Designing for Distance: Remote Facilitation Done Right

“If you do no pre-work, the first 20 minutes are lost—someone can’t open Miro, doesn’t have the password, so you lose that time sorting out technical difficulties.” - Mark Richards

Remote facilitation may feel like juggling blindfolded—especially when every participant has a muted mic and a hidden camera. In this episode of SPCs Unleashed, our hosts (Mark Richards, Ali Hajou, Stephan Neck, and Nikolaos Kaintantzis) share what they’ve learned about driving engagement when no one’s in the same room. From innovative digital whiteboard designs to “crazy” energizers, they show that running remote sessions is more than swapping your physical whiteboard for a screen—it’s about designing for human connection in a virtual space.

Whether you’re leading a PI Planning event or training new teams, remote facilitation demands empathy, flexible tools, and a heavy dose of creativity. If you’ve struggled with black squares on video calls, endless background noise, or total silence from participants, this conversation will spark fresh ideas for making digital gatherings productive and even fun.

Key Highlights

• Design for Comfort: Encourage participants to try the collaboration tools (e.g., Miro, Teams) before the workshop. Simple pre-work like creating avatars or adding photos helps them ease in.
• Amp Up Visibility: Since you can’t “walk the room,” build boards and back channels that let you observe activity. Moving cursors, color-coded sticky notes, and quick status checks reveal who’s stuck and who’s on track.
• Energize with Novelty: From tossing a virtual ball between co-facilitators to spinning a “wheel of names,” tiny sparks of fun can keep everyone alert and participating.
• Focus on Flow, Not Just Talk: A 90-minute monologue is deadly. Instead, break up the session with breakouts, short tasks, or interactive polls—anything that makes participants do something rather than sit passively.

Actionable Insights

• Shorten & Stagger Sessions: Avoid back-to-back marathons. Build in small buffer zones so people can regroup between calls.
• Use Multi-Modal Channels: Combine a shared board, a voice channel, and possibly a chat thread for real-time text. This mimics the multi-layered communication of an in-person room.
• Plan Twice as Much: Remote sessions often require more upfront prep. Test your platforms, arrange breakout flows, and consider a second facilitator to troubleshoot tech.

Conclusion

Remote facilitation has traveled far beyond “new reality” status—it’s simply how many of us work. With the right preparation, a dash of human empathy, and a few creative tricks, even digital distance can spark real engagement. Tune in for practical insights on orchestrating seamless, lively virtual sessions that your teams will remember for all the right reasons.

Transcript

Mark Richards: 0:01

You're listening to SPCs unleashed a shaping agility project that emerged from the 2023 Prague safe summit. The show is hosted by Swiss SPC T Stephan Nick and Niko kaintances, Dutch, spct, Ali Hajou and Aussie safe fellow, Mark Richards. We're committed to helping SPCs grow their impact and move beyond the foundations taught during implementing safe each week, we explore a dimension from the frameworks competencies. We share stories about our journeys, the secrets we've found and the lessons we've learned the hard way. G'day and welcome to SPCs. Unleash Episode 10 of season two, or just today. And today, we're picking up where we left off in one of our episodes. Last year, we did an episode on facilitation, which we're all pretty passionate about. And I think with five minutes to go, I threw out a question about remote facilitation. Everybody went, needs a whole episode, so we're back for a whole episode. And Ali is very excited, because he thinks we're going to geek out about tools. So Ali over to you,

Ali Hajou: 1:08

absolutely, thank you. Thank you. And good morning, good afternoon, good evening, everybody. We're indeed going to talk about remote facilitation, which is, I think, a thing of sort of the realities, not even the new reality anymore. It's just the reality heavily influenced by whatever happens in 2020, and whenever we talk about facilitation, you know, I'm personally, I'm always, I'm struggling. What does that mean? You know, to facilitate. So I thought, I'll open up Cambridge dictionary, because, you know, that's what you do. Try to figure out what it means. Facilitation means, according to the Cambridge dictionary, the process of making something possible or easier, which is a very broad statement. It's a very broad statement. So the process of making something possible are easier well, and throw that into the mix of remote coaching, you know, I think that's what we're going to talk about a lot. And, you know, the tools that we use, but also the tricks that we use, the the habits that we have built by now. So we're going to talk a lot about that, which means it's a little bit different from how I think most people understand facilitation think for most people, and correct me if I'm wrong, gentlemen, for most people, facilitation is sort of a synonym to helping out, which I think is really, really bad. You know, the facilitator is not the Secretary, you know, making notes and just helping out. It's actually the process of making something possible or easier. So, yeah, what we're going to talk about is really how, how can we still do that while there is distance, while we're trying to do this in a digital format, and maybe even across multiple time zones? So in this show, ladies and gentlemen, we're going to talk about the remote way of working, which is not new anymore. It's not really a hybrid way of working. I have no idea how to call it. Otherwise, maybe it is a hybrid way of working. For some it is really only a remote way of working. In this episode, we really dive into that topic. So for SBCs coaches and trainers, how can we do our work better while working through a screen a microphone that is always muted. Looking to some windows that should have, you know, a camera feed in them, but people have have their camera feed turned off. But and how do we compete with the tyranny of Microsoft Teams and slack and Outlook to sort of retain attention? So let's just directly dive into our true passions, special moments, surprises and challenges. I'll start with you, Niko, what is for you, if your true passion? Surprise, yeah,

Nikolaos Kaintantzis: 4:15

while listening to you, one can think it should be common sense and should be possible and so easy, and still we are not mastering very well, because what I think, or what it's passion for me, is to find out what humans need. So you're talking about tools. It's not always about tools. It's all about how the brain works, how people works. And my passion is to design meetings the way that people stay energized, that they know the Oh, it's a remote meeting. Just mute me and do my home banking meanwhile or something else. What can I do to have a meeting that is or a session, or whatever, that is energizing and people stay with me with this nice little rectangle there, and not do something else in the background? Yeah.

Ali Hajou: 5:00

How about you? Stephan,

Stephan Neck: 5:01

yeah, listening to Niko, I remember one of the statements he made, look in the mirror. And who do you see? You see a human being. You see yourself and picking up the thread. You throw. You throw to us, making something possible or easier means, do I understand? Who am I preparing for? So one of these nice quotes I always use for myself is luck is when preparation meets opportunity, think of remote facilitation as an opportunity, and you probably can mitigate the different options you have, or what could happen, what if? And there's lots of Lucky moments, how can I use them? That means rehearsal, a lot of training, a lot of a lot of really preparation behind the curtain, where, where's my that's where my passion is. Nice,

Ali Hajou: 5:59

nice, like that. It's a lot of preparation, and it's true, you know, to use the tools that we might have really well. It just inspires a lot of time trying out. How about you, Mark? So

Mark Richards: 6:13

I was smiling as Niko spoke, because he felt like he's just speaking to me. I before COVID. I never, ever did remote facilitation, but I'd spent years making my clients get on planes because I went, we're not going to have good workshops unless we're all in the same room. And every now and again, they talked me into trying something, and they said we've got a really fancy remote video camera room. And I'd try and be like, No, that's a joke, and then there was no choice. And so I was going through this phase, and my home office, I had my desk was right next to my son's desk, and so I'm in my home office learning to do remote coaching and remote facilitation, sitting next to my son, who's doing remote High School. And every time that I looked at his screen, he was playing a game. And I would say, What subject you in there, mate, maths or English or, you know? And the only time that he ever had schoolwork on his screen was when he was speaking. So, you know, if he was at school for eight hours a day, seven hours a day. He's playing a game, right? Half an hour a day he's on coffee breaks and lunch breaks, maybe half an hour a day. He's actually got school on his screen, and I'm sitting there going, this is my audience when I do a remote workshop, right? I've got my son convincing his teachers He's present and paying attention at school eight hours a day while he plays games for seven hours a day. And I know that workshops are all about engagement. How do we beat that system? So creating energy and engagement and facilitating experiences where people actually want to be present, as opposed to want to be playing a game or doing their home banking, that's that's what it is for life,

Ali Hajou: 8:01

which is so, so incredibly difficult. But I think that's actually a nice way to explain that of the challenge that we have with remote facilitation, it's we know that people have an endless amount of things that can draw their attention, whether it is social media, games, email, maybe even another call. I mean, how often have you heard? Oh, wait a second, yeah, I also have a parallel call. Um, it's, it's, it's really tough. So maybe let's just dive directly into exactly that topic, the topic of, how do we make facilitation work? I'll start with I'll start with you. Stephan, yeah,

Stephan Neck: 8:50

interesting discussions already, and I'm smiling because the time I use to prepare courses and workshops that are remote nowadays, it's much more time I use much more kind of calculating backwards. When should I start? Why is that I can't just show up virtually and hold a course? I need an intentional design. I need to know who am I working for. So we teach customer centricity and personas, but ourselves as trainers and teachers, we sometimes miss that, right? So who am I working for, and therefore having tools and we might come back to that one that allow me to adapt as fast as possible. I have to invest in myself. Mark, you were talking from my heart. Right comes March 13, 2020, I was a Porsche. They closed down the factories. They closed down the offices. We had to go home, and we were preparing a PI planning, and now we had to train ourselves. We had. To put effort into our skills and tools, and all of a sudden, those, those things like Miro mural, OBS, Ms email, MS Team zoom, where they've popped up, right going back to the preparation, I think, and that's still a challenge for me, how can I use the virtual components as close as in person ones. So always starting with, what would I do if I was in the room? What will people expect from me, and how could I adapt those virtual components? And then the keyword gaming mark, creative ways for participation, right even before the course, if they're on board through a channel, if they own both through a tool. We are all gamers, right? How can you engage people? And I think these are the ingredients I tried to bring together to cook up a meal that is tasty enough so they would sit at the table, because, as Mark's son did, right? You could do other stuff while you're eating. How do you keep people attracted? How do you make remote facilitation really work?

Mark Richards: 11:10

So I'm going to pick up because you know you talk about gaming. Anybody knows me knows I'm a gamer, and I've been a gamer forever, and I've raised a tassel full of gamers, and for probably about 10 years of my life, I got heavily into the world of massively multiplayer online games. Think Warcraft, although that's probably the only game in that genre. I never played, and I ran a guild of about 40 or 50 people. And that world of gaming, you're trying to get large groups of virtual people from many countries to operate together with split second coordination and timing and military precision for hours at a time. And it's a fascinating challenge. And when I started to think about virtual facilitation, I went, actually, we've got all this stuff we knew from gaming, because, you know, the first thing you know, if you play serious games for that kind of teamwork stuff, is you don't just interact in the game. Everybody's logged into the game of playing. But they also have a voice server. And in that voice server, they're divided into multiple channels, so that you have some protocols about, you know, who you're speaking to. You have times when everybody's speaking, of times when, you know, we call it battle comms, when only the leaders are speaking. And you build protocols about the way you interact and you share the voice channels. But you also beyond the voice channels, you have text channels, right? And you have text channels where people are sending direct messages to each other, where you cluster groups together, who can, for example, you know, if you've got six groups and every group has a healer in it, there's probably a channel that has all the healers so that they can be talking to the other healers at the same time as they're talking to the people in our own group. So you put a lot of work into the communication design for both spoken and written communication, but then you're still not happy, right? Because the other thing that's happening usually is you have some analytics monitor that is reading logs from the game and displaying real time information about performance. And you know what will happen often in those games is, you know, 30 people try something, and everybody dies, and you fail, and then you spend 10 minutes going, what did we do wrong? And now let's regroup and we'll try it again, maybe 15 minutes. And what you're often doing that time is you're looking at the stats and going, Okay, what was happening? You know? Oh, we missed this. We missed that. Okay, now we'll retry. So you've got multiple angles of engagement going on, and you're never actually looking at anybody else's face. I had people that I gained with for years, and the first time I ever saw what they looked like was when we'd have a meet up right at up. And it's not necessary. And this, I think, is where the engagement it's not about whether people have their cameras on. It's about whether you think about the modes of interaction and actually creating multi modal interaction systems. Yet,

Nikolaos Kaintantzis: 14:05

I think one thing that changed with COVID is who is sending information, who is talking. So I remember I changed once a town hall, so I had a company that never were masters in in tools. So they really had to explain people how teams worked, because, because they never opened it before. And then was the idea, oh, let's move the town hall to later, because, yeah, it feels strange having a town hall now. And then I told him, Okay, what we want to wait until COVID is over. And I don't think it's summer, so we created the summer, then you realize, oh, it will autumn, and then we have one year without information from management. Do you really want that? And the tone, yeah, it's impossible. Having a remote meeting with with 100 people, it's impossible. And yeah, by the way, it is impossible the way you're doing it on site. So if you put somebody on stage and have have 99 listeners. Because you can imagine what happened, and what we changed was the amount of participation, who is doing the work, who is talking. And I remember I told to the C level person, I think was a CTO, he has only 10 minutes in this three hours workshop to talk, and the rest is grouping together breakout sessions, summarizing things, let people work and talk. And he was completely uncomfortable, because usually, yeah, he talks around half the time this morning, and it was a huge success. And he gets, oh, we have to do more and more and more about it. So it's really about, what do people need to be there, focused, and mostly this let them work too. So I remember when, so our implementing safe trainings during COVID Were always one day longer than the normal ones because more breaks, more exercises changing. And, you know, implementing safe it's more much information, five, four days long. Here it is more and more and more, and we changed it a lot. And I remember once an older consultant done his SPC telling to telling to us. So this SPC class, I think it will never work on site. And there was a cool compliment to realize, okay, we change it so much. He cannot see how this works on site because it was a lot of fun gaming. It was a lot of, yeah, a lot of tools are hardly at the end, but using, using them all. And the thing that I did those times was a talk of psychologists, how, what people need, how, how does the brain works? How they works. And that's how I changed my meetings and my trainings. I think it will talk a lot about this with the next questions. But for this question here, how do you make remote facilitation work? Is, who is talking how? Yeah, you less usually, and let people do work. And one thing, what I do is my remote meeting starts later than the agenda entry. I don't know who has this idea that if you are remote, the meeting ends at the hour, and then it starts at the hour, because, if you are on site, it never happens. You finish earlier because you have to move. And now people thought, yeah, they're sitting anyway, just a button. And you had meetings from the morning till the evening without a break. And so my meetings usually starts even if the again, if the meeting invitation starts at.at the clock. It starts five posts, and it's just talking like you talk, usually with other people. It's gossip, water cooling elements, etc. And I also end earlier in my agenda, even if the media goes longer and then you have energized people, because, oh, I have to go. I have to go. And then, oh, here I am. Oh, meanwhile, kids called, let me switch off the camera and see what happens on my mobile phone. Now we have the time again. I think this is one of the key advices I would give to you for how to make meetings successful or remote work. It's

Ali Hajou: 17:52

kind of weird, right? I think everybody got into a habit of just having back to back calls, which also means whenever training, whenever we have a training or a facilitation session, or whatever that happens remotely, then it's still it starts right after another call, or maybe even right after the scheduled time slot that we have to, you know, coach each other, or to listen to each other, or to just even check in remotely. Right after that time slot in our agendas, there will be another one. There will be another time slot, which basically means like, I'm sorry, yeah, we have a really good conversation. But by the way, I need to go by or I'm already late in my Yeah. Oh, by the way, I haven't had lunch yet because the only free time slot that I had was actually between 12 and one, but somebody decided to schedule something in that. It just, it's, it's pretty tough. So fully, fully recognize what you've all said, I think you

Nikolaos Kaintantzis: 18:59

had lunch during COVID. No,

Ali Hajou: 19:01

no, oh yeah, lost. I lost a lot of weight. I think just checking with you, there's a, I figured out there's, there's something that I that I see works actually, very well. Oh, when hosting anything remotely, which is actually that you need to find ways to keep attention. And if you can keep attention using some visual means that there is a lot of dynamics happen, then it's, yeah, it's, it's easy to sort of, you know, keep on watching the Zoom screen or the team's environment or the Miro board. So for me, I've, I've tried a lot of things, and right now I didn't, I mean, right the way I'm talking right now, I'm not, I'm not even I haven't set up my studio setup or whatever, so I don't have any fancy buttons or fancy cameras. Camera looking at me, just my laptop camera over there, with a microphone over here, just to make sure that you all do not hear my neighbor who decided at 915 or actually at 845 to drill some holes in the wall. No, what I actually figured out works best is a 40 euros Wacom tablet, which is one of those small little things. It's like a very thin somewhere over here, whatever, and with a little stylus that allows me to write on, for instance, a PowerPoint. So what does that do? And I've and I still, I'm still, to this day, I'm getting the same question like, Oh, that's really nice. What you're doing, you know, you're, you're presenting something, or, you know, you have, you have a Miro board open, or whatever. But then with that Wacom tablet, you can draw arrows while you're talking, or circle something. Or you can draw something on the screen, so for whomever is listening or watching or just working with you, there's much more happening. It's like as if, as if you're pointing at things on a whiteboard with your finger, or you're pointing at things on a screen, as if you're standing together with that person in a room with a screen. It just, there's so much more attention happening over there. So it's just, I figured out that, you know, it's, it's indeed, not really the camera that needs to be on. It's useful to have a camera on and to be able to look people into the into into their faces. But actually, for people to be engaged, there needs to be a constant shot of dopamine happening that said, Oh, I can see something moving. Oh, and if I follow, if I follow, whatever is happening on the screen, then, then, oh, wait a second, there is, there's, there's, there's a tension, you know, I'll, I'll stick with that, rather than the 50th Microsoft Teams message of somebody that wants to chat with me. So I found that, I found that, actually, yeah, I found that pretty, pretty cool. There's a lot of things that can go very well with that, but there's also a lot of things that can go actually, completely wrong with, with with remote facilitation, and I've, you know, just thinking about, thinking about that, you know, I'm very sure that all of you have a couple of fantastic horror stories, or at least things that are just, you know, over time you figured it just, it doesn't work. So that's going to be my next question to you, gentlemen, can you share with us some of those horror stories, things that really go wrong to what's dark?

Mark Richards: 22:51

Oh, I don't know. I'm going to kick it off. And you know, for me, you know what goes wrong is, you could sum it up as going you're blind and deaf and they're disengaged and fatigued and and it's, you know, when we kind of talk about the positive side of this, which, you know, we will a little bit later in this episode, you know, we'll talk about how to avoid being blind and deaf. But you can very easily be in that situation. I know I was in. I had, I was doing some remote coaching to a client in the Philippines right at the start of COVID, and I could not get anybody to turn a camera on and and I remember I did, I think it was a safe for teams, course, for them quite early in the relationship. And I spent, well, I did four half days instead of two whole days, right? But I spent that entire four half days looking at a screen full of 16 black squares with people's names in them. And then, to make it even better, what tended to happen with the Filipinos culturally was that there was a name they called each other and the name that they were their official name, and they were often different. So by the end of the first day, I had a list next to me, of like, this is the real name of this person's screen name, because all I've got, I've got no face and and they're all on mute, and they wouldn't come off mute, except, you know, the team leaders would occasionally talk. And then I started this little list, and I'm like, Okay, I've got a I'm never hearing. I've got no idea what this person's doing, and so I had a habit where I had all their names on a list next to me, and I put a tick, because I'd ask somebody a question by name, and then I put a tick to go I've heard them speak and cycle my triggering people to speak. But then what would happen would be very clever. They would, they'd speak, and they'd, they'd be all apologetic, going, I'm sorry about all the background noise. And you would hear craziness, because these people are in these houses, in, you know, all these chickens going crazy in the background, and motorcycles and kids and kids. TV and, and, you know, they're trying to, man, that was a very, very intense few days.

Ali Hajou: 25:10

Oh, I can imagine. And

Mark Richards: 25:12

that was, you know, learning to deal with the fact, you know, you were just going a whole bunch of people who wouldn't turn the camera on. Or, you know, on the flip side, you get the that little, small, intimate conversation. Well, you think it should be, there's four of you on the call, but everybody's raising their hand when they want to talk. So you'd never get any flow of conversation, because nobody actually speaks in the moment. They all speak when their hand has been recognized. And then they, you know, start speaking, and remember that they're still on mute, and they take just madness. So yeah, there's my horror stories for you.

Stephan Neck: 25:47

Yeah, let me pick that one up Mark, I think. And you threw in the key word of fatigue right at the beginning of the pandemic. It was fancy new tools. Everyone was engaged, kind of using new stuff, but this digital fatigue, really, for me, went exponential, because there was this lack of non verbal cues. I didn't have those informal interactions anymore, like you said, all of a sudden, a black wall against you and not knowing what's going on behind that black wall that was really hard for me, right? So how can we beat that? How can we interact with that if something is really missing, and again, as I already stated, the transition from in person to remote stuff, it was hard to master. You could do some training, some investment, but again, thinking it will work. And even if you have like one Miro board or one tool that one size fits all, it doesn't work. We all know it doesn't even work in person situations, and I'm still learning to kind of trying to read like your face is now, who's thinking, what? What's the interaction? Do I see that Niko is taking a deep breath and wants to interact? And how do I deal with all those, those non verbal cues, how do I create even some informal interactions that really work, like you say mark, the healers might join in parallel, in another channel. They might even type some stuff in the chat. I'm not aware of all fine, as long as we can stay focused, as long as we can can convey the information, convey the focus and the purpose that we have, and really create a community for a certain time that that interacts, no matter what tools you're using, no matter what perhaps some constraints you have. Yeah,

Nikolaos Kaintantzis: 28:00

what I still do this days is when I have a new class or a new group that I don't know that the first hour, I still have a second guy in the background, a tech facilitator, whatever, because we still have people who feel unsecure, don't know the tools well, and it's nothing more that destroys the flow than people having no idea how it works, and it was really of the experiences once I had with the town hall, for instance, people coming in the first time using tools. So meanwhile, tools are better. People get used to it. But still, the first hour, I have something because maybe one of my tools don't work. So we have usually a Slack back channel, because it stays there overnight, and they can reach us if something happens, because if they're not able to do something else. So I try to have a facilitator the first hour, sometimes the first half day, if it's a process we're having together, and it's always very well received. And another thing that I'm still doing, if the meeting is longer and I know the people, I have some small exercise before something starts. So to get to know technology, even if people know it meanwhile and still, last month, I had an advanced SPC training. Everybody was SPC, and I assumed they can do trainings, and also remote trainings. I still have the exercise there just a picture of you, your name, with it as a group. So I can also make, make teams out of it, or breakout sessions out of it, and sometimes also a map. Where are you from, where are you located, and at the end, instead of also marketed with the names, so you know who's there by name. You can call them by name if they are not reacting, you also have a table, what you want, what is your goal, what is your background? And then if you realize I want to talk about this, you can say, Hey, Mark, you have a gaming background. You really a freak there, or a geek there? Do you see similar energy? And then, oh, okay, is this hobby? He starts to talk to with me. Okay, and camera offers really one of the most difficult things I had in the beginning. And then once in a training where everybody was just there with a black rectangle, and they told me, Oh, it's because we need two licenses if the camera is on, what the heck? I don't know if WebEx really does it. Does it that way, but they really told them, if you have the camera on, we need more licenses, and we don't have so much, because Coronavirus needs new and that had just a wall with black cameras. And what I told to myself, and I told also the audience, so if I cannot see you, I just assume you're standing in front of the camera with this expression. And that's what I'm doing. So if I see black rectangles, I imagine people just being engaged, and that helps me, because nothing, as a trainer, coach or a facilitator, nothing is more difficult. So starting questioning yourself. Oh, what they are doing now, have I said something wrong? I just imagine if I don't see the people, they are completely freaking out and supporting me, and they're cheering in the background, and this helps me, just, yeah, it was a three day training with black monitors, and once a while, somebody came in and asked the question. And the other days I was happy because I knew they were happy to at least I thought I knew.

Ali Hajou: 31:17

I mean, I those kind of sessions, they consume energy. Oh, they consume energy. And it's, you know, right? It's 2025, the moment COVID started in 2020 so right now we're, you know, about almost five years after, sort of the initial, forced remote work moment. So the thing is, you know, I've been in the exact same situation as what you just mentioned, Niko, the difficulties of getting engagement mark, which you've mentioned, the there's a little bit of a cultural aspect as well. You know, where, if you have a large calls, or a large group of people that that the team leader would speak first, and the rest not, or where, you know, you interact with people that are from environments, from cities, or, you know, being at home is just intensely chaotic. There's like an endless amount of car honking in the background and noise in the background, which is, I fully understand why they're fleeing their homes to go to office, and they're happy to, you know, sit for one and a half hours in in traffic jam just to be in office, just for a little bit of chill time. Fully understand. So it's, it might, sort of I had, I've tried a lot of things with these remotes, trainings or remote sessions, actually, and I completely also overdone it. Because I remember when remote working became a thing, I've actually, I drew inspiration from radio DJs, because radio DJ so that is, you know, if you're just in a car and you turn on your FM radio, then you would hear a radio DJ. And a radio DJ has the ability to speak into one direction, but then just completely, sort of be able to keep the attention, which also means you need to speak a little bit for your play with your voice. You need to play with a little bit of audio noises, sort of a sound bite. You need to not speak too long. So you need to switch over to somebody else. That requires a lot of preparation. So you need to already have queued up quite a few topics, or quite a few sound bites, or quite a few, you know, and now we're going to change to our correspondent in Sydney, and so forth and so forth, right? So, just to keep interaction and with that, I thought with myself, you know what this? There is a way to be able to really stay in the lead of the conversation, and then add to that, ways to draw the attention of people you know. In a second, I'll show you, I'll mention, I'll mention a trick that I use a lot, which called, which is called the wheel of names. It's free tool. Can be found online. It's just wheel of names.com I think just you add your names in it, and it spins randomly. So it's sort of a wheel spins, and it randomly selects a name, which basically means there is somebody who is going to, who can, who's, who's going to be sort of pinpointed to respond or talk or to share. But I've completely overdone it all the way in the beginning. Oh, you don't, you don't want to know. Really, the initial sort of few, either trainings or workshops, they were completely Plus. With sound bites and Super Mario bites and whatsoever. I completely overdone it, and people just eventually, after a while, just got sick and tired of it. But yeah, I had to learn it the hard way.

Unknown: 35:16

You're my brother. You're my brother,

Ali Hajou: 35:19

you know, but, yeah, I think we all try to figure it out and eventually tune it based on the cool thing

Nikolaos Kaintantzis: 35:28

is, when you're when you're old, you just don't try this fancy tricks. I remember when I installed OBS. It was, I think, last year, just because I thought, Okay, now remote is come to stay, and I just said, no, no, I don't install it because it's so difficult. Meanwhile, my son did it in one hour. So no, I don't take a one day off to install this thing. It's too complicated. But,

Ali Hajou: 35:51

yeah, but then, Niko, if you know, if, if I just, what kind of tricks did you use then for setting up engaging sessions remotely,

Nikolaos Kaintantzis: 36:03

it's really thinking, what we can do the people can start participating. So the whole jiggle thing is one, one of the things we are doing now at the session is really thinking, what for stupid questions? Can we ask the people start doing something, not just listening, so going away from from listening to be participating. And my tip to the audience would be, just be crazy. I will never receive this crazy from the other part. So I remember once in a training, my co trainer told me, I think we're losing the participants. It's now the third day, and the energy is going down. And then I thought, Okay, do you have a small bowl? And she said, Yeah, I have. Then I told her, glue it on top of your camera. And she just did it, because she knew I'm crazy, and thought she was crazy too. And then when they come back, I just throw the ball. I just said something. And said, so having the ball in my hand, I'm playing around. So okay, my takeaway of this two and a half days and this exercise is less than that. Hey, co trainer, how's it with you? And then I throw the ball into my camera. And she just Oh, okay. And then played around with the ball, and people just starting laughing. Energy went up again. And then she did something crazy. She throwed the ball again in the camera and called the participants. So, Ali, how's about you? And then somehow he took the black ball and said, Yeah, he lives in the Ruby. Beat that sort of coal. And that's why now the black is the ball is now black, because the whole internet is full of coal. And then everybody laughed again. And then he just throw it again. And then we had an orange, a cream, or whatever, wherever it was on the desk. And then he had energy again. So sometimes just be crazy. Be crazy.

Ali Hajou: 37:43

Talking about craziness. How about, let's say, going to our jingle, which, again, you know, Niko, you've surprised us. I just again, I have no idea how you come up with this kind of stuff. But So if, if, then, if, remote facilitation. Is it dance? Which dance would it be? I'll start with you. Stephan, I

Stephan Neck: 38:07

picked up the tango. If you look at the tango, it really looks highly technical. There's a lot of good stuff. I'm amazed. If I look at the pair doing a tango. It's this mutual responsiveness. They are close, but still, there's a distance, right? So, and there's always a clear leadership, and it's not only the man, it could be the woman, influencing the leader as well. And good, good pairs. They have a lot of improvisation, but that's based on they rehearsed it. They have patterns, they have moves. And bringing that together into this melting pot on the stage or on the floor, it's amazing, right? So for me, the Tango is probably the dance that, yeah, she knows what remote facilitation should or could be nice,

Ali Hajou: 39:07

a little bit of romance and tension, but also distance mysterious. How about you mark?

Mark Richards: 39:15

Well, chat to the rescue, as always, but it took me to a really interesting place, which was Helen Keller's ballroom dance. So if you're not familiar with Helen Keller, and I'll get Niko to add to this story in a second, but if you're not familiar with Helen Keller, right? She was blind and she was deaf, but she learned to dance by feeling vibration and physical cues and and for me, so much. And you know, my chat GBT prompt was, what's a dance that's good if you're blind and deaf, because that's the way I felt when I started virtual facilitation. But you know, when I when I shared, you know, where I was going with this. Niko added a story. So Niko, did you want to add a little bit to Helen Keller,

Nikolaos Kaintantzis: 39:56

yeah, last year, we've been to the Nashville the. My family and we stopped in Washington, and the first thing my little daughter now, okay, she's now 13. Soon she just see the study of her because each state can send a statue of people who are important to them. And she directly went there because she just was attracted by this statue. And it's also cool to to see what you can feel just from from a statue. And I think that's also our job, some kind of, when we are remote, try to feel what's happening in this rectangle. And it was really a cool story of, I think was the first biography she just read. The whole thing was there behind the statue, and she was reading it with my wife, together in English, translated it somehow in German. It was really cool. Yeah, it was really a touchy feeling story for her, and it's impossible this little girl, and so on and so on. Was, was was really cool. Cool family moment.

Ali Hajou: 40:58

I think if I think about the remote facilitation as a dance, for me, I've I still think that I would say a ballet, that it will be a ballet, because it, in the end, it is a very fragile King. This remote facilitation, it can go wrong horribly, quite quickly, and it takes a lot of practice to perfect it, whether it is the way you interact with people, the way you retain attention, what to ask, what to do, but also how to facilitate and how to make it work. Think I was the first thing that popped into my mind.

Nikolaos Kaintantzis: 41:37

Did you do it wrong? It looks ridiculous. No.

Ali Hajou: 41:42

Well, yeah, and it's, you know, people are not going to forget, that's the thing as well. Was a waste of time. Yeah, pretty, pretty tough. But Niko, I see that you've, you've written, you wrote down something completely different, as your dance of choice,

Nikolaos Kaintantzis: 41:58

yeah, I ended with a lot of thinking with sitaki sitaki Zorbas, the Greek, if you remember the movie, it's a dance that was invented for the movie because the main character broke his leg and it wasn't able to dance a real thing. So they started inventing something based on two other Greek dances, dances, and that's all for me, remote facilitation. You had to invent something new out of Team existence. We all did some meetings with what was with link or whatever was before we used and then you had to invent out of things that were there, something new that was really cool. And that's the one part of Situ so the invention of something that didn't exist, and now it's part of the Greek tradition. So if you go to hotels or vacation, you always have a group at the end that dance, sitaki. And yeah, so it happens out of nothing, out of an event, and then it's now part of a culture, and each dance group has their own sitaki. So it's not really a standardized dance, because there's not a history of hundreds of 1000s of years. And the other thing is, what also goes fits well, is it starts usually slow, and it becomes louder and faster and faster. So this, these two things, thoughts, okay, now it's perfect after a long, long thing. And then I told my wife, and she told me, yeah, of course you're Greek. Of course you have to do is a Greek song. But that followed the history. But she told me, for her, it's so clearly the Charleston. So Charleston is a dance you do a lot of like, like comics, so it's always like clowns dancing. And she said, yeah, for her, it's Charleston because you have fixed elements and it must be entertaining anyway. And I think this is also what's a remote facilitation, is you have some fixed elements, and it has to be entertaining.

Ali Hajou: 43:43

And it's a very creative one. That's a that's actually very nice. But hey, man, you you blew something out of the park for me, because I didn't know sir talk. He was just invented for a movie. I thought it was, it was like a, you know, like, you know, embedded in Greek tradition and families and for certain, certain types of parties. But good, good

Nikolaos Kaintantzis: 44:07

story. Good storytellers. The Greek, yeah, you always think it has to be a huge addition, but it's just

Ali Hajou: 44:15

invented. Oh, kind of tricks and ways to engage. Stephan, I haven't heard you about sort of what your tricks are to, let's say, facilitate remote events.

Stephan Neck: 44:30

Let me pick up the analogies of our jiggles of dances, right? And I'm using constantly a generic trick, not a specific one, as I said in during the introduction. Do you? Do you know your context? Do you know the people you have? And for marketing geeks and experts, I've learned this Aida acronym, attention, interest, desire, action. So. Whatever I do, I try to follow those those four words, like we had a dog and a cat. How do you get the attention of a dog and a cat? You throw food on the floor, or it falls on the floor, and then sometimes the dog has an interest or the cat, depending on Are they already fed up or not, and then the desire to catch that, you have to move right so, and they go into action. The question again, for me is, how do I how do I design that? And that, that's my trick. And as Niko said, the seal Turkey was was created on the go, right? And because they had a film, they had a context, I had a theme, they wanted to express something. And why not invent new stuff? So not just sitting on on your tricks and behaviors and the usual stuff you do, forcing myself to go into Okay, attention grabbing. Get the interest and being aware. Not 100% will be interested in what you did. You get the attention, but some will still be sitting. But in the end, how do you get into action? How do you create this, this intrinsic motivation? They get a desire to do something, and, yeah, that's, for me, the little secret sauce I'm trying to use and using when doing facility or facilitation of remote context.

Mark Richards: 46:35

I'm going to take us a completely that way, then sophisticated acronyms, I think, for me, the first bit is build people's comfort in the tools. And it's maybe back to your comment, Ali about getting too fancy is, you know, if you think about, let's say you've got a two day, a three day course, and you're getting people to use a tool, and, you know, is it Miro? Is it mural? Is it collaborators? Who knows? Right, on the first day, a lot of those people have never used the tool before. If you try and get them to do sophisticated things, it's going to go horribly wrong. But if you look at day two and day three, they've all started to feel a lot of comfort. And then, if you think more broadly, to go it's not just I've got them for a few days in a room, it's I've got an organization and a culture over the period of weeks and months, right? How do you build people's muscles that let you do more sophisticated things with the tools they're interacting with at the same time? How do you make it easy for them not to get lost? So I was listening to Niko telling, telling his story about, you know, getting people onto things before the workshop. One of the things I always do with a workshop, like a big workshop or a training, is I don't want to lose the first 20 minutes of it to technical difficulties, but I couldn't access the Miro. What was the password? Again? No, whatever the case might be. So I almost always do pre work. And the pre work could be as simple as I've got you, you're going to access the Miro and you're going to do something on the Miro, because that way I know that they can access Miro. You know, they've made it through the decision part about how to access Miro, depending on their organization's constraints. They've done something in it, and they figured out at least how to do whatever the task is. So the thing that I will usually do as my pre work is I'll get them to create an avatar for themselves. And if I was to just, and I've got a share screen for a second here, whoops, I should have set up a proper share screen. But I'll get them to create an avatar, which is, you know, I've got an example there which is precise to the size I'd like them to have it. And, you know, pick a photo and substitute your name on the label. Or, you know, I'll pre work, and I'll put all their names on and just get them to change what the picture is, because it makes them do something a little bit interactive with it. I can also see everybody who's done their homework because or their pre work, because, if you know, if the avatar hasn't been updated, it's, oh, I need to go and nag this person. And then when we get into the start of the workshop, life's easy. But then the second thing I do for them is I go, actually, if we were all in a room right now together, face to face, you'd all be looking around the room, figuring out where you wanted to sit. And you know, some of you'd go, how do I sit as far away from the front of the room as possible? Some of you'd be looking around, going, Who do I want to sit next to? And you know, you're going to spend a fair amount of time with these people. So you'd be making a whole bunch of choices. I want you to make the same choices now. So I have virtual tables, and I get them to move their avatars onto seats, to pick the way they're going to sit, and that's how we form the breakout groups, right? So there's a little bit of a linkage. It gives them control. But the one of the reasons I love the avatar and I will use again and again and again is it brings a part of somebody into the tool, right? When. You do something creative, like picking an image. And usually the image tells you something about their hobbies, right? And when they've done that, they put a little bit of themselves out there, and they feel a little bit of ownership. And you can do activities that go, you know, move your avatar here when you're ready, move your avatar to lay claim of a space you're going to work in. And it's a little bit like, you know, back to gaming, you know, in a game, people have some character. And you know, my children over the years, spent stupid amounts of their pocket money buying cosmetic items for their characters. That did nothing to give them more power, but it allowed them to express themselves. And you know, it's these multi modal ways of communication. So doing a little bit of like do pre work, get people to make avatars, put a lot of thought into making it easy for them to navigate around. And whether it's putting in short cuts and links, or whether it's getting good at, you know, doing a all follow me, summon, build their comfort moving out. Because if it's a big it's pretty gonna be a really complex board, and then do the little stuff, like putting in stacks of blank, pre sized post its if people have a posted activity, right? And they're not great with the tool of choice, whatever default size post it they drop on the screen is generally going to be wrong. People type on post its and you've got 20 post its of, you know, 50 different sizes and spreading all over the place, as opposed to you going, actually, as part of my prep, I could just have a stack of posters and they just drag a step, drag one off the top. Yeah. So do the stuff. That means that the technology and the tool aren't going to get in the way. And recognize that the more comfortable they get, the more sophisticated the things you can get them to do, the more sophisticated the things you get them to do, the more engaging they are. You know, I wound up for one of the safer teams exercises, the virtual origami one where you had to assemble, or little cut out shapes into different things, shapes to make a picture. And people had to get comfortable with, you know, rotating shapes and things like that. But then it was very engaging because it raises the difficulty level, which raises their concentration level, so doing stuff like that, huge. But then the last, and the really big one for me, is design for visibility. And you know, we talked about this when we did the facilitation episode last year. When you're facilitating in person, you are watching so many things. You're watching body language, you're watching people share, you know, who's looking just catching an eyeline connection with somebody. You're watching people sit back, sit forward. You're listening to tone of voice. If you've got people off in breakout groups, you can hear and see what's happening in those breakout groups. You can see the one that looks like they're stuck, and you can jump in and intervene in the room in virtual you send people off to breakout groups. You've got no idea what's happening, but you can spend 30 seconds at a time jumping between breakout groups, but otherwise you are absolutely blind. So how do you design whatever virtual whiteboard or tool you're using so that you can actually see and I think about, can I see if people are making progress? Right? Am I doing something that means they're all going to be moving their cursors around? Because then I can just quickly glance at their area and go, Oh, I can see lots of curses, moving stuff's happening. So what gives you the clues based on your visual design? What gives you the clues about this type of interaction that's happening, and what starts to give you all the extra data that you can't see on people's

Ali Hajou: 53:45

faces. Niko is like, oh, I want to say something. I want to say something. Yeah,

Nikolaos Kaintantzis: 53:50

yeah. So one thing that's really organizer, can you please check if you can access the mirror board? And what she did is because her working computer was on a booting mode, and they were installing stuff to just use her private device. So I thought, okay, Miro is working. So I gave the prep work for participants, and then I got answers like, I have no access. And then we realized, oh gosh, they blocking it from the company. So just did it from the private infrastructure, because the the other one wasn't, wasn't the was putting booting on something else. And then I realized, oh gosh, what would happen? Imagine you had no pre work, and you think Miro is working, and then you want to start your workshop, and nothing goes so that's why the pre work, it's really, really important. At the end, we ended up saying them, either I switched to something else or please, everybody works on a personal infrastructure, if you have one. So I was so happy having this one day ahead, this notice, that I thought Miro is working. Because just yeah, she wanted to be quick and did it just on the private laptop.

Ali Hajou: 54:54

Preparation, preparation, preparation, nothing. It's a lot of time, very difficult. Go ahead

Mark Richards: 55:03

the mic for just a little bit more second, right? Because while Niko was speaking, it's like, I'll fix the thing I messed up with my screen. Share. Just to give you a clue, right? About visual design, I now have what's what's on screen is the Miro that we run this these live streams with. And yes, this Miro collects information. But what it also does, it has a whole bunch of invisible signals to each other. So if Niko wanted to talk right now, he's got a little poster that he could pick up, and he could wave around and go, Hey, I want, I want the talk. And we don't have to look for a hand wave, and we don't have to wait for him to jump in. And you know, if we kept a recording of this, this thing is in constant motion all the way through the conversation, so that we can be communicating with each other. And somebody's made a decision that the next topic was going to be, what tools do you use for remote facilitation? Somebody stuck an X there, going, No, we're not going there. So thinking about what you can be looking at that augments your conversation in the way you approach a visual design hugely important. Yeah,

Ali Hajou: 56:08

indeed, and it's, I think there's a lot of trial also, in our case, there's a lot of trial and error that went into it. We tweak it a bit. It's a tool that we all use. Means that everyone uses it slightly differently, but we we get to sort of do a good sort of a good mode, a good mode that, I mean, if for whomever has been watching this video feed and Niko has a good mode for sort of interacting with his video audiences With a small little ticket that share that said that you're frozen. What is not frozen, however, but maybe you should be frozen in time is our one key takeaway. So Niko, you know what? Let's that's something that you haven't prepared yet. But I'm going to ask you the question Anyways, if you just think about what we've talked about in the last hour, what would be your key takeaway? Sorry,

Nikolaos Kaintantzis: 57:09

I was playing with my cards. I have also an Exo Elmo, the Sumo, which means Shut up, move on. If the Elmo doesn't work. So what is my one takeaway? Takeaway, it's always empathy. It's, it's not only the tools you're having, like Sumo, Sumo, like zoom, like Miro. It's also your heart to use. Also your heart empathy.

Ali Hajou: 57:34

Thanks a lot. Mark, how about you, Monty? It's,

Mark Richards: 57:39

it, it's, it's double your prep time. But also play with tools that make your life easier when you're in the workshop or in the moment, but and things like a stream deck or OBS that you know, they're both tools I encountered to learn to live stream. I use them in every workshop now they just make so much easier for me, so that I can focus on the conversation and the engagement, not on what button is meant to be getting pushed next. Nice,

Stephan Neck: 58:10

yeah, thank you. Stephan, mine is just paying in what we heard from Mark. Learn and practice dancing before you attend the competition. And if you attend the competition. Have fun.

Ali Hajou: 58:21

Nice, nice. I think I had the same tryout tools. Make them idiot proof, the visual cues, the visual support, it just, it's really helpful, but you'll have to spend the time. You'll have to spend the time and with that. So we're going to spend some more time in our next episode together, which will be hosted by Stephan, in which we're going to talk about the dual operating system. Big topic for anyone who's been working with safe a little bit bit more than just giving training,

Mark Richards: 58:59

it's like, easy to say, hard to do Right

Ali Hajou: 59:02

exactly.

Mark Richards: 59:04

And speaking of our next episode, when we were wrapping up last week, we got ourselves in all kinds of confusion over dates, because we thought we weren't on this week, and then we were on, and then we thought we're not on next week, but actually we're not on for the next two weeks, because I realized actually, while we were in the show, and before I had time to tell the guys that I'm out on Saturday week because my eldest daughter is getting married, so I've got a good excuse for not being Oh,

Nikolaos Kaintantzis: 59:34

very cool. Is there a live stream?

Mark Richards: 59:38

There may be some breakdown there mirror board for it. So are you prepared? No, sorry, I've got a speech to write. We will see you in three weeks. And you know you can hold your breath, because we have all the answers for how to make the dual operating system work. Well, we wish we did, but we got. Some answers until in

Ali Hajou: 1:00:02

Ali yourself.