Engagement beats technical difficulties

technical difficulties? An illustration depicting two people trying to connect online. Each appears on a separate screen, with animated arrows showing their attempts at connection.Not long ago, I designed and facilitated an online workshop that was marred by technical difficulties. The workshop was several hours long, and some (but not all) of the participants reported that my video feed froze at times. Luckily, my audio feed was fine.

Shortly afterward, I talked to a client who had participated in the workshop. I asked them about their workshop experience.

I couldn’t see you half the time,” they said.

Uh oh.

But it didn’t matter.

Phew.

Yes, they loved the workshop.

Like many of my workshops, this one was about creating meaningful participation and engagement at events. And, as usual, it focused on experiential, active learning. Learning through experience, not by listening to me.

As long as my directions for the exercises could be heard, the participants didn’t need to see me for the workshop to be successful. The workshop wasn’t about me; it was about the participants’ learning experiences as they engaged with each other. It was about the experiential learning that took place, both about the others present and the ways the learning occurred through engagement.

Now, let’s flip this scenario for a moment.

Imagine an online meeting lasting several hours that is technically flawless but has no significant engagement.

I’ve “attended” countless meetings of this sort, and you probably have too.

None of these meetings were memorable. (Except perhaps a few especially excruciating ones that I had to attend for some unfortunate reason.)

I suspect you’ve forgotten 99% of such engagement-free meetings. Feel free to let me know if that isn’t the case.

I say 99% because there are a few people, like Paula Poundstone, to whom I would be happy to listen for hours. And perhaps you’ve had the good fortune to attend a meeting with someone like her. Alas, most engagement-free meetings don’t include a Poundstone.

I rest my case.

Meaningful engagement at events beats technical difficulties every time.

Any questions? Rethinking traditional Q&A

Any questions? Rethinking traditional Q&A. A woman, seated in the midst of an audience, raises her hand.How often have you heard “Any questions?” at the end of a conference session?

Hands rise, and the presenter picks an audience member who asks a question. The presenter answers the question and picks another questioner. The process continues for a few minutes.

Simple enough. We’ve been using this Q&A format for centuries.

But can we improve it?

Yes!

Let’s explore, starting with…

Six criticisms of traditional Q&A

  • Traditional Q&A reinforces the engrained assumption that the presenter is the expert, and audience members are relative novices. This ignores today’s reality that the smartest person in the room is the room.
  • Traditional Q&A is a one-to-many process. These days, conference attendees come to learn and connect. But the only connection going on (if any) during traditional Q&A  is between the presenter and individual audience members.
  • Have you ever thought, “I could answer that question better than [the person on stage]!”? Traditional Q&A provides no opportunity for obtaining answers from audience members.
  • Who gets to ask questions? The presenter decides, allowing any implicit (and explicit) bias full reign.
  • How much time is available for questions? Again, the presenter decides. Too little time scheduled frustrates audience members whose questions remain unanswered. Too much time leads to a premature session close.
  • During traditional Q&A, the questioner is in the audience while the presenter is up on stage. As a result, questioners remain largely anonymous; audience members can’t even see a questioner behind them without turning around.

Ways to improve Q&A

I can think of two fundamental ways to improve Q&A. Here are…

Five ways to refine the traditional Q&A format

  • Include multiple Q&A opportunities throughout the session. This helps audience members get answers to questions while they’re top-of-mind, rather than waiting until the end of the session. It also increases interaction with the presenter, which can help maintain attendee attention and improve learning.
  • Instead of the presenter picking the questioners, have an independent third party (a moderator) choose them.
  • Or you can have the audience submit questions via an app and then vote on the list. This helps uncover popular questions.
  • If you’re using a moderator, have the audience submit questions in writing or via an app. This allows the moderator to curate questions to be asked. When appropriate, the moderator can combine similar questions.
  • Instead of taking questions from the audience, have questioners line up at a front-of-room mike so everyone can see them.

Or, we can…

Further improve Q&A by integrating it into a discussion format

Traditional sessions have two parts, first a lecture, and then Q&A. As mentioned above, presenting multiple short pieces of content interspersed with Q&A increases interaction and consequent learning. But we can do better!

Combined with experiential exercises, here’s the approach I use in my Participate! Labs.

Using a facilitated discussion format like the fishbowl sandwich, I create a session that offers Q&A on an as-needed basis. As I share content, attendees can join me on stage at any time for questions or a discussion that I moderate. (Check the link to see how this works.) The session then becomes more like a live Ask Me Anything (AMA) around my content.

Creating a truly participative Q&A in this way lets the resulting questions and discussions reflect the audience’s just-in-time needs, optimizing the value of the session for participants.

Do you have additional suggestions for improving Q&A? Share them in the comments below!

The top educational meeting format

incorporate participatory sessions into your events. Graphic of the results of a Meetings & Conventions 2018 survey. The top choice: 80% chose "Facilitated workshop-style, participatory session."
What’s an Ideal Meeting? April 2018, Meetings and Conventions Magazine

Do you incorporate participatory sessions into your events?

80% of meeting professionals prefer facilitated workshop-style, participatory sessions [survey by M&C Research, April 2018 Meeting and Conventions magazine]!

That’s way ahead of their second choice: Professional speakers delivering presentations (58%).

I’ve been designing and facilitating workshop-style, participatory sessions since 1992, and participants love them!

Smart conference producers incorporate participatory sessions into their events.

Do you?

Why you should run The Solution Room at your next event

Photograph of Adrian Segar on stage running The Solution Room at MPI Connecting Leaders 2012The Solution Room is rapidly becoming a popular meeting plenary. Invented at MPI’s 2011 European Meetings and Events Conference, the session fosters active meaningful connections between attendees, and provides peer support and solutions to the real professional challenges currently faced by participants.

Participants rate The Solution Room useful and valuable. They really enjoy the opportunity to meet a small group of peers in a safe, intimate, and relevant manner, and be both a consultant and a consultee on a current professional challenge each group member chooses. Here are testimonials from an MPI session:

Unlike many participatory formats, The Solution Room scales beautifully, whether there are 30 or 1,000 people in the room. The resources needed are modest: paper-covered small roundtables, colored Sharpies, sound reinforcement, and a good facilitator.

Although the format was originally conceived as a closing session, I’ve found it to be a great opening plenary, especially if time or space constraints prohibit running The Three Questions roundtables. By ensuring that each small group contains a mixture of newcomers, experienced, and veteran professionals, first-time attendees get to know peers with industry experience (and the veterans often learn a thing or two from the younger folks at their table).

You can tell that Solution Room sessions are a success when they end — and no one leaves. Instead, the small groups go on talking about everything they’ve discussed; they don’t want to stop sharing. I see a lot of enthusiastic business card swapping at the end. Participants tell me that they made valuable long-term connections through the meeting and sharing that took place during the session.

Want to learn  more about how to incorporate The Solution Room into your next event? You’ll find everything you need to know to run The Solution Room in Chapter 34 of The Power of Participation. Or contact me — I’d love to facilitate a session for you!

I know the world is crazy right now — and here’s what you can do about it

the world is crazy: old woodcut Illustration of the sun, stars, a tree, land, the firmament from The Never-Ending Play Of Life, in which Bernie De Koven is quoted by Chris Corrigan.

“I know the world is crazy right now. I know it’s hard to find the good in the news but you won’t find it there because the news asks you to be only a passive consumer of the world’s pain and joy. What we need to do is rise from our seats and participate in the world as fully as possible.”
Chris Corrigan, Pick up the unclaimed portion of joy

Illustration from The Never-Ending Play Of Life, in which Bernie De Koven is quoted by Chris.

Three ways to make it easier for attendees to participate

easier attendee participation: Adrian Segar caramelizes crème brûlée at a private dinner in SpainHow do we get people to participate in meetings? How can we design for easier attendee participation?

We know that participants — people who are active learners — learn more, retain more, and retain more accurately than passive attendees. They are also far more likely to make valuable connections with their peers during the event.

Seth Godin describes a desirable meeting mindset:

What would happen…

if we chose to:

…Sit in the front row

Ask a hard question every time we go to a meeting…

All of these are choices, choices that require no one to choose us or give us permission.

Every time I find myself wishing for an external event, I realize that I’m way better off focusing on something I can control instead.
—Seth Godin, What Would Happen

All good, but Seth begs this question. What can meeting designers do to make it easier for attendees to participate more at meetings?

Three things to do for easier attendee participation

First, we need to model participation throughout our event. In Spain last month, I was invited for dinner at a local family’s home. Besides being treated to amazing food, drink, and conversation, I was casually encouraged to use a branding iron to melt the sugar on our crème brûlée. I was politely asked to help wash the dishes. Being an active participant during the evening, even in these small ways, made me part of the experience. I was not a passive consumer. Participating added significantly to my enjoyment and connection to the kind couple who had invited me into their home.

Second, people prefer to participate when they feel safe when doing so. There are many ways to increase attendees’ safety. Some examples: creating a culture of listening, agreeing on group-wide covenants, and providing process that is comfortable for introverts.

And third, always remember that we can’t make people do anything. Ultimately what they do is their choice. So it’s important to convey that participation is always optional. I’ve found that when attendees know they have the option to opt-out they are more likely to participate.

What approaches have you used to make it easier for your attendees to participate? Share your ideas in the comments below!

Virtual Meetings Lower Costs … and Interaction

virtual meetings lower costs and interactions: an illustration of a businessman sitting in a chair with a virtual reality headset strapped over his eyes
Virtual meetings lower costs … and interaction.

“Intel’s annual meeting was entirely virtual. There was no in-person gathering site, the questions were submitted in advance, and management and the board made all of their presentations online.”
Steven Davidoff Solomon, New York Times, Online Shareholders’ Meetings Lower Costs, but Also Interaction

The dawn of online meetings

I spent the summer of 1973 working for the Long-Range Studies Department of the British Post Office, a long-defunct group that attempted to predict the exciting future that new technologies would surely bring about. The Post Office had just built a few hideously expensive teleconferencing studios, connected by outrageously expensive telephone trunk lines. One of our jobs was to find out how to best use them. Could we persuade businesspeople to stop traveling to meetings, to sit instead in comfortable local studios hundreds of miles apart, handsomely equipped with cameras, microphones, screens, and speakers that magically allowed them to meet as well as if they were all in the same room? Why yes, we concluded brightly in our final report:

“A substantial number of business meetings which now occur face-to-face could be conducted effectively by some kind of group telemedia.”

Online meetings today

Forty years later, “group telemedia”, now known as online or virtual meetings, are common and increasingly popular. Solomon’s New York Times article quoted above explores how some corporate shareholder meetings are now held online. The biggest advantages of online meetings are clearly convenience and much lower costs: no travel, venue, or F&B expenditures.

There are, however, some downsides.

Shareholder meetings

Solomon points out that virtual shareholder meetings typically pre-empt meaningful shareholder interaction; convenient if management is facing awkward questions.

“It was no coincidence that the CSX Corporation held its 2008 meeting at a remote rail yard in New Orleans, the same year it was the focus of a shareholder activist putting up a proxy fight. In previous years, it had held those meetings at the luxurious Greenbrier resort in West Virginia, which the railroad owned at the time. A virtual meeting eliminates the potential for a public relations disaster.”

He contrasts such approaches with what some companies do:

“Think about the extravaganza that is the Berkshire Hathaway meeting. Days of talking and showing off the company’s products, including copious amounts of treats from Dairy Queen, a Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary. The Walt Disney Company’s meeting is also known for highlighting the company’s latest movie or ride. Even children can ask questions; one recent interaction led Disney’s chief executive, Robert A. Iger, to give a private tour of Pixar to a child. Some companies are local legends where the entire town will gather. It is at these meetings that connections are made between the company and its shareholders.

Solomon concludes:

“By forcing everything onto the web, we lose the personal interaction. Everyone logs in and watches a preprogrammed set of questions and answers. And then everyone goes away. Management’s worldview is reaffirmed in the 10 or so minutes it allows for questioning, and there is no engagement except with those investors who own a portion of shares large enough to personally meet with management. It’s a modern world that is frightening in its disengagement.”

Online versus face-to-face

Virtual meetings lower costs. They offer a convenient way to receive content and they can provide limited interactivity. Yet you can also abandon one with the click of a mouse. Such meetings require little commitment, so it is harder to successfully engage participants when the cost of leaving is so low.

If you think of a meeting primarily as a way of transferring content, then online meetings seem attractive, inexpensive alternatives to face-to-face events. If, however, you value meetings as opportunities to make meaningful connections with others, face-to-face meetings offer significant advantages.

Yes, virtual meetings lower costs. Yet I believe that the unique benefits of face-to-face meetings are still valuable. Think of the advantages of being physically present with other people: dining and socializing together, the serendipity of human contact, the opportunity to meet new people in person rather than hear a voice on the phone or see an image on a screen, the magic that can occur when a group of people coalesces. All these combine into more than the sum of their parts, building the potential to gain and grow long-term relationships and friendships. Anyone who has been to a good face-to-face conference knows that these things can happen. Either in the moment or in retrospect, participants may see them as pivotal times in their lives.

Pair share—What’s on your mind right now?

Here’s a simple and effective variant of pair share — a fundamental participative technique that fosters connection and learning via discussion with a partner during a conference session.

pair share: photograph of Malii Brown
Malii Brown

It was conjured up the other day by Malii Brown while we were co-facilitating a peer conference roundtable.

To keep participants alert during round-the-circle sharing at roundtables, I break every 20-25 minutes, either for a short bio-break or a relevant exercise involving movement. I often use pair share as one of these exercises (see The Power of Participation for a complete description) by asking participants to stand up and spend a few minutes introducing themselves to someone they don’t know.

On this occasion, Malii and I were alternating facilitation, and she got to introduce the pair share. Malii asked everyone to find someone they didn’t know. Then she simply said:

“Share with each other what’s on your mind right now.”

Here’s a video excerpt of the resulting pair share. (I’ve removed the sound to maintain confidentiality, but you should know that the volume was substantial!)

I liked the energetic conversations Malii’s suggestion triggered, and have added this prompt to my mental toolbox for future use. This is a nice example of the kind of learning that can occur when co-facilitating—thanks Malii!

Thoughts on participation from the mouths of babes…

thoughts on participation: photograph of two musicians confering, from the Marlboro Music Festival archive  https://www.marlboromusic.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/117-1PC_4276.jpgThoughts on participation

As my wife was leaving to attend a Marlboro Music Festival performance, our five-year-old grandson asked her where she was going.

“To a concert.”

“I know what that is,” he exclaimed. “It’s a stage. Are you going to be on it?”

“No,” she said, amused.

“Then why are you going?”

Image from the Marlboro Music Festival archive

How to convert a traditional conference into a connection-rich conference

When people are asked why they go to meetings, the top two reasons they consistently give are to learn and to connect with others. Both reasons are rated of similar importance (although there’s recent evidence that connection is becoming more important than learning.) So why don’t we strive to create a connection-rich conference?

Why do we structure traditional conferences like this?
Conference connection.001
Conference lectures only focus on learning (that is, of course, assuming people are learning from the lecture, which is by no means certain.) No connection between attendees occurs during a lecture. Connection at a traditional conference is, therefore, supposed to happen somehow outside the sessions, in the breaks and socials. Unfortunately, breaks and socials aren’t great ways to connect with people at conferences.

So traditional conferences are heavy on lecture-style learning and light on the connection that attendees desire!

Luckily, there’s a simple way to redress the balance between connection and learning at meetings.a graphic of a connection-rich conference that incorporates learning and connection in each session

Replace lectures with participation-rich sessions!

Doing this greatly improves the meeting because:

  • Attendees have opportunities to connect during the conference sessions, redressing the balance between connection and learning.
  • Session participants learn socially from each other, drawing on the hundreds of years of experience and expertise in the room, rather than relying on the knowledge of a single expert.

How do you create participation-rich sessions that foster connection? That’s what my book The Power of Participation is all about! The book:

  • Explains why the health and survival of any conference increasingly require that we integrate participation into meeting sessions;
  • Provides comprehensive practical information on how to create an event environment where connection thrives; and
  • Supplies an extensive organized collection of powerful participation techniques you can use to construct meetings that attendees will love and return to over and over again.

A connection-rich conference

When I began organizing meetings in the early 1980’s, I filled my programs with expert speakers. It wasn’t until 1992 that I unexpectedly discovered the power of incorporating participation to create a connection-rich conference. It took ten years for me to realize that this fundamental change improved the experience at every kind of meeting and for every meeting audience with whom I worked. My book includes everything I currently know about making this improvement possible for you.