How To Facilitate An Engaging Remote Workshop

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Galen Low: Hey folks, thanks for tuning in. My name is Galen Low with the Digital Project Manager. We are a community of digital professionals on a mission to help each other get skilled, get confident, and get connected so that we can amplify the value of project management in a digital world. If you want to hear more about that, head on over to thedigitalprojectmanager.com/membership.

All right, today we are getting a lesson in how to facilitate engaging remote workshops from bestselling author, expert executive facilitator, founder of Starfish Synergies, and the exclusive North American provider of Hasbro's Play-Doh Power Solutions Corporate Training, Ms. Theresa Bailey. 

Theresa, welcome back to the show.

Theresa Bailey: Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be back. 

Galen Low: I'm so happy to have you here because, we got talking about how you use Play-Doh in workshops with executive teams and how that unlocks creativity and innovation. And I thought, Oh my gosh, this is perfect. Because if I were to tee it up, I would say that the world of project management and the role of the project manager, especially in the digital world, is changing quite a bit. And I was thinking, I'm like, there's two interrelated things that I see happening in the world of digital project management. Firstly, project managers are increasingly expected to be able to facilitate workshops and sessions. And secondly, project-based collaboration is increasingly done in hybrid and remote configurations.

So in my mind, any project manager who's capable of facilitating and engaging remote or hybrid workshop is worth their weight in gold at this moment in time, and who better than to give us a lesson than you, who, does this a lot, so I'm excited to dive in. 

Theresa Bailey: Yeah, and honestly, I help people figure out how to facilitate, especially people who don't like to speak in front of other people. We know that on the fear scale, public speaking is often rated higher than death as a fear. So it's probably my most popular workshop is helping people figure out how to facilitate. So I know it's such an important skill across the field, everywhere. 

Galen Low: And there is, you're right, there's something unnatural about it, which is why it sort of needs to be honed and trained. 

And hopefully, today, we can learn from some of the things that you learned the hard way along your journey. Because you were not always a facilitator, you kind of fell into facilitation, I think, probably around 15 years ago. Can you give us your origin story? Can you tell us like how you went from almost pursuing an academic career with a doctorate in psychology to facilitating corporate workshops with executives using Play-Doh? 

Theresa Bailey: Absolutely. I actually wanted to be a sports psychologist many years ago and was doing volunteer work to, because I wanted to do it, but also to get into graduate school to be a clinical psychologist. And I was volunteering with the Canadian Mental Health Association. And I was in Ottawa doing a project to try to understand how people who were homeless wanted to receive services. And I went into a shelter. I ended up right across the table from a young man who was exactly two weeks younger than me.

We'd grown up the same. And I wanted to understand how did he end up there and I ended up here. And in that moment, my dreams of being a sports psychologist went out the window and I started studying what helps people thrive, what helps people be effective. And from there, I've got a master's in community psychology, really trying to understand what helps people do well and studied resilience in a young women's emergency shelter to see what help people do well coming out of one place or the other. 

So that was the first chunk of my life. Then I went into education. I was doing work with mental health and a lot of those different areas. And once I had my third child, went into consulting so that I had some more flexibility. And really, though, my foundation was being a researcher.

So, as I started using my skills that I had picked up through my community psychology background and community development, and I was doing a lot more team building, community facilitation and trying to do strategic planning, I realized I didn't like the research part of spreadsheets. So, I really ended up more into facilitation is what happened.

And that's where I felt like I was home. I felt like I was home, trying to get the best out of people when we were all together in a place. So fast forward to the pandemic, lose all of my income over three days in March 2020, and decided to go back to my roots, put together a course on resilience, which I started with selling.

And I got asked to do a workshop with Hasbro by the VP of marketing in Canada. And we wanted to do it. So this is the leads into the rest of the conversation. I had never facilitated an online workshop at that point because we didn't have to. So, at that point, I had to put together an online workshop because it was canceled twice in person and they asked me to incorporate Play-Doh into that workshop.

So, I showed up, I figured out how to do it, and it went so well that three weeks later I was offered the opportunity to develop Play-Doh Power Solutions Corporate Training, and that's what I've been doing for the last four years, I guess. 

Galen Low: I love that the seed was this fascination with helping people thrive, and, kind of when you paint that brush across your story it makes sense.

When you're in a workshop, we've brought people together to achieve a goal. We want them to thrive. And it might not be the most comfortable situation. And you do have to kind of unlock something, A) within yourself to facilitate and, B) within your participants so that they can thrive.

And I like that as this like theme of, why to care about your workshop and like the session you're facilitating. Not just because you have to, but because yeah, maybe it's part of the outcome that you want to help drive. 

Theresa Bailey: Absolutely. I mean, I think people can feel it when you're just delivering a workshop to deliver it. That's one of the first things I talk about when I'm talking and it probably leads into some of the other things we're talking about too, but what are your intentions? I set my, you have objectives, things you want to get, like I talk about the check boxes. So what are your intentions for a workshop, but also what is the worldview you're bringing to it?

So those are to me, if the objectives are like check boxes, the intentions are like the bumpers on a bowling alley for people learning how to bowl. When you set your intentions for the workshop and you get other people to do it, then you're all committed to the same thing. And it's easier to get the buy-in to have a really effective workshop.

Galen Low: I like that framing because the objectives and ticking a box. It's not often that you kind of leave a workshop and everyone's yeah, we ticked all those boxes. I mean, it can be a, a great way of being like, did we invest the time wisely? Did we get what we came for? But, it's actually, there's a je ne sais quoi to like some of what makes a workshop good.

Actually, maybe I'll flip that question to you because you've done a lot of workshops. You've run a lot of sessions. But what is it that makes a workshop like engaging for participants, like whether it's remote or hybrid or in person, what is that thing that sort of makes people feel like it was a really valuable use of time?

Theresa Bailey: Well, I think that I probably am different, not, I don't want to say unique, but it's important for me to ensure that everyone has an opportunity to participate. So we can think about what is engaging versus not engaging. It is not engaging often when one person has all of the voice and you're just receiving information.

On the other hand, it's also intimidating for people who aren't used to having or are afraid of having the space to have to participate. So you have to find a way to engage people in the conversation that makes it relevant. Who likes icebreakers that are not relevant? Very few people, like I've asked this question, it's probably 7% of people are like, yeah, I love icebreakers unless you can connect it to their work.

Right? So you have to find a way to engage people in a way that feels relevant because then those people who don't like to participate are more likely to participate, but also it feels safe and they don't feel like they're being centered out. And to me, if it can be productive, I think is important, engaging and safe makes a good workshop.

Galen Low: I love the sort of safe aspect to it. It's almost that balance between, Oh my gosh, so and so just took up all the air time and no one got a chance to contribute. And then the other side of the scale is I was in this session and I had to participate and, Oh my gosh, it was so annoying. 

There's that balance of safety and comfort where, it's not necessarily like dragging someone, kicking and screaming to participate because they have to, but actually, it would be engaging for them because eventually at some point during the workshop, they're like, actually, I feel like I can contribute and it's going to be safe and my input is going to be valuable.

Theresa Bailey: Absolutely. And a lot of times I will be in at the start of a project, whether it's with a project manager, however, they've got it laid out to set the tone for the work that is going to move forward. So, for project managers, that's a really important part of it, I think, to figure out how are we going to work together.

And to make sure that people who typically maybe are the softer voices can find a way, whether it's speaking up or sending a message or however it looks for them, that they know that there is a way for them to have a safe in and that their voice is as valuable as anyone else. And you can do that through setting up how you're running the workshop, and that can continue into the rest of your work.

Galen Low: It's actually a really good segue, because I thought maybe we dive into, really just your approach to workshops. And I do want to zero in a bit on the remote and hybrid side of things. And you did tell us an incredible story at the beginning of how you were like, I just kind of had to figure it out, under pressure. 

But even some of the things we're talking about, like not all the magic happens, you know, "in the room". Sometimes it's, the planning, it's the intentionality. And I'm wondering if you could just walk us through some of the most crucial elements that you think about when you're preparing for a remote or hybrid workshop.

What are some approaches that help unlock that imagination and creativity and get participants into like innovation mode? 

Theresa Bailey: I mean, there are a bunch of steps to this, but really it's figuring out what do you want coming out of it? And how are you going to make everyone feel like they can see themselves in the work that's being done?

So typically I would talk probably a number of times with whoever has brought me in. I might have a few conversations with other people to get their input, or maybe we'll have a full on call to figure that out. And then it's really reverse engineering. Okay, these are the three things we want to have covered.

I know that in a full day workshop, by the way, I do not encourage full day remote workshops. Break it up over a couple of days. It's so much easier for people if you possibly can. But then figure out how you're going to structure that. And I have a pretty set way that I like to do things. The first probably hour is focused on just setting the space for the work we're going to do for the rest of the day, maybe half an hour to 45 minutes even.

And that is getting everyone to buy into what we're doing, letting me know a little bit about how they're feeling about it. And then structuring the workshop so that, I mean, it's really simple stuff like when do you schedule breaks, making sure that there are breaks, letting people know in advance when it is, talking about camera policy.

So that's something we could go into in detail, depending on where you are, they have very different structures. 

Galen Low: Pre-work. I think it's easy for folks who've been in a workshop as a participant to be like, Oh, that facilitator just has this like canned agenda and they just come in and do their thing and blah, blah, blah.

But actually a lot of that sort of collaboration and research up front of who's going to be there? What do we want to get from this? And making sure you're like driving that alignment with, the people who have asked you to come in and understanding who's going to be a part of this and setting the right policies and the setting the right expectations.

And then I love that notion of it's different, like a hybrid and an in-person and a remote workshop, like even attention spans and, that amount of time before you hit that fatigue is different depending on whether it's in person or whether it's remote or hybrid and planning all that out and then saying it, like telling people that, here's what you can expect, here's what we're going to be doing.

Obviously, magic happens in the room when you're facilitating, but it doesn't happen without all of this sort of preparation and pre-work. Have you had any situations where folks were like, "Okay, I know you sent me Play-Doh, and I know it's a workshop, but I do not want to have my camera on. I'm sorry"?

Theresa Bailey: Sometimes it happens with bandwidth, right? Especially where we are, some people will turn it off, but they'll turn it on to show what they've created. And that's okay. And sometimes people will have stuff going on in the background they're not comfortable about. So at the very least, we do ask people to show us what they've created, but usually they're fine because the way that we structure things, people want to see what other people are doing and they actually enjoy people seeing their reactions.

We do different things like use music. So a lot of the time you'll see people dancing with their shoulders, like not physically standing up and dancing, but that becomes more of a, an environment where people want to see each other. And I will tell people who are camera off people, I sometimes am also, but it is harder to gauge when people need a break if everyone always has their camera off, because you can't read the energy as well.

So even if it's on and off is very helpful for the energy of everyone, if you can sometimes have it on. 

Galen Low: That makes sense actually. I like the rationale for it. I think a lot of the times I see, sessions where it's like a hard and fast rigid rule, you must have cameras on, but you just mentioned four really good reasons why someone might have their camera off and four really good reasons why it's not just a like, okay, you must have your camera on because I said so. And more of a, like it's so I can read the room so I understand, what people need from the session and how people are reacting, and how we move things forward and hit our goals and, hit our intentions. 

Theresa Bailey: Sorry, I was just going to say it comes back to exactly that, the intentions.

If we ever agreed, and I will ask people what their intentions are for the workshop, and if we have all agreed that these are intentions, people are less likely to disengage because they're responsible for themselves in the meeting. In any meeting, it doesn't have to be a workshop, how this goes depends on the energy you bring to it.

So if it sucks, I'll take some responsibility, but how much energy do you bring to this, right? We can all either have a great day together or not. And I think that giving people the responsibility over that usually works to your favor. 

Galen Low: I like that. Yeah. They're in control of how valuable the time is as well. Not just you as a facilitator. 

Speaking of the session itself and facilitating and sort of creating that experience for folks that they can buy into, it has been I've seen it be really challenging even in just meetings, right? You have a hybrid or remote meeting. It's really difficult. I think we haven't all built that skill of like how to interject or how to sort of raise your hand or how to participate or how to sort of, be a voice, have a voice in a room of loud voices, especially if you're like the remote participant and everyone else is in person and you can't hear things well. But how do you democratize the experience for participants in a remote or an in-person or hybrid experience?

How do you manage some of the frustrations that come along with a hybrid session in terms of just like technology or psychological safety or, just their apparent ability to contribute and where to contribute? 

Theresa Bailey: I mean, we're still learning, obviously, and the technology changes everywhere. And the other thing that I deal with is depending on what technology we're using, it could be a completely different experience based on whether it's team resumes or Google meets or whatever platform we're using. But I think, again, it requires some planning. There are two different things. Being in a physical workshop with the work I do requires a lot of lugging or shipping stuff to get there.

Being on a hybrid or a virtual workshop requires a lot more testing to make sure that we have what we need available. Making sure we know where the cameras are, if there are three people in a room here, and then we have individual people elsewhere, and then making sure that we can cover everybody. And I think that just takes a little bit more planning and effort.

You can only do what you can do. Technology is technology as we know, and is amazing, but also can sometimes go wrong. Having someone in the room to help people is important. But also assigning a person, whether it's from your own organization or elsewhere, as the person who's helping people either log on to the site or monitoring for questions in case I, as a facilitator, forget to go or don't see the chat or whatever it is.

Having a person helping monitor with that makes a huge difference and can help with the flow because then no one feels like they're being ignored. 

Galen Low: I love that so much. And I almost want to do that for some of my meetings where, we've definitely had that where it's like that logistics of I want to share my whatever laptop screen usually, but then I can't see anybody.

And then someone raises their hand and makes that noise. And we're like, Oh, somebody has a question. Who is it? I can't see. It's there's all this like awkwardness to it. And then sometimes we miss questions. I love that idea that it's important enough that you should have somebody who kind of can make sure that none of this stuff gets ignored or slips through the cracks, because that's exactly the thing that demotivates people in a session, because they're like, I raised my hand, but you know, no one's getting to me, or I asked this question and nobody saw it.

And guess what I'm going to do for the rest of the session, not contribute, right? 

Theresa Bailey: You can rotate that too. I mean, it doesn't have to be the same person every time. And it's actually effective to rotate it because everyone at different points has to be paying attention. And you'll see them so and so as a question, or they'll start answering and then other people will start answering in the chat.

And that's what you want. You want people to be paying attention and caring enough about your subject that they're communicating. And I also make it important that people know if they don't want to interrupt. Sometimes I want people to interrupt, sometimes there's material that I just want to get out so we can go on to the next part.

Letting people know when they should interrupt, but also if they don't want to interrupt, making sure they know to put it in the chat that we will get to it. That's really important and a really effective way to kind of manage everybody in all their different formats. 

Galen Low: Managing expectations is such a broad word these days, but in the context of a session I love that there are relatively simple things to help people have clarity. Because I've had that meeting, so for a lot of our sort of like sessions within the community, I'll say right at the top as part of housekeeping, I'll say yeah, have a chat in the side.

It's not distracting. It's not rude. That's fine. It doesn't even have to be related. And what I hadn't realized until you just said it is that that tells people that it doesn't have to interrupt the flow because I've also been in meetings where I haven't said that and whoever's talking will be talking and then, they'll see something in the chat and they'll feel like they need to address it like right away.

And it kind of interrupts their flow versus, it might have just been a comment or an answer to a question. But I like the idea that, yeah, that the chatter can happen in both places and that there's moments to interrupt and there's moments where you might not want to. But also somebody is keeping an eye on the chat or on, who has a question to ask or wants to sort of politely interject but not interrupt, right?

Creates that sort of experience where everyone knows what's going to happen. There's clarity. 

Theresa Bailey: Absolutely. Yeah. And I think people like that sense of structure, but flexibility. I think that helps a lot when you're online, it ends up being a lot more like a conversation like this, or people can feel like they can contribute.

Galen Low: One of the things that you and I were talking about was the sort of notion of not just democratizing the experience, but like leveling up on inclusivity and accessibility. And as we were talking, we're like, Play-Doh's a really interesting thing because in a lot of ways it is quite accessible in terms of, how people can participate in it.

But obviously, we're going to have sessions with folks who are differently abled. And, it might not be the way we plan a session, any session, Play-Doh or not, might not be that conducive to them being able to participate. Have you picked up any tips or added anything to your approach or have any goals about how you can make your sessions accessible for folks with different abilities?

And, folks who maybe don't self identify as being neurotypical or, who may have just different physical abilities. What is your approach to that? 

Theresa Bailey: Well, a lot of people who are not neurotypical really love working with different materials, right? So the workshop is a hit with them. And I do really focus on trying to be as inclusive as possible, which comes back to that planning and figuring out when it's possible, who will be there and working with them to figure out how you can be more inclusive.

I know I mentioned this instance to you where I was doing a demo of my work and it was a table of people that I had not met before. I'd met a couple of them, but not all of them and talking about what I did. And there was a person there who is a double amputee arms and a woman who was blind. And it really made me think, though, how can I make the work that I do more inclusive of everyone?

And I think the real answer is asking people how they think they could participate. And maybe they're going to give me the answers easier than I'm going to come up with them. So I think in those situations, working with people who are differently abled and the people who support people who are differently abled, you're going to come up with the solutions that makes everyone able to contribute and feel good. And people like being asked. So just ask them. 

Galen Low: I like that forward motion on it in a sense that it's not like this isn't going to work for this group. It's how can we make it work for this group? And then it's a conversation, it's a dialogue and it's a sort of consultation.

And the work that I've done when we come to accessibility considerations, there's always like this sort of whatever best practice compliance regulation thing, right? Especially for something like, screen readers for site impaired users of a website. But when we actually sat down and talked to these individuals about, how they've modified their life to make it work for them, it's usually like a bit outside the box.

And, they've come up with their own innovative ideas that are not in any textbook. And when you kind of sit down and think about it, you're like, okay, well, yeah, here's how it's getting used in real life. Not necessarily just here's some considerations, which might be great considerations, but might not be reflective of, how people actually engage with it when they're in these situations. But I'd love, love, love that idea of just just ask, because they're gonna have some ideas.

They might say, yeah, no Play-Doh's not gonna work for me, sorry. But also they may have ideas and will appreciate being consulted to sort of be able to participate. 

Theresa Bailey: Yeah. And if it's not for them, then maybe we can find other ways that they can participate. Maybe they can provide their feedback in other ways and reflect on the questions that we're asking. And, like there are lots of ways around it, but asking is the best and most direct way to get the best information. 

Galen Low: Just to round out, I wanted to just talk about, after the workshop. I was gonna ask, how do you know that your session was a success? But I thought maybe I'd flip it and ask, what's the best thing someone could say about one of your workshops after having participated in one of them?

Theresa Bailey: Oh, that's a good question. And I think probably, this is why I love what I do because I get feedback immediately and I ask for feedback. I go around and ask for feedback in a specific way. Usually asking for one word to sum up how people are feeling. I have had people actually message me after to tell me that whatever concept we were talking about in whatever way we were talking about changed their life.

I mean, that's pretty powerful. And testimonials, obviously you get those. But I had a really interesting experience yesterday where I was working with a group, it was men and women. And I would say they were probably, I don't know the age range, but there was a large age range from probably, 25 to 65, I bet.

And there was a group at the back that I thought was going to be a problem group. I thought that's my table that I'm going to have to keep walking back there and make sure they're on track and all those things. But at the end, when I asked for a word and it was, I'm sorry, but it was a group of men. When I walked back there and asked for the word that summed up how they felt after the training, they said their word was fulfilled.

And I said, fulfilled? And they said, yeah. And then they pointed to two of the men and said, these two have never played with Play-Doh before. They didn't have it in their house. And they found it so liberating to enable them to be creative and just play as adults and express ideas in different ways. So fulfilled was a pretty, I don't get that one every day, but I got it yesterday from two men, I'm going to say over 50. 

Galen Low: Wow. That's amazing. And honestly that's the magic and whether the word is fulfilled or even just leaving with that gratification, knowing that something feels a bit more like play actually can be something that is quite, not just productive, but you know, revelatory?

Is that a real word? Like it can actually help you see things differently than it is now. I love that. And that's kind of why we do what we do, why facilitation is important, or why sessions are important, why getting people together is important, and why sort of sparking innovation is important.

Theresa Bailey: Absolutely. And if I didn't hear words like motivated, engaged, collaborative, creative, refreshed, I would go back and I would rework my workshop so that those are the words that I got at the end. 

Galen Low: Wow. I love that. 

Theresa, thank you so much for this mini masterclass in how you facilitate remote and hybrid workshops. Loads of good tips in there. I really appreciate it. 

Theresa Bailey: My pleasure. I love what I do and I love when other people are able to use some of that knowledge that I figured out the hard way and make their lives easier for themselves and everybody else. 

Galen Low: I've been teasing this all the way through with the Play-Doh stuff. How can people learn more about what you do? 

Theresa Bailey: Well, they can go to my website, which is starfishsynergies.com or find me on LinkedIn. I'm Theresa Bailey, and I'm the one with the Play-Doh in my cover. I love what I do. It's great to bring people together and to kick things off. It's really when I use the most with project managers. So love to talk to people.

Galen Low: Amazing. 

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Until next time, thanks for listening.