A (virtual) Shift for the Foreseeable Future

This forced movement into remote collaboration and learning has been a scramble for many - but I believe has been exciting for a handful of folks who have been hoping for an openness to change in this arena. I'm personally very excited about this challenging space we've been moved into, where the end of the tunnel isn't in view and we're still very much feeling around in the dark, learning new ways to get work done in very restrictive conditions. The write up below is lengthy, but hopefully includes a lot of opportunities for facilitators or team leads to set up effective collaboration. You won't find a focus on specific tools (although I make a few recommendations) and I cap off the article with a little ditty about having fun and staying connected with your coworkers (and friends).

I started working at Riot Games in Los Angeles in early 2013 - and in 2017, I moved my family to Pittsburgh, but continued to work for Riot. When I moved, I made it clear that I was leaving Santa Monica, not Riot. The first year was tough. Sometimes folks forgot to dial in to meetings and I had to ping every attendee until someone remembered I was supposed to be there. Our team rarely forgets to dial in now - it’s become a habit. I’ve had large success in remaining close to many coworkers and keeping up with folks as Riot grows and changes. The place where I shine is that I literally never shy away from speaking up when I have a thought, or jumping in where I find an inch of silence. At Riot, this is key, because so many of our meetings require extreme collaboration. This isn’t everyone’s experience (or preference) and learning how to include everyone (I heard it referred to as “location inclusive” in a recent webcast from IdeoU) is a fun new challenge I’m looking forward to everyone figuring out.

Last year, 2019, was a very interesting year for me. I worked with a handful of other absolutely epic folks (Kendall Cutadean, Tracy Schlessinger, and Winston Baker) in launching a global workshop that covered a shift in our mindset around feedback. The content was challenging, the most vulnerable content I’ve ever facilitated, but extremely rewarding. Instead of having folks fly to “hub” offices, we had two teams of two (poor Winston stuck with me), visit 13 of our offices (every office with more than 10 people except for Australia, that we missed). This was an amazing opportunity and I got to experience so many wonderful cultures and see so many lovely Rioters that I’ve worked with for years.

The flip side of this is that I was away from my husband and my two small children for approximately 35% of the year (including weekends). I believed in this content, I still do, and that’s why I spent so much of my year away. But (like any good infomercial) “there has to be a better way!” And I feel like we’re moving into a space where we’re being forced to accept a new approach in how we consider global rollout of programs. I hope this spells out a future where I don't have to choose between my family and being a part of programs that I believe in. 

Approaches for Various Group Sizes

There’s more to think about and plan for when you create groups virtually, since physical distance creates an inherent (additional) barrier to overcome in terms of safety and connection.

Small Groups vs Large Groups

Small groups allow for higher levels of collaboration and sharing. You're not only able to orchestrate activities with everyone and their style in mind (who should be paired with whom), but you're also able to take a lighter role in terms of assuring everyone has a chance to share. There's also a level of security and safety in smaller groups - folks will feel more comfortable being vulnerable with five people than with fifty.

Each person added reduces the chance (and interest) for sharing. Once a group reaches about 10 attendees, the ability for folks to contribute reduces significantly and you'll have to take a greater role as a facilitator in ensuring that everyone has a chance to share.

Ten isn't a large group by any means, it's still a job you can definitely do by yourself - however once you start getting upwards of 30 attendees, you should start recreating the smaller group feel by by utilizing breakout sessions (in whatever tool you'd like to use). This can turn a crowd of 100+ attendees into a more contained experience. Please also check out the recommendations for facilitator roles I've listed below when working with larger groups.

During activities, the more sub-groups you attempt to create out of one larger group, the less time you'll have to plan out who goes in what group and make it a more controlled environment.

Where large groups shine is in mass thought gathering. Look to quick input mechanisms that allow the group to see many individuals contributing at the same time, such as polling, quizzing, or providing reactions. You can also force group interactions that would be exceedingly simple at lower attendee numbers, but become daunting and fun when you're dealing with 100+ crowds, such as "sorting" activities that require coordination across all attendees to do a simple thing like send increasing numbers in chat without duplicating or skipping any.

The lead facilitator has so much more responsibility when it comes to a larger group. They must model the attitude they want to see in their audience. For example, when you're talking about behavioral change or practicing a new skill, attendees will need to feel safe in trying and potentially failing. This requires the lead facilitator to foster that vulnerability through their own stories and approaches to debriefing and interaction with the attendees. I've found that the more folks in a room, the more you have to put yourself out there to make an environment where others will feel comfortable sharing - and even then, you'll need some brave souls to lead with their vulnerability. With these larger groups, I recommend breaking down walls quickly by focusing on humor over more heartfelt emotions to get folks to their comfort zone.

Familiar Folks vs Disparate Folks

For people who have worked together frequently, they jump to whatever place they already are in a team relationship - sometimes this is good and you end up with smoother activities and collaboration, and sometimes they bring a lot of baggage that may need to be unpacked. If folks are familiar, know the landscape of what you're dealing with. You can gauge early on the levels of safety and where some trouble spots may occur (e.g. who will dominate conversation, what accommodations can you make to ensure all folks' styles are taken into account, etc)

When you're dealing with disparate individuals (or teams) coming together to engage in a workshop, adjust your activities appropriately. This is where you employ a humanizing tactic like an ice breaker. Don't create activities that force people to share their deepest fears and concerns when it comes to their careers / product / team, you'll be lucky to build a foundation for vulnerability in the room with folks who don't know each other. Stick to facts, learning to listen, and coming together to solve a problem that is unfamiliar to all involved parties.

Power Dynamics

Keep in mind the power dynamics in the room - who are the folks in the "in" group. Remember that this may not always spell the majority (as a manager or executive may be the only one, but carries significant weight). Additionally, power dynamics are often thought of in terms of hierarchy, but at Riot, I've seen this in-groups as those who have been at Riot a long time, what discipline / department you came from, and also what product you're working on. If you feel like some element of power dynamics will prevent those in the group from sharing at their fullest, find ways to level the playing field. Anonymous thoughts and voting, ensuring their voices don't dominate the conversations, and be sure to celebrate when someone comes up with a completely different - even contradictory - idea ("I really like that you brought up something completely different" over "I really like that idea!").

Preparing for the Virtual Experience

Like with any physically in-person workshop, you’ll need to do some prep work before you get everyone together.

Tool Accessibility

For you - Be familiar with the tool you’re using. During your workshop, you may need to triage tech issues for folks that pop up and the more familiar you are with the content, the better chance you have to fix problems and fix them quickly.

For attendees - Keep in mind that some folks may have never used the tools you’re engaging with. Whatever you choose to use, have links prepared or a “quick start” guide to get attendees into the tool with the best chance of success.

Approach to Virtual

I mentioned this in a previous post - some folks just haven’t engaged virtually in ways that are more demanding. Remember that this isn’t the fault of your audience, they’re bringing their previous context into this new environment to dictate how they should interact. So be proactive in helping them understand what will be asked of them.

• Hardware needs - Will they have to use a mic and camera (for most of the stuff I’m going to discuss later, you’ll need at minimum a microphone)? Give clear expectations of what someone should have and what the impact will be if someone isn’t able to secure the necessary hardware.
• Software needs - What tools will you be using? Share any guides you create or quick-start content. Give clear expectations of how someone will be using each of these tools.
• Space / time needs - Let your attendees know (in advance) about breaks - if you can get specific with timing of breaks, that’s even better - and if there’s a need for quiet space. Depending on each individual home situation, folks may need to do some maneuvering to ensure they’ll be in a good spot to attend the workshop.
• Level of interaction - What will attendees be doing during the workshop? I’ve found that telling folks how much time they’ll spend talking is effective in driving home how much you’ll ask of them.
• Directing questions - Where should someone go if they have questions about any of this? Have a point of contact for folks to directly reach out to and get answers. We’ve found that using very directed Slack channels is helpful, but if you don’t have that available, use other more immediate contact options (email is great, but it’s easy to let those messages slip through the cracks).

Be sure to message these expectations early and often. Folks should be given enough time to secure space, equipment, and ramp up on whatever tools they’ve never used before.

Message Documents Early

If there’s content you want people to act on or share thoughts about during the workshop, give it to them beforehand so they can review it on their own time and formulate thoughts prior to engaging. This is really just overall good meeting etiquette, but it’s worth a call out.

Facilitator Roles

Depending on the size of your workshop, you may need multiple facilitators to act in different roles.

• Lead Facilitator - This individual will drive the session. They’re directly communicating everything to the attendees - timing, explaining activities, debriefing those activities with the whole group, and may be the overall presenter (depending on the content being covered).
• Moderator - This person will handle any backend work. Breaking up the room into activity groups, triaging any tech issues, letting the lead facilitator know about pivoting based on timing, when to take breaks, etc. Assigning someone this role allows the lead facilitator to focus on running the session and have another person dealing with any issues in the back (where it’s less visible to attendees). This person will need to be familiar with all of the tools being used, since they will be that point of contact if anything breaks down.
• Additional facilitators - These folks come in handy when you have a larger group (30+). They give you the option to break the room into smaller groups for debriefs, share backs, or even complete activities. Smaller group sizes allow for more sharing to happen and create a larger sense of safety when it comes to speaking up (especially if it’s a room full of people unfamiliar with each other). I also utilized these extra facilitators to answer questions or triage issues during group activities.

Approaches to Virtual Engagement

It may seem like there are inherent restrictions on how a group can engage with each other virtually, but almost every in-person interaction or activity can be driven virtually. There are a variety of tools that can make that happen - so I’m going to focus on the different types of facilitation.

Generating Prompts

Every activity you run should have a clear and focused prompt. Prep these early and test them on peers or colleagues to get feedback and ensure you’re driving the right* kind of response from attendees (*folks are answering the questions you want them to answer).

Divergence and Convergence

A concept I learned about in an IdeoU class is the split of divergence - the widening of options and ideas - and convergence - the narrowing of options to start making clear decisions. Making the intent of the meeting known to all will drive better collaboration because folks know what to expect. You can attempt to do both in one meeting, but I've seen the most effective meetings are ones where folks have one clear purpose in mind - to widen the river or to narrow it. Taking a break between these approaches allows for research to happen and questions to be answered that folks waste time ruminating on or assuming answers to in the room.

Create a Clear Purpose for Collaboration

Now you want to get more specific about why you’re bringing folks together to share their ideas (even if it’s for a small portion of a larger workshop). If the following look familiar, it’s because they’re taken (lovingly) from Liberating Structures. I love Liberating Structures (LS) - Theron James, a peer I'm honored to know (who, might I add, is extremely passionate in not only facilitation, but management and also learning and development, frequently sharing articles and resources in so many channels, it's hard to keep track) brought it to the attention of our L&D team a year ago and we chose to start implementing LS in our approach to engagement and each workshop we build. 

Sharing perspective

• Can utilize more informal group discussions around prompts - leverage breakout rooms to get smaller group conversations rolling 
• Storytime for individual attendees to share their experiences with the complete group (would want to prepare folks before your session to do this) 
• To drive empathy, have the group list out various perspectives, highlight the prominent ones, and ask folks to first align to what they believe in the least. From there, groups will “debate” or represent a perspective that they don’t really believe in (this is considered an activity called “Four Corners” but can be adapted to work for any amount of perspectives). 

Discovery of ideas / solutions / risks / etc

• Brainstorm with restrictions - create a couple of categories to use as launch points e.g. What does a 15% solution look like? What can you change tomorrow? What does this look like if you have to deliver it in a week?
• Crowdsource ideas or questions - I love the Liberating Structure activity 25/10 Crowdsourcing. You can do this virtually using Google Sheets, multiple tabs, and randomizing names with numbers.
• Talk about the worst possible outcome - use small groups and individual “team” docs to run the Liberating Structure Triz.

Analyzing / Debriefing / Clarifying

• Liberating Structures rules this section - with Nine Whys (using breakout rooms for 1:1 discussions), What? So What? Now What? (creating virtual groups of 4-5 each), Generative Relationships (teams working together using collaborative slides)
• Use MoSCoW (Must have, Should have, Could have, and Won't have) to dig deep into a set of possibilities and build a prioritization list. You’ll create four groupings for each section, I recommend any tool that allows folks to work at the same time and move ideas from column to column.

Getting help

• If you want to build connections you can take major topics (e.g. work projects, development areas, craft skills) and have folks draw connections from themselves to the applicable topic. (I like using Lucid Chart for something like this, but you can easily use a Google Slide)
• You can also use Helping Heuristics or What I Need From You to find other ways to highlight areas where helping can occur.

Strategizing

• Thinking about the MVP for delivery and coming up with a product’s “non-negotiables” with your team can prove useful for prioritization and risk-identification. Utilize group discussions of around 5 folks each, have them generate lists together and then attempt to remove the Jenga blocks to see if the list items are truly part of the MVP.
• I love the Liberating Structure Panarchy. It’s great to identify the challenges at varying levels, raise up dependencies / obstacles / opportunities, and then build some action planning. You can use a combination of small group ideation / reflection and then larger group shareback (mini-presentation style).

Planning

• Using a project planning tool, like Favro, JIRA, Trello, whatever flavor you like, can be easily utilized in a team format to build an approach to work with things like backlogs, commit to work, create burndown charts, etc.
• For things like roadmaps or visualizing designs, you’ll need to use combinations of previously mentioned activities to clarify team needs.

You can look up each of these online, Liberating Structures is under Creative Commons license so it’s free to use. I love their company, we worked very closely with Keith and got to hear Henri’s own thoughts - they’re such a wonderful pair of individuals and the community they’ve created with Liberating Structures is fantastic and immensely supportive.

Having Fun

The final thing I want to write about is something I’ve found I’m using and checking more than any other resource - how I just stay connected to my coworkers. We work at a gaming company, so we’ve found bonding through games, but I really feel like these are things anyone can engage with. The approaches I’m about to describe aren’t comprehensive, just a representation of how we’ve been staying connected as a team. Additionally, they’re representative of one solution at one company. So these may not be applicable to your environment / group / team.

At Riot

We have an open office plan - so we’re very much used to being able to turn around and interrupt a fellow teammate for a quick conversation about something we’re working on. Obviously I don’t engage with this much anymore because I’m remote and all of my conversations are planned.

Also, for most teams, around half of our days at Riot are spent in meetings - we’re highly collaborative and decisions are rarely (if ever) made in a vacuum. This comes with its own risks and issues, but we’re always in search of the perfect balance of feedback and voices in a room with the need for speed.

Open Chat

One of my coworkers, Max La Due, created a Discord channel for our complete HR team. Each day we fill up the chat discussing what we’re doing, our lives, etc. It isn’t focused on one core topic (although Animal Crossing and League / TFT has come up pretty much every day), and it allows one to reach out into the void and see if someone is there. 

Additionally, Max set up one overall channel for just hanging out - popping in when you’re used to sitting by your coworkers and you can hear the familiar click of their keyboard as they also work. He also created voice channels for virtual huddle spaces - so teams can just pop on quickly to have an immediate (and impromptu) conversation without having to do any extra setup.

Jackbox Party Pack

If you played computer games in the late 90s / early 2000s, you may have played a game called You Don’t Know Jack. This game was awesome for learning stupid trivia - although after a certain amount of time, the questions began to repeat. Jackbox Games Inc brought their title into the modern era in 2014 with the Jackbox Party Pack (of which there are currently 6 editions).

I’ll skip the overall explanation of the various games - of which there are many (i.e. drawing games, games about making fake definitions, teamwork bomb diffusing) and just talk about the setup. One person will need to stream their screen. This can be done using any platform that allows screenshare and audio share (so Discord, Twitch, Zoom - I don’t think that Hangouts currently supports computer audio share). Share this streaming link with anyone who wants to either play or watch. Folks playing will join via their phones and answer questions / prompts as they appear (both on screen and on the phone). 

I’m a big fan of this set of titles, if only due to the ease of access. One tech-inclined friend will be able to run this for everyone and only one person needs to own the game for the group to play.

Skribbl.io

Quick, easy, silly - this is a completely free browser-based game where folks will attempt to guess what one person is drawing (so Pictionary). Just have everyone who wants to play navigate to the site - https://skribbl.io/ - and hop on something with voice chat (Hangouts, Discord, Zoom, etc).

Stay Connected (but also maybe tune out)

It’s healthy to stay connected to coworkers and still have fun while you interact with them. But also be mindful of your own well-being and taking time for yourself. It’s really easy to miss the cue of “I get up and leave the office” to end your workday and I would be lying if I said I didn’t pull some late nights hanging out with coworkers instead of disconnecting. Draw your boundaries and keep a “home schedule” that involves you relaxing and enjoying life sans work during your “off” hours.

For anyone who made it this far, I appreciate it. Thank you for taking the time to read this labor of love and I hope you gained something from it. <3 On a personal note, I need to get better at writing smaller articles instead of waiting and dumping my thoughts into one giant article. So I’ll try to do better on this and share things like learnings (smaller ones) around L&D at Riot more regularly.