Recently I posed the question in several online forums: What facilitation training is needed to help people succeed in the post-pandemic context? A lot of great answers came up including tried and true skills such as the importance of listening. However, the thread that came up most was needing to prepare and learn more about facilitating in hybrid settings. Indeed, the top ranked thought was being able to switch from in-person, to hybrid, to online on a dime.
I can relate to this. For months I’ve been planning a hybrid workshop. Based on participation and demand, what I’m seeing is that people like the idea of hybrid but prefer to join from their remote location. I’ve heard this from others who are planning meetings. It’s important to understand the reality as planning a hybrid meeting is exponentially harder than designing for only face-to-face or only online. That said, flipping an in-person workshop focused on visual engagement to online is not something one does “on a dime”. However, it is forcing us to consider more online options and tools and address the reality of our virtual spaces. There are ways to be creative and engaging online however it’s different than in-person and requires different planning, tools and expectations.
If you are curious, check out the Online or In Person workshops coming up!
Finally, the survey tool I used is ThoughtExchange – well worth checking out if want to harness the collective intelligence of a group in-person or online.
