The Guide To Great Remote Workshops (Part 1/4)
5 Tools To Help You Succeed
by Sebastian Mueller, Chief Operating Officer at MING Labs
Moving group workshops into an online setting causes changes in dynamics, which can hamper creativity and collaboration in the team. How can we set the team up for success, and make the experience less frustrating?
As a creative team, we at MING Labs have to ask similar questions. This article is first in a 4-part series on how to better run remote workshops.
Below are a collection of tools essential for hosting a workshop. Before diving into the practical aspects of remote workshops, it is useful first to consider why and how they are different.
Understanding the subtle changes in dynamics can help to adapt well. There are four key differences that we need to be aware of:
Reduced Depth of Communication
When we communicate, the spoken words are only a part of the message. Other factors, such as intonation and body language, carry significant amounts of meaning. Humans are incredibly adept at picking up these cues and getting the full message that is pieced together from the various non-verbal aspects.
When we go remote, many of these qualities of communication are lost.
Inadequate audio equipment leads to reduced sound quality, and hence missing intonation cues. Webcams significantly reduce our field of vision on a person’s body language. Often people are also less physically expressive in front of a computer.
Online, the reduced qualitative depth of communication can lead to many misunderstandings. Constructive criticism, lacking the depth in intonation, can be taken as offensive. A reluctant agreement, lacking the accompanying body language cues, can be interpreted as complete agreement. Misunderstandings can abound and lead to problems.
Increased Reluctance to Participate
Creative teamwork takes trust. Team members need to feel emotionally safe to put new ideas out there.
They need to feel safe from harsh criticism or ridicule. Thinking out of the box means putting yourself out there. And this does not happen without trust. Physical meetings are ideal for trust-building, because of the full range of communication we get to observe. When spoken words, tonality, and body language are congruent, we trust the message and the speaker.
For people who have never or rarely met, a remote setting is not ideal for forming that trust. When people enter an unfamiliar situation with unfamiliar attendees, the most common response is reluctance, which is the opposite of what we want in remote workshop settings. Special attention needs to be paid to every participant to include them in the session.
Increased Levels of Distraction
During an in-person workshop, the group gathers in a space dedicated to the workshop and can see what everyone else is doing. All of this is highly conducive to stay focused during the entire session.
In a remote environment, especially when people work from home, there are many distractions around them. The screen only occupies a small amount of space for every participant. All the remaining space might offer plenty of distractions. Keeping people engaged becomes even more critical.
Reduced Effectiveness of Tools and Methods
Most of the tools and methods we have today to conduct workshops have been created for in-person settings. From the ubiquitous post-it notes and whiteboards to various brainstorming and ideation techniques, including break-out groups and similar methods. They work well when everyone gathers in the same location, but not remotely.
It is, therefore, essential to see beyond the concrete tool and think about its purpose. Many tools and methods do have remote-ready equivalents. Otherwise, good workarounds can usually be found.
What tools do you need?
After being clear on the key differences, we can start with the first fundamental question — what tools are needed to run remote workshops? You mainly want to focus on the necessary capabilities for running a workshop and translate them into remote-ready tools to help you.
Real-Time Communication
For the real-time communication aspect, there are plenty of good conferencing solutions. The key is to choose one that will work in all locations and setups (e.g., corporate IT requirements). Choose an established tool, which includes audio and video communication, as well as screen-sharing. The usual suspects here are Zoom, Hangouts, Webex, Teams, and similar.
Use the tool that works for everyone. For us, we have teams in Shanghai and Suzhou, and often have workshops with stakeholders in China. To get around the firewall and connectivity issues, we use Zoom.
Asynchronous Communication
Ideally, you would also have an asynchronous communication space. As you will see, making use of a mixture of synchronous and asynchronous collaboration lets people communicate before, during, and after the workshop. Hence you’ll want to have a tool like Slack (A MING favorite!) or Teams at the ready.
File Sharing
There will often be the need to share larger documents (PDFs, PPTs…). For that purpose, it is ideal to have a cloud storage space ready for the team. Tools such as Dropbox, Drive, and similar are well-suited for the task. A clear folder structure also helps in keeping things orderly.
If you’re looking for a Google Drive alternative that works in China, our teams use Tencent docs when necessary.
Real-Time Documentation
Documentation is critical in really getting the most out of your workshop.
You need to make sure to assign note-taking responsibilities. The note-taking itself should be done in a collaborative document that everyone can access and see changes to in real-time.
Prime candidates for that are Google Docs or real-time co-authoring in Word.
Popular tools amongst our designers are Figma, Lucidchart and Miro. We use them when we work on huge flowcharts together not just to showcase and share our work but also to exchange ideas and collaborate in real-time. Clients can access and leave comments as well.
Make sure that all workshop participants can easily access and know the tools in advance. Nothing is worse than losing momentum (and time and motivation) in a workshop when people start to register their own account to be able to use the tools for the first time.
Brainstorming
Post-it notes are still the unbeaten champions when it comes to externalizing thoughts and clustering them. Luckily, there are digital equivalents that work well. The prime examples we use are tools such as Miro and Mural.
Templates can be prepared, the team can create post-it notes synchronously, and voting features are usually also built-in. Again, ensure that your team knows how to use the platforms, and prepare small and fun warm-up exercises for them to learn how to navigate the tools.
High-Quality Hardware
Remote collaboration, by default, reduces the quality of communication. You need to do everything in your power to reclaim as much quality as possible. That means that being on video should always be the default, and ideally, every participant has an HD webcam. Using a proper headset with high-quality audio should also be the standard.
Even with these tools, keep flexible and ready to problem-solve on the fly. Project Lead Jason shared, “I used Skype for Business to call a client. They could hear me, but couldn’t see my screen. So I changed to my personal Skype for talking and sharing my screen, and was calling one of the designers on WhatsApp — you make it work.”
These are the practical tools to tackle the 4 major differences between physical and remote workshops. With an understanding of what can reduce the effectiveness of a remote workshop, choose tools that will facilitate the communication process between participants.
Read on for part 2 of our series where we’ll explore how to craft a successful remote workshop agenda.
Sebastian Mueller is Chief Operating Officer at MING Labs.
MING Labs is a leading digital business builder located in Berlin, Munich, New York City, Shanghai, Suzhou, and Singapore. We guide clients in designing their businesses for the future, ensuring they are leaders in the field of innovation.
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