Facilitating workshops when your team is remote
At Amiqus, we endeavour to make everything accessible for our teams, no matter where they are based. This is why when presented with the challenge of facilitating a workshop, the prospect of making it work 100% remotely was a potentially very rewarding one.
From the successes our team experienced, as well as the points of contention and learning moments, we’ve put together this guide to facilitating a workshop within a remote team, and getting the most out of your coworkers’ time.
Test the tech
It may seem obvious, but the most important aspect is a strong internet connection. Make sure that your connection is stable and people can hear and see you clearly. It’s also imperative to have a backup. Whether this is someone else in a different location who can pick up the facilitation if you internet goes out, or opting to play it safe and use an ethernet cable for your connection throughout.
Make sure that whatever conferencing software and workshop tools work before you start. It’s important to have a video element on the call — face to face interaction will always foster more natural conversations. Participants should be able to see the facilitator’s screen clearly and follow along with any guidance.
Choose the right tools
The tools you choose as part of your workshop are integral to the success of the session. Products like Miro (formerly RealTimeBoards) are simple tools that allow people to work quickly and without interference from too many functions. Whatever you choose to use, make sure that it is simple and can handle a number of people working on it at once.
The workshop tools should also include somewhere that participants can go before, during, and after the session to keep track of the agenda and any notes. This also opens up the session outcomes to those who can’t make it. This doesn’t have to be anything fancy — a Google Doc that everyone has access to will do.
Prepare your participants
On the subject of having an agenda document, ensure that this is clearly set out well in advance of your workshop. Be open to comments and questions from your participants — they don’t have the opportunity to talk about it in person so this will be important. Google Docs is a great tool as it allows for annotations and comments.
The content of your agenda should clearly state how long the session will be, how you plan to separate out the time, and what your participants should expect. If there are specific roles you want people to fulfil, then clearly state this in your document. Keep the document updated as the session progresses, and if there are any important outcomes that you want to share, then this is the place to do it. You don’t want to overload people with lots of links to follow.
During the session
Communication is key throughout the workshop session. It can be helpful to check in with the participants regularly throughout the session to keep engagement high and everyone feeling involved. Carefully time each part of the session, and ensure that everyone has access to the tools and knows how to use them.
After the session, be sure to update the participants and the document with how the session went. It can be useful to request feedback from participants so that you can build on the format of the sessions and get the most out of them. At Amiqus, we constantly do this and as a result, we are all learning to work better together as a remote team.
Poppy Reid is a Product Designer at Amiqus.
