8 Don’ts of Virtual Professional Development
By: Lisa Irving
Tags: Training, Online, Professional Development, Workplace, Meetings

VIRTUALLY WORKING

8 Don’ts of Virtual Professional Development

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Teleworking suddenly became the new normal for thousands of organizations as a consequence of COVID-19. The pandemic forced many to transform their approach to professional development. Committees and departments not only had to reschedule training but redesign it.

Directors, managers, or outsourced trainers may largely be relieved of logistics, costs, and social pressures that come with in-person sessions. However, despite the ease provided by video conferencing and cloud sharing, professional development can still suck!

Many of the factors that can make an in-person training dreadful are magnified in an online setting. Here are eight warnings for designers and facilitators of virtual professional development.

1. Don’t let participants go in blind.

Chances are that most participants will enter your training with a sense of disconnection that is out of your control. While they may understand and appreciate the necessity of a virtual experience, each person joins as an individual.

There is no hallway small talk with coworkers on the way to a familiar meeting room. There is no conference table to gather around, and no reaching for potential free snacks.

Due to this unfamiliarity, participants need to know as much as possible about what will happen in the virtual space. Sending out the title of a session a few days before is not enough.

Sharing details like the schedule, speakers, and materials will increase the comfort level of participants. The more comfortable people are, the more actively they engage in the experience. Actively engaged participants are more likely to learn, value, and recommend the content.

2. Don’t schedule at the wrong times.

Most of us probably have been required to attend a training or other meeting that, to us, obviously started too early or too late in the day. Of course, the nature of your industry and company culture will influence the time of day selected for professional development.

Sometimes, sessions designers and facilitators have no vote in determining the schedule. As often as possible, though, professional development sessions should take place when participants are the least busy and most alert.

The idea of timing may seem foolproof with all of the apps and software that have simplified the scheduling process. Yet, several organizations continue to schedule professional development sessions in close proximity to departmental meetings, typical break times, or company-wide events.

While a midday start time is not always avoidable, not many people enjoy twirling noodles or slurping soup on-camera. The lunch-and-learn approach may be an easy recipe for disengagement.

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3. Don’t set yourself up for (tech) failure.

Remember the pre-cloud years when presenters backed up their files on a floppy disk, CD, or flash drive? They would save duplicates on their hard drive and print enough copies of their slide decks for the audience.

Today, screen sharing and cloud storage are very reliable — until they’re not. Too often, poor preparation forces a grid of colleagues to stare at an error message, black screen, or loading icon while the flustered facilitator is left helpless.

Take a few minutes to back up all files needed for the training to succeed. All software and all computers leave room for error, so all professional development events need contingency plans.

If a tech failure causes you to end and reschedule a session for later, participants will return with little confidence in the quality of your content. That’s just the way our brains work. A simple plan B is to, like in the olden days, download any files you can to your hard drive or external storage device.

For plan C, share your files with a separate account that uses a different email — if allowed by your organization’s privacy policy. It also won’t hurt to make sure a colleague has a duplicate copy of your files, even if they are not directly facilitating.

4. Don’t use a dry icebreaker.

First and foremost, think about if your professional development session actually needs an icebreaker. If all participants know each other and know the facilitator, an icebreaker is not essential. The facilitator telling a funny personal story or playing music that fits the tone of the event may be enough to break the ice.

There definitely is a need for an icebreaker when the majority of participants are strangers, the facilitator is a stranger, or the central topic is particularly awkward. Still, be sure that your icebreaker doesn’t make an awkward topic more awkward.

Thousands of icebreaker ideas are available for free through a simple Internet search. There is no reason to use the same icebreaker again and again, especially if you are working with the same organization.

Although you will be working with adults, don’t shy away from simple, fun activities either. The only thing that separates youth learners from adult learners is their experience, so tic-tac-toe is not off the table.

The experiences and personalities of the participants are very useful to know when selecting an icebreaker. If you don’t have that information beforehand, find out as much as you can about the company’s culture, organizational goals, and previous training offered.

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5. Don’t forget the agenda.

As a designer or facilitator of professional development, you probably have the content and structure of your session memorized. This is great on your end, but participants need assurances too.

Having an agenda that everyone can see and follow is a must. It doesn’t have to be super fancy or complicated to be effective. A straightforward session outline in a simple, clean format will go a long way.

Having an agenda is one thing, but using it is another. You will lose the attention and trust of participants if you provide an agenda and then don’t follow it. If you want to get through your full agenda at an ideal pace, you have to lead by example.

A good strategy is to refer back to the agenda now and then, reviewing what’s been covered and what is left. For any interactive portions, make directions and time limits clear from the beginning. Again, clarity increases comfort. Comfort increases engagement.

6. Don’t move too quickly or too slowly.

Pacing is what makes professional development either comprehensive or overwhelming. The pace of a session should align with the scope of the content, the size of the audience, and the number of interactive components.

If you follow the previous tips about tech backups and creating an agenda, you’re halfway there. Preparation and practice will help you to determine the most comfortable pace for facilitators that also accounts for participants’ needs.

Let’s consider the scope of the content. If you know that participants will be learning several new terms, concepts, skills, or policies in one event, build in breaks. Inserting 5-minute breathers, review games, or snack show-and-tell are great ways to avoid mental overload.

Size matters just as much. Small groups will have different pacing needs than large groups. The more people there are on the screen, the more easily distracted participants are. To keep the attention on your content, include more interactive elements for larger groups and fewer for smaller groups.

The collaborative or responsive activities you have planned for participants must be timed right. Practice the activity beforehand to gauge how much time is needed. Most importantly, be ready to adapt the format or pacing of an activity if the number of participants turns out to be more or fewer than expected.

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7. Don’t make engagement awkward.

Virtual professional development is always awkward to some extent, but there’s no need to make it worse. Facilitators have a responsibility to keep things moving and initiate engagement. However, none of that happens effectively if participants are uncomfortable.

If an icebreaker or responsive activity you planned isn’t going well, move on. While you probably put serious time and effort into planning and practice, the audience doesn’t have that same attachment to the activity. Be careful not to force your personal fondness for the content or activities onto participants.

Avoiding awkwardness is especially important when working with small groups. Again, find out as much as you can about the organizational culture and dynamics in advance. Unless you are coaching a team through resolving internal issues, asking known enemies to collaborate is not a good strategy.

Then, there’s the gold standard of weirdness at work: awkward silence. This is not about providing 30 seconds of think time before participants answer a poll. Awkward silence in professional development occurs when an icebreaker falls flat, a facilitator gets flustered, or too much time is allocated for an activity.

Preparation will help curb most potentially awkward situations, but there is always a chance of unforeseen mishaps. If awkwardness springs up, facilitators must address it and regain control. Laughing it off can work, as long as you’re genuine. All participants truly want in those moments is for you to let go of what’s not working and to move forward.

8. Don’t announce your every move.

As mass teleworking became standard over the past few months, social media has poked fun at the redundant announcements people make in virtual meetings. Chief among them is “I’m going to share my screen now.” Professional development is fertile ground for hyper-announcing, but it is still preventable.

Facilitators don’t need to announce every click they make unless there is a tech issue or direct change in participants’ experience. For example, you can establish at the opening of your session that everyone will remain muted except during responsive segments. This eliminates the temptation to announce it all eight times you mute everyone.

Think about the things you would verbalize if you were facilitating professional development in-person. You probably wouldn’t announce every time you advance your slide deck or turn up the volume of a video clip. Replicating in-person experience as much as possible will reduce our human tendency to state the obvious in virtual settings.

Are there circumstances in which you need to announce what you’re doing behind the screen? Of course. One indicator of how often you need to engage in play-by-play is the size of your group. We’ve discussed how large groups are more easily distracted than smaller groups. When you have 137 people waiting, keep them informed more often.

Some of the actions that you should always announce include the option for participants to turn their camera on/off, switching facilitators, and graphic content warnings. Super vigilance isn’t necessary when it comes to over-announcing, but your actual content should remain front and center.

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Bonus: Don’t stop improving and expanding virtual PD. It’s here to stay.

In terms of planning and delivery, the way you start will be the way you finish. It is critical that your planning team and facilitators understand that, despite our uncertain future, quality professional development can and should continue.

Designing and executing virtual professional development does present a challenge. Organizations that did not incorporate much tech prior to the pandemic continue the tedious process of shifting much of their business online.

What is most important for human resource departments, training teams, professional coaches, and facilitators to remember is to embrace this shift. Long after the COVID-19 pandemic ends, the systems and resources built will continue to benefit the world of work.

Human beings need in-person interaction; we are hardwired for it. At the same time, technology often expands reach, increases efficiency, and reduces environmental impact. Therefore, the future presents a valuable opportunity to further hybridize professional development for the betterment of all.