For over 20 years I have been delivering workshops as part of delivering change in my role as a transformational change specialist. These workshops have been designed to deliver a number of different outcomes all with a central theme of engaging the participants in the design and change itself, essential to deliver successful change management. One thing these workshops have had in common is that they have always been in person with participants coming together to share their insight in the physical presence of each other. At these workshops we have often supported behavioural change, a key outcome but with the changes in working practices due to CoVid -19 of working from home and social distancing how will we change our art to still deliver change management.
For those interventions that need participants input maybe we need to re-think the tools we have to engage people in a wider context not just replacing in-person with online, particularly with larger groups. We will indeed need to adopt digital tools, some, like Teams, Webex and Zoom, offer video conferencing so why can’t we just take our old-style workshop designs and try and deliver over video? Well, I believe, while video is great for communicating and sure sometimes, we are just pushing a message, it just has its limitations in building engagement where we require a two-way conversation. It is just too easy for participants to “turn off” their level of concentration and as a consequence their involvement in the conversations. Based on my experience and those shared by colleagues, what are the new design principles for remote workshops and digital tools that can help?
We must make the best use of time for self-working vs collaborative working, think Synchronous vs. Asynchronous participation. Ensure that pre-work is sent out with clear instructions and collated for discussion, this is where the value of the time spent together will be. Build accountability into the workshop too, so that any actions are followed through.
Most importantly is that we must design our sessions for the outcomes we desire, if we want participants to remain engaged, we need to build sessions that allow them to input their voice, either literally or using a common chat function. We could also ask open ended questions or run “idea” sessions that others in the workshop can build on, keeping participants involved and sharing. Tools like Howspace.com, Miro.com and Mural.co which can run alongside your video conferencing tools can support you as a change manager deliver this new style of remote collaborative workshop ensuring it is “all change” for your change management engagement.
However, our biggest challenge is “reading” the room, a core skill of experienced facilitators. When running a virtual workshop this is much harder and will require us to develop, test and refine new skills like those used in card games; poker for picking up “tells” for when a participant wants to contribute and bridge for remembering who has played what card in the session already. Here it will also be essential to have a specialist who can get the most out of the full functionality of the digital platforms and synthesise the non-verbal feedback from the surveys as well as content and tone from the chatrooms.
These are new and exciting times for those facilitating remote change workshops, and as we explore what works and what does not, please share your experiences in making change work in the world of change management.
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