WLP295: Taking the Online Participant Experience to the Next Level

Catherine Nicholson is the Director of The Virtual Training Team 

She last appeared on the show in episode 274, almost a year ago. Now she is back to let us know how the work with their clients has evolved, and how they have changed how they work as a team.

The novelty of having to move online because of the pandemic has faded. Trainers, as well as other knowledge workers, are now looking at how to make the most out of the online space, once everyone has embraced the mindset that things can be done through technology. 

Trainers can move onto the next level by taking “learning loops'' as a first design point, by looking for a routine that learners are used to so that they feel familiar in the environment. Before this familiarity turns into predictability and people “stop trying”, it might be necessary to “shake things up a bit” – but how? We need to enhance the learning experience, but maintain purpose.

One of their approaches is to “be a kid in the sweetie shop”, the sweetie shop being the huge amount of tools, stories, research, technologies out there that they can use. (Although always coming back to the purpose of the training.)

Once they explore one of these “gigs”, they focus on what is going to be essential to deliver the experience they’re looking for. But they don’t let everything go, in case it’s useful as supporting materials.

Another approach, driven by clients whose main challenge is the need for participants to consume and understand long chunks of materials. Here the problem leads to the process, rather than the output. For example, the material can be turned into an audio that summarises the key points, to be listened to before they go to the full material. Catherine covers a few more approaches that can prime people before they interact with the content. (In some ways, we’re going back to “blended learning”, in the widest sense of the world.)

13.30mins

Learning pathways can be designed for learners: required and desired pathways, to help us curate the content and design the learning experience. This is a great way of fuelling the autonomy aspect of intrinsic motivation. 

Internal trainers have another challenge which is delivering sessions where there’s a lot of content to be covered, through material designed by others in the organisations, sometimes even by another department, like communications. Catherine mentions a few ways to tackle this, like creating more slides. (More slides, you say? Yes!)

Or if you can’t change the deck, you can use “hide and reveal”, or even using the pointer to direct people’s attention through the information.

Look out for Catherine’s upcoming video on “Hide and Reveal”!
(Their videos can be found here.)

21.30 mins

Let’s leave the tech to one side and focus on the quality of the conversations that participants have in the session. When you first start to train, it’s easy to be scared by the “tumbleweed moments”, but these aren’t always bad, sometimes they mean that people are thinking, and sometimes they’re necessary. (Plus, they feel longer in the online space!)

There’s a lot to think through when you’re delivering online, screen, chat box, reactions, slides, camera pointing at you… While still being in “delivery mode”. Having your questions planned in advance is key. 

Which will provoke deeper thinking in participants? Which can lead to more fruitful conversations? Thinking through these in advance will make delivery easier.

27.15 mins

There’s a parallel here with the challenges managers have when they’re leading meetings.Plus, we’re now having conversations we didn’t have before, more personal, more sensitive. Psychological safety is key.

It’s also important to know who is present at the meeting, in what way, and what they’re supposed to be doing. For example, graduates might be attending to observe, can make this explicit during the meeting, and if they have their camera off, explain why.

As a trainer (or manager), you can also keep a “contribution log” – being respectful that people want to contribute at different levels. Catherine covers some of the reasons people contribute less, and the fact that our introversion/extroversion preferences become more radical if we are uncomfortable. 

We can manage our presence in our meetings, and part of this is discussing/communicating how we use our cameras. For example, video is useful, but doesn’t always have to be on. There are times when it’s important for it to be on, and there are advantages, but it’s not an absolute. It’s important to understand our own preferences and not always design for them.

Balance—that’s the word. 

37.00 mins

The conversation turns to how Catherine’s team is experimenting with new ways of working. They’ve come across the challenge of balancing schedule autonomy, with the need to be available to each other when needed.

One challenge some team members have is seeing a message and, even if it doesn’t need immediate replies, the message presence lingers, so they’re using the Schedule message function in MSTeams.

“Flexible work” is great, but it needs structure. Catherine and her colleagues are experimenting with core hours, with flexibility within them. Through experimentation, we get clarity, and have to have conversations about working together.

You can find out more about Catherine over at The Virtual Training Team.

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Looking for the transcript? You can find it further down…

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Transcript for WLP295: Taking the Online Participant Experience to the Next Level

Pilar Orti 0:00

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the 21st Century Work Life podcast, where we talk about leading teams, online collaboration, and working in distributed companies. My name is Pilar Orti. I'm the Director of Virtual not Distant, which is the company behind the show. And you can find out everything about us over at virtualnotdistant.com. And today I have a guest, I have a lovely guest. She's been on the show before. And I'm really excited because I talk to her online a lot. But now we are in synchronous time. So listeners, welcome back to the show. Catherine Nicholson was the director of  The Virtual Training Team. Hello, Catherine.

Catherine Nicholson 0:39

Hey, Pilar. It's great to be here again.

Pilar Orti 0:42

Well, it's lovely to have you here. And you last appeared in Episode 274, which was on the 27th of May 2021. Yes, we're recording this at the end of February 2022. So how have things been at the Virtual Training Team company?

Catherine Nicholson 1:01

We've been very busy. And we keep getting comments saying you were like, in there first before, we were doing this before it was cool. And certainly before it was necessary. But still, we've been busy. And we're working very hard because the truth is Pilar before the pandemic, we were a niche organisation, because not many people were specialising in virtual training. Of course, now, every training company is a virtual training company. So that's made us have to rethink and stay on top of well, how do we stay ahead of what we're doing? How do we do our best to pioneer new ideas and new thinking and use the latest research to keep moving forward? And for me, that's really exciting, because we have to keep challenging ourselves, to deliver new things, to do things in different ways. But then also as a team, how do we operate internally? So there's been lots of change. Lots of really positive stuff, and we're just super pumped about this coming year. It just feels… I don't know whether you've got this feeling as well. Just everyone we speak to everyone's like, “yeah, this year” because we've been on hold, haven't we for two years. And now it's like this is it. Let's do it.

Pilar Orti 2:11

Yeah, it does feel like that a bit, like there's been a big pause button pressed. And we don't know, we weren't sure on when to release it. So yes, I agree. And you also work with internal trainers, is that right?

Catherine Nicholson 2:28

Yes, we do. So a big part of what we do at the Virtual Training Team is Train the Trainer programs, which we've always done. But at the beginning of lockdown, you can imagine we had organisations coming to us saying “help, we're selling gene DNA sequencing machinery. And when we sell one of those machines, we need to train people on how to use it, but we can't do it in a room anymore. Help us”. That's just one example. We have lots of organisations come to us to help us with the train the trainer. So we're helping individuals and teams within organisations. Well, originally, it was making that shift from how to be a face to face trainer, a confident face to face trainer to the confident virtual trainer. And now we're getting an organisation's approach of saying, “well, we've got people that have never done any training before. So can you help us learn how to train?” And then how to train virtually, we're also doing Train the Trainer programs that are like a hybrid between how can we train face to face, and virtually, and in a hybrid way as well. So that needs to evolve. But now we're getting people that came along and did our train the trainer a year or so ago who are like, “Okay, that was great. We're really good at what we do now. What's next?”

Pilar Orti 3:39

Well, let's pick up there because I think that that's a point where to just take it a step aside from the training world and profession. I think that's where a lot of people are in online work as well. That, that novelty and that adaptation to the medium and that acknowledgement that we can work in this medium has happened and now it's exactly there. “Okay, we've experienced this. What next?” I think I can and that everyone can probably relate to that. And listeners, if you haven't listened to Episode 274, Catherine explains exactly the I think a similar, if not the same example you gave us about how they helped people to transfer some technical training online as well. That was great. So maybe you can tell us how you approached this new need of trainers coming and saying “our people are now used to talking online”, “they're used to meeting online”, “they're used to doing lots more stuff online”. And if we stay with that place at the moment, what's coming next then, what is…  how have you approached those next steps?

Catherine Nicholson 4:55

Yeah, we always start with a need to understand and seek to understand first of all, and you're right. It was trainers saying to us, “we've got used to this now”, “we can do this thing called Zoom and PowerPoint”. But also participants, learners, were saying the same thing. It's like, “yeah, we've got it now, we're used to it”, because there were a lot of learners who just weren't ready for that virtual environment of learning. But they've got it. Now they've nailed it. And that's great. And we looked into it. And there's this… those of you listening who were into your learning science, there's this concept of learning loops. So when you're new to a particular type of training, let's use virtual training as an example. There's so much to learn of that new environment and that new way of learning. What really helps is to find a routine or a pattern of learning that can become familiar to you. So a simple example is you go to a workshop, and it's doing some introductions. Let's do some context setting. And let's ask everyone a question where they're responding in chat. Now let's have a breakout conversation. Now let's come back and explore a case study, for example. And what then happens is, if the next workshop follows a similar pattern, it's easier for learners to settle into that routine, because they know what to expect. So they're not having to work hard around what's happening, it's like going into a familiar room, or a familiar building, you're not having to think about where the fire exits are, you know it already. So that's great for a while… and then that familiarity turns into predictability. And it's almost too easy, people can become so familiar that they stop trying, they don't need to work hard to settle into that environment. So that's the point. And it's hard to know when that point is, and we actually don't know when that point is. You sort of get a sense of it, but it's there. We need to shake this up a little bit. But then the danger is, your shaking is abusive. I mean, there's so many cool platforms and applications out there, and if you're like me, you're super curious. It's like being in the sweetie shop, it's that I want to use everything. But that doesn't work either. You can blow people's minds with too much stuff. It's more a case of well, what can we use that enhances the learning experience that keeps it adapting and keeps it interesting enough to keep people engaged, but always still maintaining that purpose, and the learning outcomes so that we're only using new things in a way that enhances the learning, rather than just adds bells and whistles, which is far from what we need. There's enough bells and whistles out there.

Pilar Orti 7:21

I'm really curious now, and I'm sure listeners want to know, so what is it? What is it then?  I think it's so interesting that we've gone to a place of… first predictability can bring comfort, and we embrace that, but when it starts to get in the way, that's when we start to address it. So how do you address it? 

Catherine Nicholson 7:44

How do we address it? We address it from two different angles. So one approach is we allow ourselves to be that kid in the sweetie shop about to go, actually let's just create that smorgasbord of what's possible. So we have as VTT a whole eight step process that we use to design workshops, programs, all of that, but it starts with the end in mind, first of all, so what's the outcome? What do we need people to think, feel, and do as a result? And that’s always in mind, that keeps our feet on the ground and stops us from getting overexcited. But then we do let ourselves be a little bit excited. I'm very easily excitable, Pilar if you know. So then what we do is, we let ourselves get a little over excited in like a safe space by saying, “Well, what what's at our disposal? What are the sweeties?” We call them gigs. So a gig is an idea. It could be a concept, it could be a platform, it could be a story, it could be an image, it could be a process, it could be an activity, it could be a piece of science, but it's a thing that could be incorporated in some sort of training program. And we get overexcited and have, ideally way too much that we could possibly use. So then we can move on to the next stage, where we get all grown up and get quite ruthless and say, “Well, what must stay in? What do we need to have in order to meet that outcome, and if it isn't relevant, or if it isn't necessary, even if it's really nice to have sometimes we let it go”. However, we don't necessarily let everything go completely, there might be a great model, or idea, or concept that there's no time to put into the actual program. But maybe we can deliver that in a different way as part of the supporting collaterals, or pre-work, or supporting materials. And so that allows us to get all excited, but then brings our feet back to the real world to work out what we must keep in. So that's one way of starting really big. Another way is, and this often gets driven by clients coming to us to say something like, so one example is just a conversation we had yesterday with one of our clients where they said, one of the challenges we've got is in this particular training, which people get certified at the end so they've got to pass an exam. As part of that they've got to read, consume and understand a 67 page legal document. I certainly hate to say it's that boring, a 67 page legal document, which, even if it's hard work to consume, and you're reading it and you're taking it in. And so they've come to us to say, “Well, what ways can we help our learners consume the content”. And actually, there's loads of things that we can do, if we get creative. So this is a case of starting from the problem, rather than the output concept. So for example, do you want me to share a few ideas that were being…?

Pilar Orti 10:26

I think listeners would be fascinated and I would be also interested and I am taking notes.

Catherine Nicholson 10:31

Well, one idea is to take a leaf from your book Pilar, is to turn it into a podcast. So you could take the key concepts of the 67 page document, make them into a discussion that you record that people can then listen to on their dogwalk. So they've got some idea before they go in and actually read the document, or they use that afterwards, as a way of consolidating what they've learned. We've taken some inspiration from other applications as well with this idea of what we call learning blinks. What you can do is, if you already are an expert in that 67, page document, it's to pull out what are the key points that people actually need to remember and take away and then consolidate that into… it could be a recording, or it could be a document or it could be a slideshow, but something that's says, these are the key points that if you know nothing, this is what you need to take away. And that's a great way of having people primed before they read the document. So it's not coming to them new, they're like looking for those things. And then it's a nice summary to layer the learning afterwards or to recap, and then even things like go find so you say, somewhere in this document, there's a statistic, or there's a quote, or there's a piece of research, where is it? And then of course, you've got all your quizzes and tests. If you think about it, and one of our philosophies is we've not been beaten yet,there's always a way to make something work to bring it to life, if we just get creative. And if we explore ideas. So that idea of having to consume a 67 page document, you still might have to read it. But there are loads of ways that we can bring it to life and make it more digestible.

Pilar Orti 12:03

I hadn't thought of that, yeah really giving those… When you look at this, what is this and start to look for their soul. So your mind is primed. And also, I suppose you're narrowing down those 67 pages, even in the mind of the person is like, “Okay, I'm going to be looking for specific stuff, I don't need to…” you already know what you're looking for. And that helps understand the material. So for me, what you're starting to describe as well is to really embrace, even when we are preparing interventions for training, and tell me if I'm just reading stuff into it, but we're also going back to the concept of blended learning. Which now, we don't even… we will probably get rid of that word blended, because we're just learning and we're using everything at our disposal now. So, is that right? You're really using the real time, the asynch, the tech, this kind of tech, this other kind of tech, etc? You're really blending everything?

Catherine Nicholson 13:05

Yeah, and you can blend at different levels as well, can't you? Because I think we used to think of blended learning, originally blended learning was, how do we take our face to face learning and combine it with elearning? And so that was it for a bit, wasn't it? And then it was, maybe we can combine it with virtual. And like I said, now it's just that's what it is, it's everything. And you can blend on a big level, you could take complete, like onboarding programs or management development programs and blend the whole program. Or you could take a single workshop that's two hours long, and do some blending within that, what happens before, what happens afterwards, we talk a lot about learning pathways that you can curate for learners as part of a workshop, or a program where they have two pathways, one pathway is required, and one is desired. So you can create that learning so it's actually if you're going to go through this program, you need to read the 67 page document. That's part of what's required. But actually if you're curious let's curate some stuff for you because there's so much stuff out there Pilar that I don't know about you, but I get lost regularly in these rabbit holes on the internet. It's another thing, and another thing, but actually you've got to check this stuff out because there's a lot of stuff that on the surface seems really interesting. But when you look at it, it doesn't have the rigour that we need so having somebody curate that far as to say “hey, if you're curious, here's some useful stuff” as well can be really helpful. So yeah, absolutely blended is the norm now.

Pilar Orti 14:29

I love that and listeners, I also want to hear some input from you although, we do have listeners that I only find out they listen to the podcast like months after it has been released. Because I'm the same, I rarely reach out to shows even though I listen to them regularly, but listeners this… it's now gone because I was talking too much, but this required and desired. I love that and I think that a lot of the times when we are either going to go through training programs or providing those training programs that can really make the difference, one between the people who are seeing it as a requirement actually go “well, I'm not having to do everything, because I don't have to do the desired. So that's fine. Okay?” we have a sense of autonomy there, their sense of autonomy is increasing. And for the crazy people like you and I who just would be in the gathering information and dreaming phase of learning forever. I think then it gives you that extra space as well. I love that. Yeah, I really, really like that, the required and desired. And that's a really good approach for a lot of stuff. Also, it's really good. That's a really nice word. So thank you, Catherine, I'm gonna steal those. 

Catherine Nicholson 15:44

Yeah, it's yours. 

Pilar Orti 15:49

or borrow with pride, like another podcast guest said, I don't even know if their conversation will have come out yet. So something though, talking of requirements, there's lots of organisations where there are things we have to deliver as trainers. So I'm talking now from the internal trainer point of view, and I'm saying we as the royal “we”, but we receive the slides from the department that has put the training together, and then we need to deliver. And some of these slides are very similar to the document you were talking about and might have a lot of things that need to be in them. They might be they might feel a bit difficult to navigate, how do you help people approach those? How would you approach that kind of challenge?

Catherine Nicholson 16:38

This is something we see a lot actually. So the challenge comes in a few different places. So just the first challenge I find quite a lot is that a lot of organisations have the organisational branded templates that you can use for PowerPoint. The challenge that I see is that it often comes from comms or marketing, not from a training perspective. And slides that work for a marketing campaign or an internal comms campaign don't necessarily work when you want people to engage to learn in a different way. So that's one of the challenges. But then quite understandably, if you are delivering something very technical, it might be that the slides have been created by the science department or they've been signed off by the legal department. And sometimes that means we can't change them. Or we're limited with what we can change. So where that becomes a challenge in the actual training environment is if you're a participant, and you get this slide, it's got all of this data or a complicated diagram, or loads of bullet points and text. Where do you look? It's information overload. And also, as a trainer, how do you control where the participant looks? Now, the first thing I think that we can do here is understand that one of the reasons that the legal department or the science department, whoever creates the slides do that is because they need to, from their perspective, they need to make sure that if it's on the slide, then the participants see it, and then the box is ticked that they know it. But just because they've seen it doesn't mean that they know it, or that they can remember it or that they will apply it. So I get why they do that. And so often what we do is we say “well, okay, maybe there needs to be in the takeaway documents. So people have that”. But in terms of what you visually present to them in a learning environment, that could be different, either by taking that one slide and stripping it out and putting it into more slides. And by the way, I just have to say, because I've had this pushback a few times, certainly in a virtual training environment, having a lot of slides isn't a bad thing, you're probably better off having more slides with less on them, then fewer slides. You want things moving without being too quick. But you want visuals moving to keep people engaged? So that's one thing if you've got the ability to strip them out into my slides, great. But even there are things you're stuck with, if this is it, this is the slide you can't move away from, you have got to live with it. Still, how can you control where participants look? So for example, what you could do is you could cover elements of the slide. We call it hide and reveal to make it sound more exciting, but you could literally use shapes to cover elements of the slide. So people are only looking at the bit that you want. And even just the good old using a pointer or a laser pointer to say this is where we are right now. Or even explaining to participants “Okay, right, just before you do jump into this, there's a lot of information, we're going to start in the top left hand corner, then I'm going to guide you through so stay with me. And I'll make sure that you are looking at the bit that you need to look at”, but it is thinking about it from the participants perspective. How do we make sure that they're looking at what they need to look at? They're not racing ahead. They're not getting cognitive overload, which is just too much. Wwe look at what you can do if you can change the slides to make them more accessible? And what do you do if you're stuck? But there's always something to make them better?

Pilar Orti 19:58

Yeah, I love the covering idea, covering the slides and stuff.

Catherine Nicholson 20:04

Watch out for this because it's going to be one of our next videos that we do, we do videos and put them on our YouTube channel. Bit of a plug there. But the next one that we need to do is that, because we found a way,  it's quite straightforward, but it took us ages to work out where you can cover elements of things on your slide. But usually in PowerPoint, if you're using animation to move or remove things, you're stuck with the order of when you click your mouse. Whereas if you want a choice, you might want to say to your participants, which… So say we've got several boxes covering different pieces of content, and they're a different colour, you could say, “Pilar, which box would you like to reveal next?”, and you say “I would like to reveal the red box.” And then I can unclick the red box. And we'll show you how to do that, because it's a really simple thing. But it just gives so much control back into the session where you're not having PowerPoint, dictating to you which reveal happens next, you can actually control it, it's a really nice little touch.

Pilar Orti 21:01

Yeah, do you remember the address of your YouTube channel?

Catherine Nicholson 21:06

If you go into YouTube, and just put in the virtual training team, you'll find us

Pilar Orti 21:11

Excellent, do check that out. I might put the link in the show notes. It really depends on what my brain is doing for a couple of days. And gathering something else that you were mentioning when we were preparing for this episode was how important the quality of the conversations that participants have in the sessions is. What are some of your thoughts around that? So how can we help people have great conversations online? Let's stick to online for now. Or some of the things you've been experimenting with? And also has your view of how these things happen changed that all? All of that.

Catherine Nicholson 21:51

So let me take you back in time to when I first started delivering virtual training. The very first session that I ran was a disaster. It was a long time ago, thankfully, but the memory still lingers. But I was quite cocky and confident and thought, “hey, I'm a great face to face trainer. How hard could this be?” But the thing that I found most difficult and even now the thing that we know, when we're training trainers new to virtual training, or less experienced in virtual training, their biggest fear is the tumbleweed moments. That's what hurts the most, you crack a joke, or you ask a question, and you get nothing back and it really hurts. So what then happens is you found some ways of getting a bit of interaction. So rather than just ask it a question, like, “Is everyone okay with that?” Instead, you say, “Hey, if you're okay with that, put a thumbs up in the chat box.” And instead, then you ask questions with more purpose. So you might ask a question and say, put your answer in the chat box. And then I might say, “okay, so Pilar, you've said that your experience of this is x, tell me a bit more?” and now we're having a conversation. Now, often, I've been through this, so I can speak with experience. What then happens is, as a trainer, you're so relieved that you've got a conversation going, that you think you've made it. We're having a conversation, but our challenge is, what's the quality and depth of that conversation. So we give ourselves a huge pat on the back because people talked, they're involved, they're engaged, and we had a conversation. And so when you start to look at the learning science of how people learn, we know that the deepest learning and the longest lasting learning and the learning that's more likely to be applied in the long term, is where we are thinking harder, we're thinking deeper, we're analysing things, we're making connections with what we already know. And that often means that as a trainer, we need to ask questions that challenge the thinking. And actually, a slight tumbleweed moment is often a good thing. Because if you ask somebody a question that makes them stop in their tracks, and go “ Oh, I really need to think about that”, that's great, because they're really thinking about it. But we can't do that as readily in the moment as we can, in a face to face environment. We've all been there. I confess, I have rocked up to face to face days of training with like a few flipchart pens in my back pocket. And that's it, I'm good to go. And you can fly by the seat of your pants. And you can do a little bit of that in the virtual space as well, but it's much harder, because when you're delivering virtual training, there's a lot to think about, you've got a camera on you, first of all, which you're supposed to be looking into while somehow subtly glancing at your notes at the same time and glancing at the the videos on the screen of all the other participants. We've got the chat box, we've got the participant reactions, we've got our slides, we've got all of that happening, our tech, and we're supposed to be performing at the same time. It shouldn't be a performance. It's real, but… you know what I mean? And I often describe it, like it’s learning to drive a car and being expected to sing at the same time. That's really hard. So in a virtual environment, what we always say is “just think about your killer questions in advance”, because it's really hard to just think of them in the moment and then be brilliant. Think of those kinds of questions that are really going to provoke thinking and get people to think at much deeper levels. And then you're having conversations that are much richer.

Pilar Orti 25:15

And going back to the massive silences, which always seems so much more daunting online than when you're in the room together. I also think I've learned to embrace them as well. I mean, they are horrible, because, are they not speaking because they're thinking? and not speaking because they want to go? Why? What shall I do? At the same time, I don't want to force them to speak, maybe they don't want to speak and that might not be a bad thing. And I think that preparing for those also, and knowing and accepting that those moments happen, and instead of just letting them happen, and deciding in the moment, how to deal with them, be prepared for them as well, like with the questions. I suppose we go back to the online space where everything needs to be a lot more deliberate. And it just requires that much more thought. Yeah, that's a lot of stuff. So I think you've already touched on this, this whole preparation, and just a little bit of anticipation, because there's something else I wanted to draw from this conversation and that is these conversations that we want to enable, as trainers and lead as trainers, maybe they are similar to what managers might want to do when they're talking with their team, when they are in… in the in the context of meetings specifically… what do you think? Well, okay, I'm not gonna ask you a leading question, because it's terrible training practice.

Pilar Orti 26:49

But what do you think of this category? What I'm thinking is that there's a lot that we can apply around this. Let's find the moments where we can suggest that we go into the chat for a little bit of a rest. But also, let's suggest a moment where we don't use the chat, so that we don't have too much stuff going on. What else do you think that managers or people leading a meeting can take from this practice?

Catherine Nicholson 27:15

So I think the first thing to consider is we're now having conversations that we've never had to have before. So whether you're a manager, having one to one conversations with your team, virtually or in person, or running hybrid meetings, virtual meetings, even just the topics of conversation that we're having conversations we didn't used to have to have before, we're having much more personal conversations and sensitive conversations. A big part of that is, if we're talking about being in a meeting, if you're running a meeting, it's so important that we create that psychological safety, that people feel that they can speak, and people feel that they can share without judgement, without people having opinions or without going anywhere else as well, if it is a sensitive conversation. And that's something else I think we need to do intentionally so that the whole thing about trust builds over time, everyone says, but sometimes we haven't got time to wait for that trust to build, we need to make it happen. So that could be about setting the scene at the beginning of a meeting, even some basic simple things like, are we all in agreement here that this is a private conversation, for example, that we're not recording anything? Are we all in agreement that we'll have our cameras on, at least for part of the meeting, for example? I think in those situations as well, it's really important to make sure that everybody in the meeting knows why everybody else's in the meeting. So there's not that suspicion as to why you are there? And actually, we do quite a lot of graduate training. And one of the things that graduates… I am stereotyping here a little bit, but a lot of graduates say that they feel a little bit intimidated in meetings. And they're like, “Well, I'm the graduate, I'm there to observe, I'm there to make notes. And not to interrupt an adult. It's my place to ask questions.” So we always say, “well, it's important that you introduce yourself and explain why you're there.” Even if your camera's off, maybe explain why your camera's off. Maybe say “I'm here to observe and make notes” and while you're presenting yourself, you’re being appropriately present, but you're turning down your levels of presence, because that's appropriate. And so just making sure that everyone knows why everyone's there and what our rules are, it's been that great host as well. When you're leading that meeting, I think about it as being a great conductor, like you're moving, like any great facilitation, you're moving the conversation around. And something that can be really helpful that we always use in our meetings and training is just a contribution log, or a learner log, we sometimes call them. So the idea that you've got everyone's name on the list and you just keep it a bit of a track as to who's contributing. Being respectful that some people will want to contribute less than others. Of course, that's fine, but just keeping our eye on that so if they are contributing less is that because they're not interested? Or are they just more of a reflector already multitasking, because that's worth just keeping our eye on as well. But also, we need to manage the over contributors. And what we found is that there are reasons why people might struggle to manage their contribution levels more in a virtual environment than in a face to face environment. For example, the visual cues are less obvious in a virtual environment. And for example, we know that one of the reasons some people don't like to speak in a virtual environment is because they're concerned that they'll speak over somebody else. Because those cues aren't as obvious. We also know that if you're a little bit uncomfortable, then if you have a preference for extraversion, you're more likely to be extroverted. If you prefer introversion, you're more likely to be more introverted, if you're feeling intimidated as well, then there's the whole zoom fatigue,  it is a real thing. We used it in the beginning of the pandemic, to say basically, we're sick of family quizzes every Thursday night and friendly quizzes on Sunday because I have Zoom fatigue, but it is a real thing. So being on camera and being virtual in meetings all day, which many of us are, it's psychologically tiring, because our brains are having to work just a little bit harder to read those visual cues. And also, I find this quite surprising is this still such a slight delay, in which we don't often consciously notice when we're speaking, but subconsciously, we're picking up on that and just having to work a bit harder. So I think it's about being aware of all of that. And there are a few ideas I've mentioned about overcoming it. But another thing is to say, “Actually, everyone, for this next conversation, should we all just turn our cameras off.”

Pilar Orti 31:42

I am glad you said that one. That is really important. And I love how you were talking there about managing your presence, something like that you phrased it better. And I think that is so important that that is a conversation that we need to be having. And I'm going to hammer on this. Just because the other day I heard someone say they'd been at some webinar or something about hybrid work. And with talking about hybrid work, they had to talk about hybrid meetings, because that's the first thing people think about meetings, and how they were saying that everyone has to have their video on all the time and things like that. And I think that we really need to understand that just the same as we don't expect everyone to be doing exactly the same thing. And looking exactly at the same point of reference. And the same thing, when we are in a co-located space. We've got to give that freedom as well, when we are online, and the use of cameras still needs to be discussed, I think, because it is wonderful, I am such an audio person. But when I see people on the screen, I do like it, and think it sometimes makes me smile more. However, for a lot of conversations, I prefer to have my camera off, because I'm thinking, because I'm writing, because I might be uncomfortable in that conversation if I have the camera on all the time, I might be worried about my face. And it's not the same as having a conversation face to face because there is that pressure that you have to be facing. And in fact, I have had times when not out of disrespect, but out of curiosity, I might not have been looking attentive in inverted commas. And somebody, I know that somebody has then tried to get me in because they were thinking they thought I was disengaged. But actually, I was just not really looking where they wanted me to look.

Catherine Nicholson 33:40

But if you've got dual monitors, you might be looking at a monitor where the slides are and your notes are there. You might be looking down because you're capturing notes. And that's absolutely fine. And I think your point about having the conversation is so important. So I prefer to have my camera on. Because if I don't I multitask.

Pilar Orti 33:58

Oh, Catherine

Catherine Nicholson 34:00

It's like my fingers creep away, and I can be really engaged. But the next thing I'm like on my phone, why did that happen? So I know I'm better behaved if I'm on camera. Sorry, but I said it, there I said it.

Pilar Orti 34:15

But you see there, now this is the thing. So before the pandemic, I had another conversation with someone who said, “Yeah, someone I know doesn't trust their people to work from home, because they don't trust themselves to work from home.” And I think this is very similar… It may be that we run a meeting and we don't like people not having the on camera because we know that that for us is a key point of engagement and attention. Therefore, I think that it's really important to have a lot of self awareness, and not assume that everyone needs the same as you. And then, shifting around, shifting around.

Catherine Nicholson 34:51

Yeah, and I confess that that was me, I thought well, “everyone should have their camera on, why wouldn't they?” But I've now learned that for some people. That's just so tiring. But then, one story I heard. So I know a few organisations that have said to their employees, please don't ask people to put their cameras on. So people aren't in a position to say “I'm uncomfortable doing that.” But then that can have the opposite effect in some cases, because one manager said to me that he has a graduate in his team who had  joined virtually. And so they've never been in a room together. And for 18 months, he'd never seen his employee because his employee never ever put the camera on ever. And that worries me as well. Because the stuff that we see from a well-being perspective, the way that somebody is taking care of themselves, some of the small clues sometimes that we pick up by seeing people as to whether they're okay, that worries me as well. So I think with all of this, there is a balance. But if we're having conversations, at least that's a great start, isn't it?

Pilar Orti 35:55

Unbalanced is the word, it really is. And I know I go sometimes… that imbalance goes one one way, but really, that balance between cameras on between meetings, not meeting synchronous, asynchronous, going back to the learning experience, balance of different ways, and just really making sure that what we're doing is the most, either the most appropriate or at least the most deliberate choice, rather than going with inertia and not stopping, and also trying things out, and then revisiting them and making that time. Of course, making time I know is always really difficult. But we can have these kinds of issues like, I mean, the example that you gave was so great. Thanks, Catherine. Okay,we've covered a lot,  I think, but the last thing that I would like you to share with me and listeners, I love having a podcast, because I'm really curious. So how have you in your company, how have you changed how you work either internally? What are some of the things that you've changed as a result of all the thinking adjustment experimenting that you've been doing recently?

Catherine Nicholson 37:06

I love the fact that you use the word experimenting? Because it's always an experiment, isn't it? We've been taking some inspiration from some of the podcasts that we've been listening to, from you actually Pilar about asynchronous and synchronous and working out loud, and grappling with what does that mean for us? And one of the things… It's a small thing that occurred to us, so we live on teams, like literally everyone says, Good morning, Goodbye, and then every meeting, we have our own teams. And what occurred to me is that we're all trying to be good citizens and have, focus time, and you can put on teams that you're busy with something, or Do Not Disturb and then people know that. But the problem is, if you've put yourself on Do Not Disturb for the morning, and relax, you've got a really important deadline to hear. But I've got a burning question for you. Now, it's burning enough that I don't want to forget to ask you, but it's not that urgent that it couldn't wait. But I'll forget to ask you, if I don't like to send it straight away. But then even if I send it even if you're on Do Not Disturb still, we all know that we just can't help just checking in our messages every now and then, especially if you're a multitasker like me. And then even if you don't respond, it just still knocks your focus a little bit. So we just learned internally that we can delay messages on teams. So you can schedule a response in teams to go whenever you think is best for that other person, it's like, “hey, let's do this.” So we've been sharing ways of being more intentional about meetings. So we've all changed our Outlook calendars, so when you set a half hour meeting, it sets to default to 25 minutes. Or if you set an hour meeting, it sets by default to 50. So that we can't, it's harder to book back to back meetings, because we were terrible at that. The other thing that's come up recently, which I found again, really interesting was this idea of flex so we say to all of our team, we operate a flexible working policy here. And I thought well isn't that great. It's really straightforward. So if you work for me, what that means is I'm pretty cool. You do what you want, if you want to go to the dentist, or go and have two hours for lunch and enjoy the sunshine. That's great. But what we discovered is that that's great for me, but still people want structure around flexibility. Yeah, so I can flex but within what reason. So we're experimenting, we literally just launched it this week. Okay. And this hurts me to say this, but we're experimenting with core hours, so our core hours are 10 to 3 outside of that, do whatever you want. But we can still flex within that, go to the dentist or whatever, we're trying to work out to give people… I think everyone wants that comfort level that they can flex but within the parameters of what's fair and reasonable. And no one ever goes beyond what's reasonable, if anything they're more likely to hold back a little bit. So yeah, if any listeners have got ideas on that, that's definitely something that we're experimenting with. 

Pilar Orti 40:09

Yeah, that's a really good point, this factor of, you could do what you want. That's really hard, because then you're second guessing what really is acceptable? And what the boundaries are? Because there's always boundaries. Even if we say there aren't any, there are boundaries, because especially if we've been in the workplace for a certain time that there are boundaries. And it's the same as the unlimited holidays thing, where they found that there were many companies that have introduced these, but nobody's really taken them. Because everyone was hesitant, it's actually better to say, well, you can take a maximum of, Doist I think has a maximum of  40 days a year.  So it and all the experimenting with… because as soon as you don't have core hours, then you're really relying on asynchronous communication. And for some teams and some personalities, you want that real time you want to feel almost that people are there with you during work, and they might not be sitting next to you and you might not have your cameras open, and you're not talking all the time. But it's just that sense that, as you say, if I want to know that people are there working at the same time as me, it just helps me.

Catherine Nicholson 41:22

Well we had a period last summer, but it was glorious weather that we had, but we had loads of it. We're like great, I'm gonna start work at seven, finish it three. And then I've got like the rest of the day. But I wish I was an early riser, but I'm not. So I was working from nine till five well beyond that, I rarely worked the actual hours. But I found that it's like four hours of the working day when we work together. So that's a limited amount of time to have meetings, and there were only two of us working in between three and five. It was like, where is everybody else? So yeah, it comes back to your point from earlier. It's about balance. It's about conversation. It's about experimentation. It's about a plan with a bit of common sense and saying, “well, let's try this. If it doesn't work, that's okay. That's not failure. We've just found a way that doesn't work that's positive, it's learning it's progress. Let's try something new.”

Pilar Orti 42:13

And also, especially and, this is coming from someone who is pontificating all the time about stuff, don't worry too much about what other people are doing. Find your own way. But also, in this experimentation, we get clarity, and this was the whole reason why I went into the virtual space because I thought we needed to have these conversations when we do it gradually. And in doing that, we really start to understand how we work together. And again, we just started to understand each other better. And we can then do things by choice or not by inertia.

Catherine Nicholson 42:46

Yes. Because back to that point, again from earlier about being intentional.

Pilar Orti 42:50

Yeah, great. Good. Well, gathering this has been really, really wonderful. And I'm sure that listeners might want to connect with you, find out more about you, or even work with you. Well, I know you're still active on LinkedIn, aren't you? Is that your preferred social media platform or have you got others?

Catherine Nicholson 43:08

We're on others, but probably LinkedIn is the easiest way to find me. Just put in Katherine with a C and Nicholson and you will probably find me it's a virtual training team.

Pilar Orti 43:16

Excellent. And let's direct them to the website, which is virtual training team dot co dot uk Excellent. Well, thank you very much. It's lovely to speak to you.

Catherine Nicholson 43:25

Thank you, Pilar. As always, I love it.

Pilar Orti 43:52

A big thank you for listening to the 21st Century Work Life podcast produced by Virtual not Distant. If you have something to add to the conversation, let us know through the contact form over at virtual not distant dot com I have been your host Pilar Orti, and I'm signing off now. Wherever you are, whatever you're doing, enjoy