Many businesses, organizations, and establishments currently conduct their meetings virtually.
Virtual sessions have unique challenges and opportunities, as you can imagine. Maybe you already have experience about that yourself?
Virtual sessions tend to need specialized facilitation techniques, knowledge, and strategy. Here a professional virtual facilitator is the answer.
For companies looking for ways to innovate rapidly, engage their workers more, or grow their business continually during the period of an establishment developmental process, a virtual facilitator might be something to consider of hiring. In this article we explore the reasons why your organization, too, should start thinking about using a digital facilitator.
Make Everyone’s Voice Heard
It’s not new that us people ´, we crave to be listened to. However, it’s not easy to get every member of a large – or even a smaller organization involved in an organizational development process.
Though virtual facilitators are not supernatural bullets that’ll mystically fix all the problems associated with business developmental initiatives, they help to solve the people part of the puzzle. By bringing everyone into a shared workspace where they can ask questions and collaborate with each other, team members will now know that everyone’s opinion matters.
The feeling of being heard gives every member of an organization a sense of belonging and importance. We feel like we are being appreciated and that our voice matters in the establishment.
It’s almost impossible to facilitate a meeting or any type of virtual event in such a way that it will satisfy every member’s wishes. On the other hand a virtual facilitator can bring a lot to the team and make the event run smoother.
Develop a Safe Environment for Different Character Traits
As we all know, in a face to face meeting setting, it’s easy for few individuals to hijack the meeting while some members sit in absolute quietness praying in their heart for the meeting to end so they can leave. At the same time few others wish they could be allowed to communicate using the medium they’re comfortable with.
Consider the fact that not everyone in an organization has the same thinking capacity – some are fast thinkers while others are not. Some members of your team prefer to write rather than talk, some even prefer to communicate their thoughts through images, charts and mind maps.
Therefore it’s important to provide members of your organization many communication channels – not just the one you are most comfortable with. With this, too, a virtual facilitator may help you and your team.
Importance of Different Communication Mediums
When members of your company or an organization are not given a conducive environment to air their views, your organization will not be able to benefit from the knowledge, observation, and contributions of every member.
This means that the your company will continually depend on the ideas of a few members who are comfortable using the communication channel provided while others stay silent.
Surely, this you do not want to see happening in your team. Virtual facilitators are a perfect solution in these types of situations. They can help you to bring out the best in every member of your team, in more ways than just one.
Lacking New Ideas
What to do, if it looks like your team members are not providing any new good answers or ideas? You want them to put on their thinking caps, but you have no idea how to do that? Here bringing a facilitator on board is a good idea. A facilitator can inspire team members to participate and by that bring in new and creative solutions.
Giving members of your team a way to communicate their thoughts using the medium they are comfortable with, your organization will truly benefit from every member’s ideas, observations and points of views.
Mediums for this can be for instance writing, info graphics, videos and images. This will sure increase your team’s productivity and expansion level. Virtual facilitators bring in all the necessary tools, so you won’t have to.
Co-creation is the Best for An Organization
Research from Great Place to Work has shown that businesses that encourage their members to innovate will see 5.5% revenue higher than those who rely on the innovation of a few members of its organization. The reason for this is that no individual can possibly possess the collective intelligence of a big establishment.
Therefore, by figuring out ways to listen to everyone in the company, your business should be able to utilize the expertise, skills, and opinions of every member of the establishment. That way the business will be sure to deliver better results in figures and in employee satisfaction. In a nutshell, creating a collaborative culture is necessary for business growth and for better team work in general.
Share the Duty of Documentation
Generally, the facilitator is responsible for post workspace documentation, but by having a virtual workspace, your business can assign documentation between the participants and prepare it into a workshop. A facilitator can encourage your team members to think outside the box and share pictures and videos in addition to the text base of what was discussed.
Having every one of the members of the team perform this task will help the memory of the virtual meeting last longer on every member’s mind. There’s also the fact that even those who were not present in the sessions can easily catch up. That way everyone is carried along, with no one left behind.
Ask for Feedback
Every organizational change process always differs from the previous ones, which is the reason why it is important for a business and an organization to stay open to feedback. That will help to figure out areas where they are performing well and areas where they need improvement.
With this information, it’s possible to optimize work for better business results.
Effect of Not Asking for Feedback
Not asking for feedback is dangerous to the growth of an establishment, no matter the size of it. There are things that junior employees know or have heard about the business that the senior staff might not know.
Creating a good environment that enables the business to ask for feedback from its employees is a gold mine. This can be done with the help of a virtual facilitator.
Virtual Facilitator Collects the Feedback
If you are not comfortable with the idea of collecting the feedback yourself, let the virtual facilitator do that instead. An experienced facilitator not only gathers the feedback but he/she will also pin point the most important parts, and help your team in solving them and moving forward.
Neutral Party Needed
Most times there are topics that require a neutral person to handle them and to motivate the team members. When a neutral party takes that topic and addresses it, it is more likely to encourage total participation.
Remember: you don’t have to do everything on your own. A virtual facilitator has experience on planning and running digital events and work shops. Let a professional help you to improve your team’s work!