Hybrid facilitation is hard. Much harder than when all the people are either in-person or virtual. Here are five lessons I learned from my experience of facilitating team-building workshops with the same team over the last three years. It was a journey from the first (and only) in-person workshop to virtual and now hybrid meetings. It could have been an almost perfect real-world experiment - same people, same topic but different delivery formats. But the real world is not perfect. The shift in delivery format also came with changes in team members and the challenges the teams were facing.
Wind back your memory to early February 2020, when the whisper about covid was just starting to get louder. We all met together in a seminar hotel, on the edge of a lake on one of those clear sunny winter days where the mountains just pop out from the bluer-than-blue sky. We sat over lunch joking it was too nice to return to the workshop room. The team had already slogged through a day and a half covering strategy, monthly reviews and new product launches. I was facilitating the last afternoon to bring the team to work together. They were a bunch of individual experts who valued intellectual superiority over collaboration. I could feel the room – a cocktail of tiredness, curiosity, and longstanding tensions. We workshopped to build a common understanding of how they could work together, which was to become very important in the two years that followed.
We all know what happened in March 2020. At first, the follow-up workshops were put on hold as the team adjusted to working from attics, kitchen tables and spare bedrooms. Then as the days of lockdowns dragged on. Six months later the first follow-up workshops were rescheduled. New challenges had appeared: increased workloads, long hours and mental wellbeing ... The team had changed too: resignation, sick leave (burnout) and new faces. The team and I were now all too familiar with zoom. For the first workshop, I introduced the team to an online collaboration tool and canvas (mural) for breakout groups.
We got into a rhythm with a series of short 1 or 1½ hour workshops each month. With a similar format, beginning with a fun icebreaker, a framework to look at a topic, breakouts to discuss and report back on the framework using mural, and wrap up as a group. We experimented with things like using hand signals to express more emotions. Along with some of the changes in the team, there was an improved sense of team spirit. I felt we were in a different place than the first f2f workshop. The sense of camaraderie facing the common corona enemy might have bought them more together in spirit even if they were physically distant.
Finally, after nearly two years there’s the first opportunity to meet f2f again. It’s close to Christmas, so the team decided to have the next meeting at a hotel followed by a Christmas party! I’d facilitate the team-building session as usual, but I’d be virtual as it wasn’t worth traveling 6 hours to facilitate a 1½ hour workshop.
A gorgeous old hotel was booked for the meeting and Christmas party by Mary, the team assistant. But then the shock: it is not set up for hybrid – the conference room does not even have a beamer let alone video facilities. The hotel desperately wanted the business, so they ordered and installed a “spaceship” phone and despite supply shortages, got it in under two weeks. Mary and I planned with laptops and a portable beamer how I could manage to facilitate virtually.
Thank goodness we’re ready for hybrid as one after another team went partly virtual. Craig, the team leader had to self-isolate as his son had corona. Virtual participant number 1. Corona cases were back on the rise, so Jeremy and Andrea elected to stay at home. Virtual participants number 2 and 3. On the day of the meeting, Karla’s train was canceled. Desperate to get to the Christmas party she was calling in from a later train, virtual participant number 4.
We got it to work with breakouts: one virtual group, and two f2f. It worked reasonably well in breakouts though one f2f group seemed to lose time talking about things other than the task. The groups came back together and the discussion spluttered along with only spaceship audio. I couldn't really feel the room. With Craig also virtual, Carole stepped up to get the people back on track and talking.
The following workshops there was never a time the whole team can get together f2f. More hybrid workshops continued. Now, we have a standard setup with the f2f groups in the office’s video conference room, and others attending virtually. We’ve gotten back into a new rhythm, and it has gotten easier. We even coped with only a minor glitch due to the last-minute (mandated) change from zoom to MSTeams.
This real-life journey from in-person to virtual to hybrid has been with real-life challenges, mistakes, and hiccups.
In my humble opinion, "video on" is a must for team-building workshops. The team members have to see faces to read expressions otherwise there is too much information lost. That means when you’re fully virtual, all cameras must be on. For hybrid, you have a video conference room. The virtual team can’t be left blind, not seeing the faces of their colleagues in the room. The virtual colleagues' faces need to be projected on a screen in the conference room.
2. On ground co-ordinator
If the facilitator is not in the room, you need someone on the ground who can keep the breakout groups working, sort out issues with the technology and keep things moving. In this team, it was a combination of the team leader, Craig and the assistant Mary who could sort out any issues in the room. We‘d have a quick pre-meeting and review the workshop plan. For breakout groups, it also helped to appoint a co-ordinator for each group to keep on time and on track.
3. Cluster virtual and f2f breakouts
I disagree with the advice that the best way to do hybrid is to level the playing field by making everyone go virtual.
What is the point of meeting together? This team wanted to meet (maybe for the post-meeting dinner or Christmas party ). Clustering those virtual into a virtual breakout group(s) or those in-person in physical breakout group(s) brings the best of both. Both groups report back using the online collaboration board (mural), though they use it differently: The f2f groups work on the mural board with one person writing on it while projecting to a large screen, otherwise, they’d be staring at their screens.
4. Clear structured workshop plan
As an experienced f2f facilitator, you know when you can wing it. For example, when you need to take a little longer or when to clarify if a breakout group is not clear. With hybrid, you need a very clear plan, instructions and deliverables for the breakout groups to avoid them going off tangent.
5. Adapt quickly, experiment and move on
Congratulations to this team for adapting to so many changes over the last two and a half year. If I do allow myself some self-congratulations (something I’m not good at) I think that my mindset has helped. It wasn’t just a journey from f2f to hybrid. Also, it was a change in challenges facing the team, the team members, and technology. All required a sense of experimentation and not stressing out when things did not well. Working with a team leader who also has this agile mindset, has made it easier too.
Hybrid facilitation is hard: you have to make sure everyone, whether virtual or in person, is engaged and feels free to speak. Engagement and creating a safe space are essential when working on sensitive topics such as collaboration, wellbeing, emotions, conflict or ways of working. With these five lessons learned you can successfully facilitate a workshop that allows sensitive topics to be discussed, brings teams together, and builds a sense of belonging.
Want to dive deeper into the topic of hybrid facilitation? Jane also shared more tips on practical ways to reduce bias in your next hybrid meeting.
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