The Remote Facilitator's Pocket Guide

How Local Businesses Are Beating the Global Competition

Kirsten Clacey, Jay-Allen Morris

• Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9781523089109
• eBook ISBN:
  9781523089123
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Comunicazione aziendale
• Index: Business

This approach to remote facilitation makes virtual meetings powerful means of collaboration using proven techniques to accommodate a diversity of cultures, locations, and personalities.
Many people struggle with remote meetings: a cocktail of factors, such as technical barriers and invisible group norms, increase the uncertainty and risk of the already vulnerable task of collaborating and sharing ideas. When remote meetings go badly, they go really badly. Few things feel as lonely and intimidating as speaking to a screen with unreadable faces staring back in silence. This book will help you improve the quality of your remote meetings. With a little awareness, some planning, and some practice, you can make your remote meetings an effective, engaging, and powerful mechanism for collaboration within your organization. 
This book is for anyone seeking to get more value from remote meetings. Whether you're a seasoned facilitator, a new facilitator, or someone hoping to improve team meetings, you will be empowered with principles and actionable methods to enhance your organization's effectiveness.  

PRINCIPLE 1: CREATE EQUAL OPPORTUNITY

“If you aren’t actively including, you’re probably accidentally excluding.”

—Dr. Jacqui Grey⁸

Imagine going on a safari. Picture a dirt road, sporadic potholes, some really muddy areas, and the possibility of animals approaching from any side . . . the vehicle you are in will really affect your experience. Now imagine three people setting out on safari: one person is in a beautifully kitted-out 4 × 4, another is in a Ferrari, and another is on a bicycle. Who do you think will have the best experience? What will the impact of the vehicle be on their experience?

When going on a safari, the vehicle is the mechanism through which passengers experience their surroundings. Similarly, in remote meetings, everyone is entering in a different context, which will result in a different experience. For people who are in the room having face-to-face conversation, it’s likely their experience will be pretty smooth. For someone attending remotely, listening through a speaker and observing a whiteboard through a camera might at times feel a lot like bumping through a game reserve on a rickety bicycle. It’s really difficult to enjoy the experience and contribute when the rest of the group is racing ahead in their fancy 4 × 4.

If someone has been invited to a meeting to solve a problem or be involved in decision making, it is important that they are able to contribute and that it is both safe and easy enough for them to do so. Who is involved in solving a problem is equally as important as how they go about doing so. We believe a condition of an effective meeting is that the right people are involved in the discussion. Hearing all voices matters. That does not necessarily mean that all meeting attendees have the same degree of authority or influence over the outcome, but as far as possible facilitators should provide the space where all people can be heard.

There are many reasons why creating an equal opportunity to contribute is important. Consider a scenario in which two individuals dominate the conversation in a meeting:

• 

  How likely is it that the group will defend or action the outcomes outside of the meeting if they were not allowed to participate in reaching them?
• 

  What opportunities might have been missed by not hearing some other opinions and voices?
• 

  What might the cost to the organization be in reaching a skewed outcome?

Both team motivation and quality thinking are at risk when some voices are silenced. The inverse is equally unhelpful: no one speaks. By considering how to design and hold a meeting in which there is an equal opportunity for participation and contribution, we believe a facilitator improves the quality of outcomes.

UNDER THE HOOD

THE BRAIN AND PHYSICAL PAIN

Before we get practical and explain how you can create equal opportunity for participation, we want to go a little deeper into what lies behind the subjective experience of “not having an equal opportunity to participate,” also known as exclusion. We would hazard a guess that you were not expecting to see a heading on “physical pain” in a facilitation book. We hope that by the end of this section you’ll think differently about those moments in which someone’s contribution is accidentally (or intentionally) ignored.

Have you ever stepped on a LEGO block? The pain that races through your body increases blood flow to a region of your brain called the anterior singular cortex. It also results in less blood flow to your prefrontal cortex (the part of your brain responsible for more complex cognitive functioning). Simply put, you’re less likely to do high-quality, complex thinking when experiencing acute pain.

So, what happens in the brain when we experience social pain? In a study, beautifully titled “Broken Hearts and Broken Bones: A Neural Perspective on the Similarities Between Social and Physical Pain,” Eisenberger⁹ looked at which areas of the brain are activated when someone feels excluded. This study found that the same pathways in the brain activate when a person experiences social pain and physical pain: the dorsal part of the anterior singular cortex. This is interesting when we consider that feelings of exclusion, isolation, and rejection are all forms of “social pain.” As mentioned above, in meetings in which certain voices dominate and others are accidentally/intentionally silenced, motivation and quality thinking are compromised. A further cost we pay in such spaces is that some people may perceive the experience as painful, and under such circumstances our brains are activated in a way that is not optimal for complex reasoning.

TYPES OF REMOTE MEETINGS

To consider how we, as facilitators, can make sure that every meeting attendee is able to experience the meeting in a 4 × 4 we need to start with an awareness of the kind of remote meeting we are holding. Creating equal opportunity to participate and contribute in a remote setting looks different depending on the type of meeting. Typically, there are three generic types of remote meetings (independent of the content of the meeting)a:

1. Solo remoting: A few individuals dial in remotely and the majority of the meeting attendees are co- located in one meeting room, using one screen/audio/ video to connect with the remote attendees.
2. Hybrid: A few groups of co-located people are dialing in to one call.
3. Fully remote: Each person is on the call using their own machine, audio, and video.

Each of these spaces poses a unique challenge in creating equal opportunity.

Consider the first scenario in which one person is on a screen and the remainder of the group is in the room, writing on the board and having a conversation. The individual dialing in does not have the same experience as the rest of the group. Both audio and visual quality compromise their interaction. At worst the remote person is forgotten by the group, at best they attempt to contribute while having a different experience.

METHODS AND MECHANICS

Go Fully Remote When You Can

One way to address the imbalances of power on a remote call is by encouraging everyone to go fully remote; each person dials in to the call on their own machine. Going fully remote in many ways levels the playing field. While there are no perfect solutions to creating equal opportunity, it is the role of the facilitator to creatively seek solutions. We prefer to have everyone dial in remotely regardless of how many people are co-located.

“Otherwise everyone else has an in-person experience with facial expressions and body-language cues except for those dialing in. It’s almost as if you are having a conversation in another language.”

—Sam Laing¹⁰

This approach takes a shared commitment to equalizing participation in the group and we recommend that you take this step with buy-in, commitment, and agreement from the whole group. It may help to ask for feedback from all participants on how they experienced going fully remote versus when only some are remote. We acknowledge that for some organizations this may seem like a stretch but we have experienced the value this shift brings to both engagement and meeting outcomes.

A “PSEUDO BODY” AS A SUBSTITUTE

When considering how to create equal opportunity ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Why is Remote Collaboration Difficult?
• What is the Role of a (Remote) Facilitator?
• Principle 1: Create Equal Opportunity
• Principle 2: Enable Flow
• Principle 3: Guide With Visuals
• Principle 4: Nurture Connection
• Principle 5: Enable Playful Learning
• Principle 6: Master Your Tools
• After the Call: How to Maintain Connection When the Call Ends
• Tying it Together
• Notes
• Acknowledgments
• Index
• About the Authors