1. Always, always have a back-up plan based on the particular technology and audience.  Know what quick questions you will ask (about the connection or other technical issues), then what steps you will take (for example, email or download presentation) and finally, what follow-up you will propose (reschedule the meeting, do some work offline?)
2. Work in pairs.  One keeps the conversation going.  The other deals with the technology issue or transitions to the back-up plan (P.S. always have one). If you are facilitating solo, ask a “power user” to help.
3. Create a back-up agenda to accomplish what is possible without technology, then schedule a follow-on session for the rest.
4. For meetings crossing time zones, make sure that the technology provider is not planning maintenance.
5. Build in some pre-work, for example viewing a video presentation or contributing to an online discussion topic.  This allows your participants to test their access to the technology and familiarize themselves with the navigation before the live meeting.
6. Be aware that technology that requires downloading something adds complexity, especially if people are signing on at the last minute. Make sure your participants sign in early, and/or complete assigned pre-work.
7. Focus on keeping the experience positive for everyone.  Don’t apologize and keep struggling with the technology. People want to feel that their time is valued.  Accomplish what can be done given the situation and propose another venue and time to finish the rest.

Now, what if most of your group is doing just fine, but one or two are experiencing technical difficulties?

1. First and foremost, don’t take up the meeting solving one person’s technical problem! It may be possible to keep that person partially connected, for example via telephone, and then follow up with them individually after the meeting.
2. Give someone the role of help desk and refer people to them for help off-line.
3. Contact participants individually who are new to the technology to make sure they are ready.
4. Depending on the objectives of the meeting, offer to collect this individual’s input another way, for example in a separate phone call or via email.

http://www.anecdote.com.au/archives/2006/09/why_people_don’t.html

As group process people, we know that there is no one right way to facilitate real world team building. Facilitators use a portfolio of essential tools and two of the most important are preventions & interventions.

To identify the preventions and interventions for your group session, first collaborate with the meeting sponsor to articulate clear desired outcomes. Next, think about what could possibly go wrong. Is this being negative? Not at all.  By pinpointing potential issues, you create the opportunity to put preventions in place to mitigate them.  Going a step further, you also plan for how you will intervene if the preventions don’t work.  Thinking this way avoids the situation in which you must try to be creative in that critical moment when participants begin to act out. Finally, discuss and get agreement on the preventions and interventions before the group session and remind people at the kick-off.  You’ve just increased the likelihood of having a successful session.

Digging deeper into preventions
When you ask, “what could go wrong?” the answers will fall into one of two buckets: people and process issues.   Allow yourself and the folks who are planning the session to be negative in order to find the potential things that could go wrong…don’t worry about the discussion but do make it somewhat private.

Examples of the process issues might be:

• Unclear roles and/or authority
• Unclear decision-making / governance,  and/or communication protocols
• Ambiguous organizational structure / reporting relationships and/or team meeting processes and procedures

Examples of the people issues might be:

• Folks not making their thinking / feelings  visible
• People using a resistant and/or debating communication style
• People demonstrating an attitude of “I’m right and you’re wrong!”

There are many prevention strategies so be creative and think of how you and the leader will partner to mitigate them. Here are a few of my favorite preventions:

Ground rules / behavioral meeting agreements
Presented and agreed upon at the beginning of the meeting. Sometimes best to cover them before the meeting if you anticipate participants who might be resistant

Example

• Be On time
• Park issues…if they are relevant but off topic
• Stay on topic
• One conversation at a time, no lengthy side bars
• While dialoguing difficult issues we will use “ally” tone of voice, words and body language
• No one is as smart as all of us

Decision-making approach with fall back
Present at beginning of meeting but workout before meeting

Example

• Consensus with fall back that the leader will decide

Agreement on meeting outcomes
Best to address before the meeting and re-inforce at kick-off.

Example

Kick off the meeting with PCA….Present outcomes, ask participants if they need any Clarification and then ask them to Agree to put their focus / energy into the achieving those outcomes…do PCA with ground rules too

Identify side issues that could sabotage the meeting
Before the meeting sometimes the team leader or sponsor will need to ‘run a trap’ so as to take away potential participant resistance / attempts to derail the meeting by bring up marginally legitimate issues.

Example

For example, the sponsor will find out before the meeting answers to questions like these and then report out those answers at the beginning of the meeting

• Will more resources be available to the team?
• Will production schedules be extended to account for the unexpected delays?
• Will project managers from the customer & contractor agree to create a joint ‘integrated’ organizational chart?

Conflict resolution agreements
When groups of people work together for extended periods of time to reach a common goal, it is not a matter of if, but when, conflict happens.  It is far better to create agreements how you will mitigate & recover before you experience an actual conflict.

Example

A conflict agreement could include factors like: use facts – i.e. what you saw or heard, check out assumptions, use mature / ally tone, body language and avoid toxic words, control emotions while staying passionate, argue principle not position, if you cannot resolve pull in a 3rd party for support….and agree on a fallback person to make the final decision if you can’t agree.

The intervention escalator
When a prevention doesn’t work it’s time to intervene.  As with preventions, discuss and agree among the planning folks what interventions will be used and who will use them. Most of the time the facilitator will do the intervening but on occasion it might be best for other participants to take the first step.

Let’s use the example of two meeting participants who are engaged in a persistent side-bar conversation, in spite of the ground rule that was stated at the beginning of the session. Think of interventions as a series of escalating steps. At the first sign of the issue, start with a low-level intervention such as walking over to the people who are talking amongst themselves without saying a word.  If they keep up their talking, lean down and whisper to them to complete their thoughts.  Let’s say they continue to talk on the side. Escalating a level, wait until the break and ask them to keep the length of their side bar conversations to 10 seconds.  Assuming none of these steps are effective, confront them in public and ask others if their sidebars are ok.  Usually the others will say no and now you’ve used some respectful peer pressure to intervene.

Learn from your mistakes
Becoming a master at interventions takes practice and occasionally failures. Here’s a true story.  I was facilitating a group of twenty PhD scientists and everyone was passionate about their version of the truth.  One group was telling the other group that their data model was wrong and that this group’s was right.  The other group responded that no, their model was right and they could prove it.  They went on for close to an hour, sounding like school children arguing on the playground. I finally lost it and said in a scolding parent tone, “come on guys, grow up”!  Well, they stopped attacking each other and started attacking me!  I failed my role and their meeting. I’ll leave it to you to ponder how I might have handled this situation more effectively.

As facilitators it is important to keep growing our skills, and in my view we will always be learning new ways to use these two key tools – preventions and interventions – to help our clients meet or exceed their team building expectations. Good luck and be creative!

• Don’t panic! The key to devising a workable plan is to 1) simplify the agenda and 2) engage your participants early.
• Do consider the scope of the meeting. What are the objectives that must be accomplished in one sitting? Think about what really needs to be addressed during this meeting and what could be done outside of the meeting. Reach out to the 12 participants and ask them to prioritize the items on your full-day agenda, telling you what they think is essential, what would be nice to cover and what items wouldn’t be missed. If you have online meeting tools, a quick survey or asynchronous topic would be an efficient way to do this.
• Do consider who really needs to be in the meeting. In general, the fewer the participants, the more productive the conversation. Is it possible to gather input from some people ahead of time and limit the actual meeting to those who need to make decisions?
• Do find ways to accomplish the remaining objectives in other ways, such as by email, one-on-one phone calls or giving small groups assignments to do offline.
• Don’t leave the group feeling at a loss because a face-to-face meeting was canceled. Make an individual phone call to each of the participants to explain the change in venue, review the objectives and underscore the importance of their input.
• Do communicate to your group the importance of being well prepared for the virtual meeting. Completing the pre-work will help sharpen the focus and level the playing field, enabling participants to launch right into the meat of the meeting.
• Don’t ignore the social component that creates team bonding in a face-to-face session. Kick off the meeting with an ice-breaker and plan a fun quiz or game for a mid-session break.
• Do use collaborative technology to help you run an efficient, productive virtual meeting. Consider video conferencing when the group is brand new. Consider web conferencing if there is a significant presentation component. Use online brainstorming and decision support tools when you need to solicit multiple opinions and prioritize alternatives.

Here are some suggestions:

• First, check that you or someone else has not been disconnected from the conference call.
• Understand what’s behind the silence. Silence can indicate different things: distraction, lack of understanding or simply people taking the time to think.
• Check for understanding, then ask the question again. Be comfortable with the silence.
• Give your own input and then encourage input from the others.
• Call on someone you know is vocal to break the ice. Also call on people that are shy about speaking up.
• Ask for a check-in. Have the participants describe how they are feeling in one word.
• Explain that you are going to go “around the room”, asking each person in turn to respond to the question.

Here are some points to remember:

• Start with a face-to-face client group session: Despite all of technology at our fingertips, we cannot circumvent the face-to-face client sessions and leap right to remote client advisory board sessions. It takes face time to create the required trusting relationships among clients, and between you and this client group. No remote session, regardless of how advanced the technology or brilliantly-constructed the agenda, can replace the power of face-to-face conversations, especially when you’re seeking candid feedback and bold ideas.
• Clarify intended outcomes: Make sure that all understand the purpose of the remote meeting, and how it relates to the face-to-face meetings. For example, a remote session may be designed to build on new ideas that sprang up in the face-to-face session or to solicit feedback about a new product or service. If the conversation is likely to be very different from the usual face-to-face meetings, say so to allow people to opt out if needed.
• Create a multi-pronged communications plan to augment the face-to-face sessions. To keep the momentum going and relationships fresh, create a communication program that allows clients to communicate with each other and with your organization in ways that are easy, comfortable and mutually rewarding. While email may typically act as the glue, consider introducing additional forms of communication, including a private shared portal and web conferencing service that can be used synchronously and asynchronously. If you do a good job selecting your group members, they’ll see value in networking among themselves, and they’ll appreciate any help you can give.
• Familiarize clients with new technology during an onsite session. Introduce whatever technology you plan for your remote session while people are face to face. This way, they will be more comfortable and confident using these tools, which will increase the chances of their participation later on. For example, if you’ll be brainstorming new ideas as part of your onsite session, have clients use the appropriate web conferencing tool from their laptop in the conference room. Demonstrate one or two capabilities as part of this session, so when you reconvene remotely, people will be ready to go right away.

Decision-making is an incomplete science. Decisions are affected by the type and presentation of material to be decided upon and based on information as it is understood by both questioner and responder.

Typically, we ask questions based on either what has been decided already (How are you doing Z? Why is X happening?), or plans for new decisions (When will you do Y? What are you planning around Q?). These questions are biased by the questioner’s motives (for example, ammunition or clarification) or by the responder who answers the question without thinking about why it is being asked. They lack vital context - like decision criteria, values, feelings, history or relationships.

People do not make decisions based on information alone. They actually make decisions based on their own set of internal criteria that are unique and idiosyncratic. We need questioning techniques that identify those internal criteria and use them as true tools for collaboration.

Facilitative Questions

Facilitative Questions differ from conventional questions. They actually teach people how to recognize and manage their own internal criteria and approach a decision in a way that supports their values. Consider these examples:

Situation: selecting a vendor

Old way: How are you currently choosing vendors?

Pulls information on a decision already made and does nothing more than give the questioner old data.

Facilitative Question: What would you and your decision team need to understand about your outcomes and your team process to be able to choose the vendor that would support your objectives?

Supports new decision making that would incorporate team beliefs, needs, values, criteria and make it possible to take action immediately.

Situation: project kick-off

Old way:How should we go forward with this new initiative? Does anyone have thoughts about first steps in moving forward?

Gathers information on everyone’s current thinking including biases and partial understanding of full range of options to be considered.

Facilitative Question: What do we need to consider to move forward in a way that supports the entire group working together, based on shared buy-in?

Adds personal criteria and demands action that includes the entire team.
Since decisions are belief-based and teams include several juxtaposed, and unspoken objectives, this approach helps teammates recognize their unspoken criteria and make more reliable decisions. Facilitative Questions start with either ‘What’ or ‘How’ and engage the brain in a way that allows change to happen. Facilitative Questions can help teammates, customers, and suppliers collaborate with you. Questions such as:

• What would we need to know or do differently in order to enable us all to participate in this project?
• How would we be working together so that all of our values could be encouraged and ensure that no one gets left behind?
• What needs to happen first to ensure that we all get heard and feel safe? And what would that look like?
• Collaboration occurs when everyone is heard and individual ideas and values become part of the process. Because if we’re not working together, we’re working alone.

• Think twice about having some people participate in person while others join remotely. This dynamic tends to create an uneven playing field and inhibits open sharing among all. Better to have everyone participate remotely, with equal access to the same technology. Or, if you want to take advantage of face-to-face interactions by those who can get together in one room, use that face time to plow through the work that can more easily be done eyeball to eyeball, and share the results with the rest of the team. If you must bring together co-located and remote members on a call, adapt the agenda to minimize the time the remote people must spend on the phone.
• Plan your agendas to encourage engaging conversations that will accelerate time to results. Assume that a group will lose focus after 60 minutes on a conference call—90 minutes tops. This means no more tedious slide decks or extended report-outs on the call. Instead, send them out or post them ahead of time. Asking people to do a little homework (e.g. bring “three top ideas” or “two major challenges”) is a great way to encourage people to pay attention to prework. Send agendas in advance, along with explicitly-stated intended outcomes, so all have a chance to prepare.
• Make use of asynchronous web meeting software to augment same-time meetings. This works especially well when participants work across time zones and speak multiple languages. If you open an online conference a few days before the same-time meeting, you can solicit vital input to help sharpen the focus of your meeting. It also provides an easier way to assess priorities, issues and ideas, saving you valuable phone time later on. When everyone finally meets in real-time, you can share results and jump right into the needed conversation.
• Pair web-based tools with phone for a really productive working session. Say you have 12 people on a call. If you poll each one sequentially about top challenges or new product ideas, those who are not talking may tune out quickly. Instead, set up a virtual conference space that people can use while they are together on the phone. Consider which topics lend themselves to electronic brainstorming, and which are better addressed through an open discussion. Make use of voting, action planning and priority-setting capabilities as well.
• Consider cultural differences when thinking through the facilitation options. Especially when people don’t guage, providing multiple communication paths will elicit more participation from everyone. For example, if you went around the virtual room and asked each person to name challenges or propose ideas, you might find very different responses. Some cultures place a high value on hierarchy and seniority. Others relish a high-spirited debate over differences, while some seek to preserve group harmony at all costs. Some people may feel more comfortable communicating verbally, while others may be more confident when expressing views in writing. For all of these reasons, giving people a choice between verbal and written input on a team call is often the wisest approach for removing barriers to participation and eliciting the best ideas.
• Maintain momentum through frequent asynchronous communications. When teams work from a distance, out of sight really can be mean out of mind. Establish conventions about how, when, where and to whom vital group communications will take place. Find ways to keep members of the group working together between meetings and milestones by using multiple channels, both synchronous and asynchronous. Make use of shared portals to share progress, review and edit documents, raise issues, and generate ideas. Consider, for example, setting up a permanent asynch meeting area where you pose a topical question to the team every week or so and send via email. Once a critical mass of people has responded, you can share responses at team meetings, via email, or ask people to view online. This can help keep the team engaged and cross-pollinating knowledge and ideas even when they are not meeting in real-time.