Prompted by a conversation with clients in the UK about their Innovation Labs or iLabs* that use an unexpected physical environment to create space for thinking “out of the box” I started thinking about the impact of a virtual meeting space. Rather than explore onscreen media and technology solutions, I wondered more about the local, physical surroundings that each participant experiences. As a virtual facilitator I don’t control the meeting space in same way as I do for face-to-face meetings but there is value in attending to the physical surroundings of participants in order to optimize participation, attention and stimulation.
I began by thinking about different types of meetings and how they might impact the optimal virtual meeting space. How would the requirements or possibilities be different when the focus is communication and conversation vs. learning and development or innovation and joint problem solving vs. consensus and decision making? This lead to several ideas to mix and match according to the situation.
[*See related article “The Where Factor – New Environments for Innovative Thinking” by Laura Powell at http://www.facilitate.com/support/facilitator-toolkit]
- Start with your own virtual meeting space. Look at your immediate surroundings – your desk, your office, the floor, the walls, the view, and your neighbors. Consider your mood in these surroundings – whether you feel organized or muddled, forward thinking or backward looking, stuck in the past or ready for something new, efficient or unproductive… Think about how you can accentuate the positives and remove the negatives.
- Ask participants to think about their own environment – Where do they feel most comfortable, attentive, alert (or distracted, uncomfortable, bored)? Ask them to select and schedule a place to attend the virtual meeting that will allow them to be focused and engaged.
- Start a virtual meeting at 15 minutes past the hour to allow people to finish up their last activity and provide a few minutes of quiet time before your meeting begins. This can help create the mental space for an effective virtual meeting.
- Provide an environment conducive to active or attentive listening when communication is the main purpose of a meeting. I often find that if I turn my chair away from my computer screen or go sit in a comfortable arm chair with a cup of tea, I am much more ready to listen. If we close our eyes and listen to what is being said we often hear a whole lot more.
- Pay attention to the audio quality of a virtual meeting so that participants and presenters can clearly hear and be heard. Sometimes the visual component of virtual meeting technology is emphasized while the audio component is neglected. Ensure that the audio technology can easily cope with the number of connections, turn off Blackberries and phones that cause distortion and suggest each person has a good quality headset.
- Provide access to meeting and learning materials ahead of time and encourage participants to print a copy of presentation slides or interactive workbook. I recently coached a facilitator who was running her first virtual workshop and expecting over 150 participants. She created a colorful workbook to accompany her session to encourage participants to take notes, write down their ideas, answer questions for themselves and fully engage with the materials during the session as well as afterwards.
- Look for ways to interact with the local work environment. Many training sessions will be work related so we can take advantage of this. What if a participant was walking about the office or was out on the shop floor – either during the virtual meeting or half an hour before? What if the first part of the virtual meeting got people to stand up and look at their surroundings and make an assessment their work environment or look for clues that connected to the learning principles or subject matter at hand?
- When the focus is innovation and idea generation we need a meeting space that can help us look at a situation from a new angle. Ask participants to bring with them half a dozen objects, encouraging them to collect them from different parts of their lives – home, family life, outdoors, sports and hobbies, other associations, friends – not just off their desk. You don’t necessarily need to say how these objects are to be used. Magazines with photos, articles and advertisements might also provide objects to stimulate new ideas when combined with a creative thinking exercise. One colleague sent out a box of customized cards that they use during their face-to-face workshops so that participants would have the same props and prompts for generating ideas in the virtual environment.
- Arrange for participants to join in from a place other than their office or normal work environment. Virtual meetings offer the possibility that people can participate from pretty much anywhere – the park, the beach, a hotel lobby, the top of a sky scraper, at the museum or aquarium. Encouraging people to place themselves outside the usual “box” of their office.
- When the focus is collaboration and joint problem solving the concept of bouncing ideas off of each other is extremely valuable. So we might consider how to provide visual representations of our group – as a whole or in teams. One way I do this is by collecting photos through online introductions ahead of time and turning this into a pictorial meeting place – sometimes with the group of us sitting round a table, other times organized into teams or sitting classroom style in rows. This then becomes a handout at the beginning of the session and a useful prop to facilitate team work, cross-talk, round robins and other formats to engage everyone in conversation.
- Online visual aids such as whiteboards, shared electronic flip charts or a presentation screen are obviously useful visual aids that keep everyone on the same page. Local, low tech props such as a flip chart or pad with colored pens and pencils where everyone is encouraged to make their own notes and draw a diagram of a problem can help people conceptualize an issue and benefit from different takes on a problem and possible solutions. Sometimes being on a different page may help people express themselves more fully and creatively capture what they are hearing from others.
- Our physical surroundings substantially change our ability to focus – on the topic at hand and on what others are saying. Ask participants to remove clutter and distractions on their desk and their desktop. Close the office door. Shut down computer applications. Moving to another meeting space such as a conference room might distance participants from distractions and interruptions.
- Consider standing meetings. Sitting at a desk readily leads to distraction. Encourage participants to stand up and walk about wearing their headset and carrying a portable phone. Physical movement – whether walking up and down the stair case or stretching in place, pumps the blood and activates the mind. As a facilitator I also like to find ways to stand up during a virtual meeting. I find that this focuses my mind and has me think more about the people on the call and the subject we are discussing rather than the words on a screen in front of me. (Get a new iPad and take the screen with you!)
The bottom line for us as facilitators is to pay attention to the physical environment of our virtual meeting participants. We can’t completely control it but we can get creative and instructive in how we encourage people to be aware of their surroundings, make space for attentive listening and provide tools and props to support their engaged participation. I am interested to hear what other ways you have used to manage the virtual meeting space.
Posted by Julia Young, Facilitate.com