Back in February, I was thinking about carbon-neutral team development, and how as a world we needed to think differently about what was possible without team members travelling around the world for team development. Within just a few days, the world was in a very different place. Covid-19 infections were growing exponentially with tragic consequences, and the world of work had been turned on its head.
Our 1:1 coaching business moved online or onto phone calls fairly easily, but our team development, management development and training programmes were invariably put on ice. As countries locked down, one by one, the world started working from home, learning workshops were the last thing on client’s minds. We realised quite quickly that the learner still needed to learn, it’s just that they needed to do it in a different way, and more than ever, people craved connection with others. There was an opportunity to do things differently to support people at work in these exceptional circumstances.
We’ve delivered virtual learning before, and honestly, it’s never been our preference but we do have the expertise in our team. Boldly, I said to our biggest client “what if we could switch these 5 programmes to a virtual offering, would you be interested?”, she asked “how fast?” and I said “two weeks?”. My team nearly fell off their chairs at this point when they heard what I’d committed to! We all worked day and night – paddling really hard under the surface to switch the nuanced experiential learning approach we’ve become known for to an equally powerful virtual learning experience – thinking about materials, timings, learning method and interaction. Simplifying and shortening for maximum impact.
We also trained up our global facilitator community to be confident and comfortable being just as engaging, energetic and seamless in their training style. For some, this was a major shift in their way of working and skill set. Facilitating an interactive soft-skills training session using Zoom or Webex is no mean feat. Whilst appearing to be ‘swan-like’ to the learner, what most people don’t see behind the scenes is the chaotic paddling of feet whilst delegates’ audio fails, the breakout rooms throw people out, the slides won’t load, the internet connection is slow, delegates join a 3-hour session then mention in ‘chat’ that they need to leave in 20 minutes, and then your dog sees a squirrel outside and starts barking right in the middle of a poignant moment! Maintaining your graceful, smooth swan is not as easy as it seems!
This virtual switch has seen us replace every single piece of face to face facilitation or training work with a really powerful virtual alternative. I’m really proud of that. And when I come up for air to breathe after 4 months of pretty long days behind my desk, I notice some curious learnings that I hadn’t consciously expected from this experience.
When people are in the office, being pulled from one meeting to the next, they rarely spend much time prioritising themselves, their growth and development. In this new world it’s different – many have seen this enforced period of isolation positively as a learning time.
In virtual learning environments, the introvert can thrive – hiding behind the screen, contributing in ‘chat’, having safe 1:1 conversations with strangers in virtual breakout spaces, but quietly absorbing new skills without the spotlight on them.
The most agile clients have openly communicated the period of home-working as an opportunity for learning, with internal campaigns like one client led called ‘Learning Fridays’ which resulted in our virtual soft-skills training sessions being ‘sold-out’ within 15 minutes of being listed online! That’s what communication and engagement of employees in learning can do.
In global organisations, frequently the smaller markets get missed out. Everything is delivered face-to-face in core locations – and yet the virtual offerings has levelled the playing field, provided genuine equality of opportunity to access high quality learning along with an unparalleled opportunity for global networking.
Virtual learning has to be short (3 hours on zoom is an absolute maximum) and so we have moved to learning spread over multiple sessions over a period of time. This ‘short but regular’ cadence has provided a greater opportunity to embed learning between sessions.
A big thank you to our clients that rose to the challenge of saying ‘YES’ to trying out a different approach. And a thank you to my team who stepped into the challenge to make it happen. As I look ahead, I’m still thinking about teams, how they will re-group successfully if/when they come back together physically or as they adapt to a more remote future world. And I’m also thinking about how we can take the positive learnings from the big virtual switch and apply them if/as we ‘switch back’ to some face-to-face learning environments in the future. In the meantime, it’s been a long 4 months, and it’s definitely time for a holiday.