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The art of virtual facilitation

Jackie Black, co-author of Working Virtually from the International

Management English series, discusses the aspects of virtual facilitation our

professional students need to master.

Whenever I run a course on meetings skills I always ask the participants: "What makes an effective meeting?" and once they have reflected on this question and come up with some key success factors, like a well- written agenda, or good time-keeping, I ask them: "So, what makes an effective virtual meeting?". Of course, they come up with a similar set of factors since the two are so closely linked. The main difference seems to be that effective virtual meetings demand twice as much planning and effort than face to face meetings. Facilitators of these virtual meetings also seem to need to be twice as mindful when managing these meetings.

So what does it take to become a good facilitator? Face to face meetings can be a real challenge, especially if time is limited and decisions need to be made. In a virtual environment this challenge can become even greater. The facilitator has to have a keen eye on the time, enable everyone to participate and ensure that consensus is reached whilst simultaneously managing any technical issues which may arise. Obviously, it goes without saying that a good facilitator will have a well-prepared agenda which will be circulated in advance and any technical issues will have been minimized by thorough checking of equipment ahead of the meeting. However, facilitation involves significant use of soft or interpersonal skills too. This is something that both Jon Dyson and my-self as co-authors have tried to incorporate into our book: Working Virtually as we both see these kinds of skills as an integral part of the training we do. Below I touch on just a few of the aspects of virtual facilitation which I believe it is important for us as trainers to introduce to our students, many of whom probably have years of experience as facilitators of face to face meetings, but are new to the virtual environment.

Building virtual relationships Being able to develop and maintain virtual relationships with team members is a vital starting point for any virtual facilitator. This may require getting individual team members to introduce themselves and establish relationships via social networking pages which the

Author Insights

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facilitator sets up or encouraging people to create personal presentations which provide a snapshot of themselves for the kick-off meeting. Knowing what information will get people to 'connect' with each other is also important. It could be that the team will work well based purely on shared technical knowledge. On the other hand, there may be a need for a more personal insight. A facilitator will only start to understand how the team functions best by listening carefully to how the team interacts and by asking for feedback from individuals and the team as a whole on how they feel the relationship is working. It is therefore a good idea to allow time for regular feedback of this kind at the end of a meeting. And of course the importance of small talk should never be under-estimated.

Keeping people engaged Once a strong relationship has been built and the facilitator is confident of maintaining it, there is a danger that meetings will become routine, even dull. The facilitator needs to keep the team engaged with the proceedings at all times. This involves a range of skills from the deft handling of talking time to the use of attractive visual aids to keep people's attention. It is so easy for team members in different locations to be distracted by phone calls or colleagues around them, so it is a wise idea for the facilitator to establish a set of meeting guidelines and ask the team to respect them. This will hopefully keep everyone focused on the task in hand.

Communication strategies In a virtual meeting the use of voice becomes critical since it is the only element of our personality we can convey. It sets expectations for the meeting participants and can have a lasting impact on them, so pay attention to how you use your voice. Make an effort to vary the pitch, avoid filler words such as "erm" and keep repetitive language to a minimum. People respond better to a warm and friendly voice, a voice where you can hear the smile. They are often prepared to trust that voice even though they have never met the person. With a distinct lack of visual cues to assist them, virtual facilitators rely on communication strategies such as active listening, clarifying and reformulating far more than in face to face meetings. In this case, non-native speakers need to build up a stock of phrases to help them manage this area of communication effectively. There are of course other communication strategies which help facilitators run meetings successfully: a change in pace is always good, but by far the most effective, is the use of questioning. Facilitators who ask questions which involve all the meeting participants are more likely to keep them engaged and encourage discussion. Questions have many uses and varying the form will undoubtedly produce more interesting results. A good facilitator may employ overhead questions directed at the whole group first, followed by questions aimed at specific people. There will then follow a variety of open questions to stimulate debate and closed questions to summarize or obtain agreement. Hypothetical questions can be used to get someone to reflect on how they would handle a

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particular situation and reverse questions will allow the facilitator to throw a participant's question back to the group to be answered. The significance of silence is also something which must be considered. In certain situations silence can signify disagreement, or even anger. In others it is simply a pause for reflection. However, one must not forget it could also signify confusion or incomprehension. It is the duty of the facilitator to interpret this silence and deal with it accordingly.

Managing diversity Virtual meetings are often attended by people in different geographical locations and from different nationalities. This means that there will always be an element of cultural diversity which the facilitator needs to be aware of. Some people like meetings to be very task -focused and get frustrated with those people who enjoy what they see as inconsequential chatting. Other participants regard the facilitator as responsible for making the decisions and consequently take a relatively passive role in the proceedings. Preparation for such meetings therefore requires a certain amount of information gathering. It is always handy to know if the nationalities involved have different attitudes towards procedure, time-keeping, or even degrees of tolerance towards conflict or differences in opinion. Again asking questions of those around you can produce helpful information as can reading about the countries concerned. In addition to the cultural differences which may affect the way a meeting runs, there is the matter of diverse communication styles amongst the team. Some people prefer a more direct approach to discussion which may make others feel uncomfortable. The role of the facilitator then is to optimize the leverage these differences provide and ensure that individual team members are willing to adapt to this diversity and use it to create synergy.

Native speaker issues One of the most difficult aspects of facilitation is that of dealing with the native speakers in the meeting. All too often it is the native speaker who causes the most communication problems through speaking too quickly, using idiomatic expressions, or simply having a very strong local accent. Dominance by native speakers needs to be kept to a minimum and the facilitator should monitor this carefully otherwise the meeting may become one-sided and non-native speakers will feel excluded and their levels of engagement will decrease. These are just a few of the key aspects of virtual facilitation. You can explore this area in further detail with your students with Working Virtually, which is part of the International Management English series published by Delta Publishing and York Associates, 2013.