Cara Bermingham

TLDR; there are some things you can’t do when facilitating online and can take advantage of in person. I’ve shared these as a useful reminder if you’re getting out there again and need some tips.

It has honestly been about 2 years since I’ve run an in person workshop and I was so happy to be packing my box up and heading off to facilitate an offsite with a fabulous team.

There are of course, tons of differences between remote and in person facilitation but there are some that stood out which I thought I’d share in case it’s useful for people as you go back into the world of in person sessions (if you are ready to do so of course)

Create more space than you think you need

People have a lot to catch up on, so don’t be too ambitious with your agenda. Most teams have got in to the habit of only meeting for work conversations and are missing out on all of the ‘in between’ things that happen when you are sitting next to someone. There might be an awful lot that needs to get out of people’s heads and of course if you sense that you need to just allow it to happen because it’s really important.

In hindsight I would’ve cut my agenda in half and then just give people the space to catch up and connect properly. If you manage to get through stuff and need more to do then that’s great, you can always have other things in your back pocket to try. It’s about making most of the great opportunity you have by having people in the room together.

Notice the energy arches

Something that is really hard to sense remotely is the energy levels in the ‘room’ as quite often you can’t keep tabs on what everyone is up to. It’s really easy for groups to disengage without the facilitator noticing and the ‘arches’ aren’t being opened or closed in the right way.

Arches is a concept that was introduced to me through an amazing Kaospilots training course I went on and it’s something that is really so much easier to be aware of in person.

Arches are the natural movements of a group’s activity through space and time. Noticing where you are in relation to these can help you act in ways that keeps energy moving in the way that suits the group.

If you think of a workshop as one big arch and then all the activities within it are mini arches, humans naturally move through these and there is an optimal time when the arch is ready to be closed off. A great facilitator is someone who can understand where the group is in their arch and knows when to close something up.

By interrupting an arch too soon you can get in the way of a great idea or something being resolved and by not interrupting the arch at the right time, things drag on, people get bored and it just generally feels tiring.

The power of hovering

Another thing it’s impossible to do online is ‘hover’ to try and influence the energy levels I mentioned above. There is an amazing thing that happens when humans are in a room together where they sense movement in their peripheral vision and things come to a close or people stop talking. There’s also a technique where you gradually move closer and closer to someone from behind to stop them talking if you feel it’s time to move on. Don’t get me wrong, this doesn’t always work but it was really nice to be able to move around a space, listening to what people were discussing and it reminded me of how much I enjoy the in person thing.

Please let there be more opportunity for this in 2022. 🙏

Let me know what you miss about being in a room with humans.