Greetings from Barcelona☀️where I am celebrating all of the women who make a difference in this world on International Women’s Day💪 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.
Let’s jump right in!
✋Raise your hand if you had to switch suddenly to doing your work online during the pandemic.
Exactly two years ago, I got an alarming email from a client. Because of the pandemic, our face-to-face training would be switched to an online workshop. The problem was I had never led an online training before.
🩹I thought that facilitating online would be a temporary measure.
I was a huge skeptic. I did not believe that we could do the same kind of meaningful, creative work online as I had been doing face-to-face. My first reaction was to wait it out.
💻But online is here to stay.
What I didn’t realize at the time is that a major shift was underway. An Upwork survey predicts that by 2025 people working online in the US will increase 87% from pre-pandemic levels. Similar trends are unfolding all over the world.
📈We’ve learned a lot in 2 years about how to dramatically improve virtual facilitation and online learning.
I have had my own breakthroughs about what is possible online. I have learned from so many of you. I believe we’ll look back at this period and marvel at the explosion of creativity, experimentation, and innovation. And I believe we’ve just begun.
🤔What have we learned about facilitating and teaching better online?
That’s our Quest for this week🔎
👉5 Ways I Design and Facilitate Differently Online
👉Surviving the Horror of Online Meetings
👉Mural’s Ultimate Virtual Meeting Toolkit
💻5 Ways I Design and Facilitate Differently Online
When I made the sudden switch to virtual facilitation 2 years ago, I thought that I would do what I did face-to-face, only online. I tested out some ideas with some facilitator friends before my first online session. My first attempt was a total flop😅.
I quickly learned that what I did in person was not going to work online. I needed to design and facilitate my sessions differently. When I started designing my sessions specifcially for online, participation skyrocketed.
Here are 5 ways I’ve learned to facilitate differently online:
1/ Connect People Early.
2/ Mix Up Your Methods.
3/ Cut Your Content in Half.
4/Check in Often.
5/ Treat Live Online Time as Sacred.
Read the full atomic essay with tips on how to facilitate specifically for online 👉here.
How do you facilitate and design differently for online sessions?
📗Surviving the Horror of Online Meetings
I love that someone has actually written a book with that title. The Author is Brian Tarallo, a specialist in visual and virtual facilitation.
I came across his work via this flowchart to help you decide if your meeting should be online, in-person, or hybrid. I like how he starts with the question “Does this need to be a meeting —> No —> Don’t have the meeting.”
Check it out 👉 here. Thanks to Nora Sheffe for sharing.
🧰The Ultimate Meeting Facilitation Toolkit – Mural
I’m a complete sucker for a good FREE toolkit. I was excited to come across this virtual facilitation toolkit from Mural. It includes tips for planning virtual meetings with online icebreakers, energizers, templates, frameworks, and more.
Scroll down to the 10 Virtual Meeting Principles and check out the icebreaker templates👇
✍️Women I am grateful for
I took a few minutes to write the names of the women who I am grateful for today (and there are more!). Who would be on your list?
💌Thanks for reading The Quest
I always love hearing your feedback and suggestions. Just hit reply to share your thoughts and ideas.
🙌Special shout out to BF Demo attendees Ravi, Máximo, Scott, and Barb; Tatiana and Office Hours Session attendees – welcome to the Quest!
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Creatively yours,
