Expanding Your Grouip and Team Coaching Toolkit - Virtual platform tools (13)

One of the areas I continue finding myself spending a lot of time in these days is the in space of

virtual learning. As a former virtual leader, I’ve always been an early adopter of tech – even throughout the 1990s and early 2000s when business and tech looked a lot different than today. For the last 15 years I’ve headed a virtual business, and the bulk of my work has been virtual, supporting teams, groups and individuals, through coaching, training and consulting services.


With this in mind, I’m dedicating the next three weeks to posts around expanding your group ad team coaching toolkit into the virtual space. This week’s post gets you thinking about leveraging all the tools available to you on the virtual platform. There’s a lot more available to you than you might think. It’s usually the inclusion of these tools that moves us from on a one way talking head/death by PowerPoint experience to an interactive conversation.


Things to keep in mind:

Trust and connection are key to conversation in the virtual space. Be sure to include activities and exercises that will connect people early on to each other, and what they know, and can share.


Switch the pace every 7-10 minutes – Pacing is key in the virtual space for engagement and learning


Leverage the tools available to you. These could include:

Breakouts  Just like in the in-person room, breakouts bring the conversation to the personal level. For larger groups breakouts are an essential part of the group coaching experience. Some skill development around questioning and listening may be required with groups that are non-coaches. For more on breakouts check out my October 2017 video – Breakouts that Sizzle! LINSERT LINK

What can you do to leverage breakouts?

Polls – Polls are a great way to incorporate discussion and dialogue. From using the internal polls available (which can be activated on most platforms like WebEx and Zoom), to using an external app like Kahoot, polls area  real-time way to get consensus happening and see where the group or team is.

What can you do to leverage polls?

Annotation – Annotation is a great way to get people moving. For kinesthetic learners this invites people to create together. Whether it’s having a team draw their vision for themselves on a white screen, or having people share the theme they want to explore that week, annotation is also a key tools in making things visual. More on this next week.


Questions to consider:

What can you do to leverage the tools available?

What’s the environment you want to create in your virtual call?

What breakout opportunities

What will connect people to others quickly in the conversation?

What will connect people quickly to their WIIFM – What’s in it for me?

What polls might you add to the conversation 


For resources on this topic check out

My 2017 book – Effective Virtual Conversations (444 pages) – pick up a copy at Amazon (almost all of the 13 chapters of the book have relevance to this topic, including part 3 which is geared to supporting virtual team development)

Jane Bozarth – Bettter than Bullet Points

ICF’s January 2018 blog on the Virtues of Virtual Coaching – read it at https://coachfederation.org/blog/virtues-virtual-coaching


I also have a whole series of past community calls you can tap into around the topic of creating Engaging Virtual Conversations – you can check them out at https://www.youtube.com/effectivegroupcoach (Check out the Effective Virtual Conversations playlist)

With best wishes,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton, CPCC, PCC – Potentials Realized 
Leadership | Teamwork | Business Success
Author of Effective Virtual Conversations (2017), Coaching Business Builder Workbook and Planner (2018) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (2013)
Follow along with the #90DaysPlanDoTrack series over at Instagram @CoachingBizBuilder 
Join the conversation at the Conversation Sparker Zone - our online community where you can explore virtual and team issues, coaching, productivity and business development)

Join us for an upcoming ICF CCE approved program - Group Coaching Essentials (starts Monday July 8 - 8.75 CCEs), Advanced Group and Team Coaching Practicum (starts Monday July 8: 10 CCEs) or the Virtual Facilitation Essentials(starts July)