Greetings from Barcelona☀️where people are still celebrating Rafael Nadal’s 21st Grand Slam championship after winning the Australian Open yesterday. But my real highlight was 15 seconds of tennis in the Men’s semi-final. More on that below.👇
🙌Many thanks for reading The Quest.
If you are joining for the first time, welcome to our deep dive into facilitation, learning, and how to live a creative life.
You can catch up on the last edition 📈How to take a Lean Approach to Learning and all past editions here.
How do you read a Zoom room?
If you lead virtual groups you may be familiar with the following situation:
You are about a third of the way into your online session. You want to do a quick read of the room to see where to take things next.
If you were face to face, you would be scanning for non-verbal cues.
Are people making eye contact? Are they shifting around in their chairs? Do they look bored?
But you are on Zoom.
It’s much harder to pick up body language especially when cameras are off. It’s like swimming in the dark. You don’t know what may be lurking beneath the surface.
Reading the room is hands down one of the hardest parts of virtual facilitation.
So how do you “read the virtual room” when you don’t have non-verbal cues?
That’s our Quest for this week🔎
👉 Reading the Virtual Room
👉4 Ways to Read the Zoom Room Even When You Can’t Read Body Language
Plus:
📅 Breakthrough Facilitation Course Updates
Join the waitlist to receive the latest course updates, demo session invites, discounts, and more. Thanks to the 43 Quest readers already on the list! Cohort 2 will run from March 15 to April 7, 2022. More updates below.
👀Reading the Virtual Room
When I was researching this newsletter, I realized that there still isn’t a lot written about this subject. So I was happy to come across this article from the folks at Digital Facilitation.
Here are a few tips they share:
- Be creative. Let people create, write, draw, discuss, decide, and ask good questions. Then get out of the way.
- Scan for participation. Keep tabs on how many different people are participating.
- Understand the silence. Check to see if silence a sign of intense activity or disengagement.
Read the full article 👉 here.
💻4 Ways You Can Read The Zoom Room Even When You Can’t Read the Body Language
An atomic essay I wrote that’s getting some traction on Twitter.
🎥Ask for cameras on.
💬Proactively use the chat.
👍Invite reactions.
🤔When in doubt, check it out.
How do you read the Zoom room?
Join the conversation on Twitter or read the essay on Typeshare.
🚀Quick Course Update
I am excited to be working with our brilliant course manager Lilian Warutere on the launch Cohort 2 of Breakthrough Facilitation in March.
Here are a few things I’m learning about:
👉 Landing pages. I want the course page to share more about the value participants will get, including tools, frameworks, and the community. I am taking inspiration from the Ship 30 for 30landing page and Julia Saxena‘s Course Landing Page Template. I’ll be making some updates to the Breakthrough Facilitation page this week. Let me know what you think!
👉Marketing. I find this to be the most challenging part because I hate to feel sales-y. I’ve learned a lot about how to create more compelling and authentic marketing messages from Billy Broas and his5 lightbulb framework.
Stay tuned for a new course video and a shiny new course framework…
Join the waitlist to receive all course updates (no commitment required!).
🎾For the Tennis Fans
Rafa’s win was a stunning display of grit, perseverance, mental and physical toughness, and a master class on making a comeback. If you missed it, catch the highlight reel 👉here.
But the best 15 seconds of tennis I have ever seen was in the Men’s Semi-final 🇨🇦Felix Auger-Aliassime vs 🇷🇺Daniil Medvedev.👇
Watch the full 8-minute match highlight reel 👉here.
And while we are on the topic of tennis, I highly recommend the movie King Richard, that tells the moving story of Serena and Venus Williams through the eyes of their father Richard.
💡Quote of the week
Via @willpidge on Twitter.
💌Thanks for reading The Quest
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Creatively yours,
