before which specialised in bringing business people into further education colleges to give young people a taste of business from real business people. We decided to look at running it online so that the business leader didn't have to leave the office for a whole day to attend one class. And so, I was helping teachers to learn how to use Zoom, to connect with the business person, and also helping the business person learn how to present from their home. I stood side by side with the teacher, introducing them to this platform, and I was connecting and positioning the video so that all the students in the room were on screen and that the microphone would pick people up. And so, I've been playing with Zoom for a year before the pandemic started.
The other thing that became very apparent to me was that I'm an engineer. My original academic training is as a materials engineer and I left that behind because I really wanted to work with people. But once you start doing online facilitation, your technical skills become really important. I had all these latent technical skills. ready to go. So I was quick at finding new features, explaining them to other people, getting people playing with the Zoom platform and combining that with my facilitation knowledge to create the best possible participant experience in an online setting.
Caroline
So, you're using your engineer creativity and problem solving with your comfort with technology, with facilitation. It’s a really lovely Venn diagram!
Phil
I got really lucky. Once I flipped that switch, from crash in that first week of thinking my business is finished, to all of a sudden my business has a new lease of life, and I was out there. I mainly started helping other facilitators about what they could do online and volunteered my time with charities and NGO's. It was lovely to be able to help people with something I knew about in such a tangible way and give them some confidence in the tools and the techniques of how best to facilitate online.
Caroline
And so that was during COVID. And then as we've been out of COVID for a couple of years now. And we are in this strange world where many people work from home still, this hybrid world, which obviously throws up other dimensions as I've experienced.
What are you noticing around that transition to hybrid? What have you experienced and what are you anticipating?
Phil
You could see hybrid coming over the waves and what I did was adjust my attitude to hybrid given what I'd learned about my combination of technical and facilitation skills during the pandemic. I then started to put together an online programme about how to facilitate from a hybrid point of view, with my friend Kat and with Kirsty involved in the development. Then we started to tell the world that there was a way of learning about how to do hybrid well.
In terms of observations coming out of COVID, there's a there's a couple of things I’ve noticed that I think are really interesting. If you think about how humans meet, before the pandemic you could argue that it’s fairly consistent going back centuries. You can go back to Roman times and look at how councils were run and how people met and debated and held that space.
It's such a big shift when you bring in online. I think that one of the biggest things is when you are separating the audio channel from the text-based channel, having a chat box alongside a conversation. That means that we can start to communicate asynchronously.
So, we can have a conversation happening and at the same time, someone can pop a topic in the chat and someone else can respond to the chat topic, whilst another person is responding to the audio topic.
I see that as a real benefit in terms of our ability to develop our brains and our thinking about our ability to engage an audience in the way they want to be engaged. What I mean by that is not everyone wants to stand up and put their hand up and speak in front of a room full of people. And the people that don't want to do that still have really valid opinions and really valid questions and really interesting ideas.
Giving these participants a quieter, less visual and auditory way of putting those thoughts and ideas into the room, it's a game changer for how we how we meet.
Caroline
That's so interesting, isn't it? As an introvert myself, I would probably speak less if I think back to some big corporate meetings. I would have loved the ability to ensure my ideas were captured, however interesting there were. It makes you feel valued. I was on a neurodiversity webinar recently and they used closed captions, and we received transcriptions which made it much more accessible to a wider range of learner. So, inclusion is a real advantage.
What do you see as the downside of hybrid?
Phil
There definitely are downsides. On the hybrid course that I teach through The School of Facilitation, I make a point of saying hybrid is the third best option.
If you can get everyone together in a room. That's great. If you can get everyone together online. We can make that work. We can have a good experience. It's only ever going to be the third best option to get some people together in a room and some people joining online. On the downsides, I talk a lot about the power dynamic.
If you think about working face to face, there is so much in the way that we communicate as humans nonverbally, what’s flying in the air. You share a space with other humans, and you are transmitting and receiving a volume of information, nonverbally, human connection that is flowing from you and into you, the whole time. And so therefore that's an amazing benefit when as a facilitator, you can influence and manage that flow of human connection, you can create an amazing experience for participants.
Caroline
I like the coffee breaks where you get a temperature check from side conversations or you can join a physical breakout room and get a real feel for what's going on, much, much more closely.
Phil
This is a challenge with hybrid to overcome. There's a there's a felt sense of being in the room. How does that not then reinforce the power dynamic and the kind of the sense of ‘otherness’ from the people that are online? It could be really beautiful connection between the humans in the room or it might be really stifling, there could be awkward disconnection between the people in the room. But the people online may have no idea which one it is. They might be able to guess, but they won't really know what level of connection is happening in that room because they won't be able to feel it.
So we need to work on that power dynamic whenever we're running hybrid, it needs to be addressed, and my ‘go-to’ is transparency. Let's talk about it and make what's unsaid said.
If we've got a good vibe and everyone's enjoying each other's company, let's try and show that, let's tell the people online that we want to include them in it and let's find ways to do connection activities. Bring them into that dynamic. Sometimes a really nice thing to do, depending on the numbers, is to put the online people in their own space and give them a chance to do the online version of connection and the online version of coming together as a group, so you separately create a good atmosphere with the people online.
I'd always recommend having a technical host or an online facilitator who can manage that space for you, because it's hard to do both at the same time. Essentially, you're trying to facilitate two different rooms simultaneously, and if you took that to the physical analogy, you would never try and facilitate two different rooms simultaneously.
Caroline
On my programme, I remember you suggested I used two laptops, one for managing the Zoom room, one for connecting to the AV system. And as I was the only facilitator, you encouraged me to use the in-person participants more create the interaction with the virtual participants, e.g. sending pictures of the flips charts into the chat, or on a Slack channel. As they were more familiar with their systems, they were more than happy to take charge of including their colleagues.
I was speaking to another facilitator about this and she was explained how if she does hybrid, she makes sure that she's virtual. She felt like she could enable a better power balance and manage the process more effectively.
Phil
I like that. I think you'd have to contract with someone to be your presence in the physical room, to feel what's going in in the room. At the moment with hybrid we're at a place of great experimentation. And what we learned from the pandemic is that the technology will follow us.
Whatever we find we need to do, we know that Zoom and Teams are racing to provide us with that functionality. And I only mentioned Zoom and Teams but there's another 100 platforms behind those that are racing to win that market and be the best possible meeting solution.
Caroline
One of the things we've done on some of our programmes, which isn't technically hybrid, is to apply a modular approach. So, for example, four sessions are absolutely in person, but then sessions in between are on Zoom, with everyone on Zoom. So we’re mixing the methods but using the most appropriate learning medium for the learning objective, e.g. imparting knowledge in a webinar format, vs. collaboration in person. We’ve found this maintains the learning cadence which in turn supports embedding the learning. Plus it takes some pressure off budget and travel and diary arrangements.
Phil
That’s interesting.
In fact, if you give me a blank sheet now and tell me to design a programme it would be all online first, as a kick-off, then it would be as much as possible all face to face, (I'd accept some level of hybrid if we had to). And then I'd go all online for a for a final closing session.
So when I work with clients, that would enable us to do a lot of connection and coming together and co-creating the agenda, really defining the ‘why’ upfront and that works really well online. Then maybe a week or 10 days later, we've taken that information and we've put that into the agenda, we get together, gather as many people in the room and do the work. And rather than that difficult part, at the end of the day where we say, ‘OK, so what are the next actions and whose taking this action, I'd finish the day on a high and say ‘wow, we've made so much progress’. And there would be some next actions clearly dropping out at that point, but the next actions would be. softer, because we know we'd come back online for session three. And for that ‘action’ session, this is where we get to ‘what is next?’, ‘where is the value?’ ‘who's doing what, by when?’, and really nail those next steps.
Caroline
I had a question for you about autonomy. In the context of a flexible working hybrid world, I’ve been reading about how the individual choice of location has been impacting in-person meetings. As employees value choice on where they work, that personal choice may mean they don’t attend events in the format they were designed for. For example, an event is designed as in-person, but delegates arrive on-line.
Is this something you have noticed?
Phil
I think there's two things here.
One is about getting the art of invitation right, how we entice and excite. ‘You want to be here. Obviously, you want to be here. This is a big thing. This is important. This is a game-changer for how this department is working or how we can be’.
The second part links to autonomy. I'm not anyone's babysitter or boss. If you're not in attendance, then that's fine. You are your own person with your own ownership of what's happening, as long as you're not going to derail what comes out of our event. If you choose not to attend then that's its own message to your colleagues and the team. And I am happy for that to come out in, however that comes out through the team dynamics. I'm really lucky in that I work with a lot of teams where people want to be part of what's going on and if anything, we experience people are saying ‘can I come?’
Caroline
I think you're right about the invitation, really tapping into the why. And I think you're also right about people making choices. And if you have positive intention, you can respect the choice delegates make for themselves.
Thinking back to when I approached you for some help, we went through my programme together and you critiqued it, with your hybrid hat on. We have talked about some of the aspects you looked at.
What other hybrid working top tips would you highlight?
Phil
The first one, which we’ve touched on, but is often overlooked is the double facilitator. You have two rooms. If anything, from a prep point of view, it's almost like you're running three events. You're running an online event, you're running a face-to-face event, and you're running the interface between those two events. So, in terms of preparation, in terms of delivery, it takes longer, it takes more resource, and it needs more resource for it to run really well.
Other top tips?
One of the traps we can fall into as facilitators is we can think, ‘here's this activity, how do I make this the same for both audiences’. We need to take a step back and think, it's not the activity, it's the outcome.
The question is ‘what's the best way of getting this outcome from an online audience and a face-to-face audience’. And therefore, you might be briefing two different activities to get the same outcome.
Caroline
I recall us discussing technology tips too. For example, using Jamboard for the people who are remote, so they can access a visual activity. In my case, we were using picture cards in the room, and the online group were using images on a Jamboard.
One of your recommendations that really resonated with the group was when we were doing pairs work. I was very conscious of creating cohesion across the whole cohort, and so we needed to mix them up, online and in-person. You'd suggested just using mobile phones, rather than playing with breakouts. Just phone each other. We received great feedback on that approach from participants, recalling how they had such a good conversation with a colleague online that they’d not had before, that was enhanced by the intimacy of the telephone, a screen-free call. That small intervention had a big impact on the depth of interaction.
Phil
That’s lovely. And you can get creative with that as well, depending on where you are in the world. I’ve experienced it where Kirsty facilitated a ‘walk and talk’. Six of us dialled into an old-fashioned conference numbers, put our headphones in, went for a walk and talked about our local environment and what we were experiencing. We have built that into a programme now, as a very deep audio experience.
There's lots you can do to change things up. For example, in breakouts, you can ask one person from each group to bring a laptop with a video call. So, you've got a group of four people sat around, three in the room and one of them happens to be on a laptop screen. When you're in hybrid you are constantly trying to break down this power dynamic.
Caroline
I’ve found participants are quite open to that, in a company with embedded systems, they seem adaptable to switch between platforms, so for a breakout with an overseas colleague, they will open a Google meet, quickly pop items, like photos, into a Slack channel and so forth.
Phil
I'm really lucky with my technical background, that I can go into an organisation and see what tech they have got and work with what that. This is a big part of the preparation. A bit like how, with a room, we may make assumptions that there will be chairs and tables we can take out or leave in or move around, as well as breakout spaces. The same thing is true of hybrid. It just takes a bit more preparation to prepare the technological spaces to help people to convene, as well as the physical spaces.
So again, hybrid is extra work and extra preparation. But it allows inclusion across boundaries and it's going to be here forever!
Caroline
So what’s next for you, and for Kirsty and the School of Facilitation?
Phil
We’ll continue to share with other facilitators. Kirsty has the School of Facilitation Community Pods every Friday morning, plus all the other great programmes. And we are hoping to do a Pod on Hybrid in October, so keep your eyes open for that.
Caroline
I’ll look out for it! Thanks so much for you time and for sharing your experience and expertise!
If you want to get in touch to find out more about facilitation, hybrid, leadership development and more, here are all the contact details:
School of Facilitation https://www.schooloffacilitation.com/
Kirsty Lewis kirsty.lewis@schooloffacilitation.com
Phil Walsh phil@walshslearningtoachieve.co.uk
Caroline Duncan carolineduncan@north-52.com