If you’re like most professionals we work with, you’ve sat through more than your fair share of murky meetings and aimless presentations. They often begin with chit-chat, segue into updates, and then meander through discussions with no clear sense of why everyone’s there or where the conversation is going. This kind of ambiguity slows progress,...
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We spend a lot of time helping people succeed as trainers, meeting facilitators, and presenters. That work focuses on helping people initiate and manage the conversation that takes place in each of these settings. What we rarely focus on is the role of the people receiving the training, participating in the meeting, or listening to...
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We’ve all been meeting virtually for a long time now, and there is no shortage of articles, videos, webinars, and books on how to do it “right.” Most of those resources focus on the technical stuff. This article will focus on the human side of the equation and what we’ve learned while providing virtual presentation...
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One lasting effect of the pandemic has been an upheaval in people’s expectations of where and how they work. Job-seekers are targeting remote-only positions that give them the freedom to search for employment across the country or even globally and to work from wherever they are. Long-term employees are negotiating with their companies to stay...
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A while back, I wrote a blog post about what learners really want trainers to know about their experience and expectations in a learning environment, especially when it comes to the instructor setting ground rules. We thought that since virtual learning seems to be here for the foreseeable future, we should update that post to...
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This article was inspired by a question posed by a client in a recent virtual workshop. She asked: If you are part of a virtual meeting and there is a conflict, argument, etc., how does one handle that as a host or an attendee of that meeting? This question is extremely difficult to answer because...
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In other blog posts, we’ve been talking about hybrid meetings: how to lead them successfully, how to practice good participation behaviors, and even how to dress and set up your space to look professional on Zoom. This led us to think about what an organization’s leaders can do to ensure an efficient, effective, and equitable...
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In our first post on hybrid meetings, we talked about best practices for managing focus when leading meetings with some people in the room and others participating remotely. But even if you’re not in the leadership role, you contribute to the efficiency and effectiveness of the hybrid meetings you attend. If you don’t make these...
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One of the many interesting observations from the pandemic is the evolution of people’s Zoom backgrounds. Initially, everyone was excited to play with the virtual backgrounds available online. I saw people log in from virtual versions of a dive bar, Versailles, and the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. Eventually, talking to colleagues who were literally...
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One thing the pandemic has shown is that people can work efficiently from home. A lot of major corporations, including Salesforce, Google, and Amazon, are working on a “hybrid” model that combines working in the office with working at home—either on a fixed schedule or as determined by the workload and need for in-person collaboration. The number of...
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