The Art of Virtual Facilitation

Part 1: Facilitating Your Next Virtual Session

*Awkward silence*

“Anyone can feel free to chime in with their thoughts,” the moderator stuttered, their voice laced with hope that at least one person would say something…

[5 seconds later] *Awkward silence*

I’ve seen facilitation done well — where speakers are comfortable and engaged, where audience members are buzzing with questions and insights from the session and where silence is used as an effective tool to allow people to think. In contrast to this, I’ve also seen facilitation done poorly as described in the snippet above. In this article series, I share some of the lessons I’ve been learning from my experiences facilitating 100+ online webinars, designing online learning communities, speaking on panels and observing effective facilitators at work. My hope is that in the next session you moderate, whether that’s a work presentation, conference panel or a social media conversation, you’ll be more deliberate in your preparation with some ideas up your sleeve.

1. Set clear expectations for how you want participants to engage before the session starts and remind them during the session.

This might seem like an obvious step, but it’s one that I’ve seen so many people miss in conferences and presentations. It’s important to set the expectations for how you want participants to engage in a session. This usually involves a statement that goes something along the lines of… “The goal of this session is….If you have any questions/comments feel free to [type in the chat to all attendees/ unmute and chime in/ use the raise your hand feature located at X part of this platform]”. This helps provide clarity early on and helps people go past the initial hurdle of wondering what the expectations for engagement are.

I saw this done well in a session recently where the moderator said the following at the beginning and during the session (to remind new participants joining in).

“If you’re joining in, welcome to Master of None. Here, our goal is to unearth the different perspectives we’re bringing to the table from our various backgrounds. We consider everyone here as an expert of their experiences and we encourage you to raise your hand/come up to the stage to share your thoughts.” Here, the moderator, Isaac, clearly describes the title of the stage, the goal of the session and explicitly invites and communicates his expectation for people who want to share their thoughts.

2. Acknowledge people on the call

As a facilitator, my goal is typically to make participants feel welcome to share their thoughts and stories. Additionally, psychologically, newer participants feel more like a part of a community when you take the time to build some rapport, whether that’s commenting on something interesting you’ve seen in their profile/bio or on a point of connection you identify in introductions. I’ve seen this work well in webinars on Zoom where moderators ask participants to type where they are from and in social media live communities where the TikTok creator says, “Hi Ama, thanks for joining in, ah I see you’re involved in educational technology in California. Which part of California do you live in? I’m moving to LA in December. *[Inserts an interesting connection to X that resonates with you].”

An acknowledgement as simple as that helps make viewers establish a connection and build some initial rapport, especially in virtual spaces.

3. Scaffold conversation with specific open-ended questions

The type of questions you ask as a facilitator influences how conversations unravel in a session. If your goal is to moderate and bring out different perspectives, it’s helpful to be prepared to speak less and listen more. Ask open-ended questions to probe deeper on a perspective or mirror something you’ve heard to clarify perspectives for your audience.

You can share your perspectives as well but if this is a panel where you’re playing the role solely as a moderator, focus on bringing out perspectives from your audience members and use your stories as a way to draw connections, probe deeper or lay a foundation for others to build on.

In a MasterClass session by Chris Voss, Former FBI hostage negotiator, he talks about the art of mirroring and labeling. The excerpts (italicized) from his resource book below shed light on how to mirror and label.

Mirroring lets the other side know you’re paying attention to what they’re saying and treating their views with the close consideration they believe they deserve. An example of mirroring might look something like this:

* Sally the speaker: “This year was tough, however I tried to be intentional about how I spent my time and found that being intentional worked well. ”

* Nicole the moderator: “Intentional? Tell me more about what you mean there.”

Labeling is used to give voice to the other side’s feelings. Good labels take the form of: * “It seems like…” * “It looks like…”

To label effectively, you must avoid all use of the first-person pronoun, as in, “What I’m hearing…” or “I think…” First-person phrases signal that you are your number one priority and everyone else in the room is an afterthought. At its core, labeling is designed to let the other side know that you understand their feelings, to help build relationships, and to gather information.

4. Practice, practice, practice

After shaking through my first virtual webinar, three years ago, voice quivery, I realized how important preparation and practice was. With every new virtual experience, whether a Zoom Speech/Hangout Discussion/Conference WebEx/Clubhouse, I have been amazed by how much I learn with different contexts, events and audiences. I’ve prepared by learning about my audiences beforehand where possible, practicing my presence on camera/off-camera and also learning how to maintain my composure especially with the added interruption of potential technical glitches in virtual spaces :) Unexpected things always still happen though.

But there, you have it! This is the first part of my virtual facilitation series. Future parts will talk about the role of music in virtual presentations, navigating disruptive speakers, techniques for moderating chat conversations and tools for leveraging silences intentionally.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could shift from awkward silences to more scenarios like the snippet below?

*Intentional silence*

“Person X, I’ll turn it over to you if you’re comfortable to chime in about your thoughts on [why X is important to you] ” the moderator said confidently.

[Response from Person X]

Let’s leave the awkward virtual silence behind. :)