JO’s Newsletter 📰

Hello, and welcome to the retro newsletter. This week, I’m focusing on some Remote Facilitation Tips. Thanks to James and a few others for their feedback in the poll. Then, you can join the referral program and get a 30-minute call with me to help you plan your next retro.

What's in this newsletter

• Remote Facilitation: 3 Principles for Remote Facil …

  • 1. Create Equal Opportunity =

  • 2. Nurture Connection and Safety ⛑️

  • 3. Enable Flow 💦

  • 3 Tips to Improve the "Gather Data" Phase in Retr …

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Remote Facilitation: 3 Principles for Remote Facilitation 🖥️

There are many reasons why things are just different in remote meetings. Some of these speak to cognitive load, and some to social cues and interactions that make them a more difficult place to navigate overall. Combine that with many distractions and people not focusing, and remote meetings can quickly become a minefield.

Jay-Allen Morris and Kirsten Clacey wrote a wonderful book, The Remote Facilitators Pocket Guide. Published in 2020, these ladies had already been doing wonderful things in Remote facilitation before we all got sent home during COVID. I can highly recommend the book. The 3 of us developed a course together, The Remote Facilitation Practitioner, based on some of their book's principles and included additional resources on change and confidence.

I’m going to share a few of the principles here, that you can start to use to improve your retrospectives.

1. Create Equal Opportunity =

Virtual meetings have a bias for verbal communication. Meetings do generally, but more so when we are on screens and separated by hundreds of miles. Sometimes, we also have hybrid affairs where some people are in a room together, and others are remote. Take a moment to think about the impact on people’s ability to contribute.

The first Principle we need to consider is creating equal opportunity for people to participate. If we have invited people, we probably want their input, so making it easy for people to contribute is very important.

Practical Tips: Use a tool that creates an interactive space where people can visualise what is happening. Google slides, Miro, Powerpoint, or Retrium

Create clear working agreements for how people can communicate.

Use the interactive space to vary communication styles and create shared documentation

2. Nurture Connection and Safety ⛑️

We all know that teams and groups function better when there is trust and safety between the people in the group. In remote spaces we need to be more intentional about creating time and space for this because it doesn’t happen organically the way it does in person.

Practical Tips: Start each meeting with a brief check-in, allowing participants to share how they're doing.

Make space for having fun together as a group.

Open a space with connection and safety; be intentional about how you show up and the container you create.

3. Enable Flow 💦

The best meetings have a natural rhythm, moving between topics or speakers or allowing ideas to build on each other. As a facilitator, your role is to create that sense of flow, keeping energy levels high while ensuring discussions remain focused. This is even more difficult in a remote space because there are so many ways that flow can be impacted.

Practical Tips: Use co-created documentation to help visualize what is happening in case of technical issues.

Create working agreements to help handle talk order when the discussion gets lively.

Enable people to leave and come back without interrupting the flow.

These three principles will help enable more productive remote spaces for your teams. Stop sharing a screen and start creating collaboration spaces that enable and encourage engagement instead of passive half-listening. Changing your meeting culture can change your organisation, starting with retrospectives.

The book has three additional principles and many specific practices and ideas. The course shares these principles and practices and some specific ideas for creating artefacts in tools like Miro/Mural and PowerPoint / Google Slides. You also get time to practice and get feedback on things you want to experiment with with your teams.

3 Tips to Improve the "Gather Data" Phase in Retrospectives 📈

1. Create a Focus:🔭
   Think about what the team might need and use that to create a focus of the retrospective. For example, if everyone is talking about too many meetings, get people to add all the meetings that they have been to in the last two weeks. Then, when you generate insights, you can ask questions like, looking at all of these meetings, what can we stop? Which were really valuable? Which are wasting our time and why?

2. Visualize Data with Tools:⚒️
   Incorporate visual tools like a Miro, Mural, Retrium or Concept board. Then, use these to visualise the data and encourage participants to categorize their input, making it easier to see patterns and trends while also making the process more engaging.

3. Include Silent Brainstorming:🤔
   Give participants time to reflect individually and jot down thoughts before sharing them with the group. Virtual sticky notes allow everyone to contribute their ideas simultaneously, preventing dominant voices from swaying the data and ensuring more diverse input.

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Feel free to share this newsletter with others who might find value. Subscribers can get 10% off the Remote Facilitation Practitioner Course use the CODE NEWSZA10, NEWS10US or NEWS10EU if none of those geographies work for you, get in touch with me and we will see what we can do. You can also check out BuyMeA Coffee, where I have shared additional resources and will keep adding things.

Next Issue

let me know what interests you and what you want to learn about for the next newsletter. Contact me at [email protected] and share what you want me to discuss or ask for help with specific scenarios.