I've been doing this kind of facilitation work—though not virtual, obviously—facilitating executives and groups on the topics of strategy formulation, change management, and leading for innovation since I got out of business school in 1995. That has evolved over the past 25 years. As I've progressed in my career, I've found myself doing more of this type of facilitation and less traditional in-person consulting.
The stage was set—not necessarily for a happy reason with the pandemic—but it got me ready to write the book. The book is titled 72 Easy Tricks, and I want to emphasize the "easy" part, because I set out to write a book that wasn’t necessarily for professional facilitators but for people who just have to lead meetings as part of their regular job. These tricks work on any platform—Zoom, Webex, Microsoft Teams, BlueJeans, or whatever conference platform people use—because they all have common functionality. The book is pragmatic: Here's what you do, here's why you do it, and it’s organized based on what you as a meeting leader want to accomplish. You can go right to the section you need and find quick ways to make the meeting more engaging.
For me, the biggest learning has been accepting that everyone is doing the best they can. We’re all at home, working hard, juggling multiple things—some of us with kids, pets, or other responsibilities at home. You’ve got distractions like mowers outside and everything else happening around you. We have to support each other and acknowledge that this is everyone's reality. In a way, we need to embrace our humanness, even though we’re more distant than ever. In fact, I find these meetings are sometimes better because we get to see more of each other and understand each other better.
One client of ours, who does a lot of medical work, had people literally participating in meetings in their scrubs while walking down hospital halls. It was inspiring to see people in the hospital, wearing scrub hats and masks, still showing up to work on this. We're seeing more of each other—sometimes good, sometimes bad—than we’ve ever seen before, and it helps us accept each other a little better.
The great thing about the business simulations that Insight Experience does is that they give participants a chance to do all the things we say are important in virtual delivery. They’re typing, talking to each other, and solving problems together in teams. They are practicing what we’re teaching, and the simulations lend themselves perfectly to working online. We’re really fortunate to have that available to us.
One of my favorite tips in the book is called "sneaky participant onboarding." I tell people that if you're going to use a certain technique—like chat functionality, a chat cascade, or an annotation poll—you should give participants a low-pressure opportunity to practice it at the start of the call. You can have a slide up explaining how to do the chat cascade or other functions. It feels like an icebreaker to them, but they’re actually learning the mechanics of Zoom or Webex without feeling under pressure. It’s sneaky training without them even realizing it!
