Speaking and Communicating Podcast

What we encourage people to think about is how can they create purposeful interaction? Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating Podcast. I'm your host Roberta. If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning into. And by the end of this episode, please log on to iTunes and Spotify. and leave us a rating and a review. Let's get communicating. Today, my guest is so perfect and fit for our show because she is the founder and managing director of Virtual Space Heroes, a company that specializes in digital transformation for virtual and hybrid teams, and they coach teams on how to communicate and also train the trainer. Before I go any further, please help me welcome her to the show. Hi, Barbara. Hi there, Roberta. Nice being here. Thanks a lot for the invite. Thank you for being on our show. Yes, when I first met you, we were on another webinar, I said, oh no, look at what she does. She's perfect for a show. So welcome. Please introduce yourself. Well, as you said, I'm the founder of Virtual Space Hero. And we have been working for the past decade with organizations from across the globe on the topic of virtual teams, collaboration, digital transformation projects, and so on. And my background is indeed from academia. So I have been a professor and a researcher, research team lead working on the topic of new ways of working. And I think I started doing that in 2010, 2011, my first research project about new ways of working and new ways of learning was launched. And since then, I have been eager to understand What do companies need to work together in a more effective and productive way where people from across the globe can connect in global virtual teams? And well, when the pandemic hits, my business of course exploded as you can imagine since then and also before that, working with companies from across the globe on this topic. Because I'm about to ask, how did you have the foresight that the world was going to go in a direction where? Most things are now virtual. It's funny. Indeed, it was not really me starting this project, but I was invited by a practitioner platform in Austria to join them as a research consultant on a project that was about new ways of working. And so we were developing with them together a model that was measuring the degree of maturity. So how well is an organization equipped for new ways of working for flexible ways of working? And they invited me, we developed the model, we had a framework, we tested it, we empirically validated it, and then we used it to measure organizations, to audit organizations, and work with them on the topic of new ways of working. Even before the pandemic, remember companies have different offices in different countries. So we used to have these video conferencing calls, and now we had to adapt, obviously during the pandemic. Is that when you started this project? We did it way before because what we were looking at were in general flexible ways of working. It was not only about global teams, but it was in general about flexibility when we work in our organizations, which means flexible. Also, whether I'm an Austrian Vienna-Hot headquartered company, most of my employees are from Vienna. There still was already 10 and 15 years ago a lot of research on why flexibility in terms of allowing for where and when to work. boosts productivity. So we were in general looking at the flexible aspect of collaboration in our organizations. And as I like to say, the future of work is choice. Choice where and when we work, whether we're a global company or not, it doesn't matter. And so we started in 2011 with our research project, but there has been literature and academics and practitioners around this topic for decades already. The future of work is choice. That's where the digital space kicks in as well, because not just the fact that you have a choice on how you work, but that work is becoming redefined. Wouldn't you say? Absolutely, absolutely. And I think it's not only that it's more human-centered, the way that we should approach leadership, organizational tasks and stuff like that, but it's also about the way that we provide our employees with more... autonomy and choice, as we like to say, on when, how and where they work. There are really fundamental changes that have been massively spread over the globe in the past three years due to the pandemic, of course, yes. When it comes to virtual teams, when so many screens are facing you and you are either the presenter or the facilitator for that meeting, what are the two or three main things for in order to run as smooth a meeting as possible? I think, Roberta, that's an excellent question because in general, meeting facilitation is a topic that is totally underrated in our organizations. And it's not only about virtual meetings because in general, we do see that research shows us that only 20% of managers have been trained in how to design and run, facilitate an effective meeting. So if only 20% know how to do a meeting well, imagine how those numbers are when we talk about virtual meetings. So I think virtual meetings particularly, as we do know that people are much easier distracted, right? We do have many other things that are going on, a lot of pressures. In some organizations, even in the past three years, there was an increase in meeting number, even though there was a decrease in meeting length again, but still there was an increase in meeting numbers. And in many organizations, managers and some of the employees are sitting around three fourth of their time in meetings, which means effectively, they don't have time to work anymore, right? This doesn't sound productive at all, no. Exactly, exactly. So first of all, when we talk about communication in virtual teams, we need to be aware that there are two different ways of communicating. The way that we know. communicate for the past decades of course, it's the so-called asynchronous communication, which is an email. Asynchronous communication means that communication is happening not in the same moment. So I send you an email, Roberta, and you answer me within 24 hours. Exactly, async communication. On the other hand, there is the way that we prefer to communicate with each other, that's the synchronous communication. because we have been used to being in the same office, the same building, knocking on someone's door, interrupting someone's thoughts they were having, working, whatever they were working on, to get an immediate answer to my questions. That's synchronous communication, and we're used to that. Very often our preferred way of communicating. But we do know that in virtual teams, asynchronous communication should be the default. Even in our not virtual teams, we need to be aware that interrupting all the time somebody else might not be the most productive or effective way to work together, right? But we anyways do it, because that's the way we were used to work together. So first of all, in virtual teams, we need to be aware that asynchronous communication, communicating via emails or channel systems like Slack or Microsoft Teams is a more productive way that should be the default. But then of course, When we talk about meetings and when there is a collaborative aspect on it, that we need to work on something together, we need to discuss something together, but there is not a one-way communication, that is when really we do need a meeting. If this is the case, we as managers or as meeting leaders, we need to design for that. We need to make very clear in the invite what decisions need to be taken, what topic is, what decisions need to be taken. How long will they take, who are the decision makers, and so on and so forth. Very often what we do see is that we get a meeting invite and sometimes it only says like team meeting or something. And very often those are update meetings about information that is being shared by a team leader that could have perfectly been done asynchronously. So the first aspect, as you were asking is meeting design, the purpose of the meeting, making it clear. When we move on and think about now about the meeting itself, we need to design for collaboration. If it's just information sharing, I can do that by an email, I can do it as a Slack message, I can do that as a video, even as a recording, right? And people can listen, watch or read it that whenever it suits them best. But a meeting should be where we discuss, where we argue, where we find solutions together. That is also hope. when people don't multitask because they are invited to do something, to collaborate, to decide, to bring in themselves, their thoughts, their views, their opinions, and so on. So design and facilitate for collaboration as a second point. Right. As you were asking for the three important points for me, I think also you as a meeting facilitator should be aware about digital body language. Many of us, we are leading meetings and we are presenting ourselves in front of the camera in a slightly awkward way, in a not well thought through way. Many of us, we don't know that it's important to look into the camera so that people feel that we are speaking to them. We don't mind about the setup, what is behind us. Sometimes people don't even mind what kind of angle is the camera showing. So... whether it's like this or it is like this, which is also weird, right? So all these small things that help your colleagues to sort of concentrate and feel that they are valued because they feel that you are presenting to them, you're talking to them, and you are setting up also all the context so that they're not distracted by, I don't know, whatever is in your background, right? Right. It helps a lot. in your meetings as well to come across professionally. So I would say those are the three things that if you ask me, I would encourage everybody to think more deeply about. Very good points, Barbara. Quick one about the camera. So right now, I'm not looking at the camera as much as I'm looking at your face. Because since you're communicating with me, I wanna pick up on your body language, your passion. I'm looking at your face. When you are looking back at me while talking, do I look like I'm looking at you or the camera or that I'm looking in a very far angle? That's a good question. So what I usually suggest speakers or meeting facilitators to do is if I'm opening a workshop, if I'm opening a meeting, if I'm giving a keynote speech, the first minutes, the first two, three minutes, I really stare into the camera like I'm doing it now. I'm just looking into the camera so that you have the feeling I'm speaking to you. But of course, at some point, and that's always like the argument that I'm getting, but how do I see what people are thinking, feeling, what's the body language, what are they telling me? I always tell speakers, facilitators that of course, at some point you need to detach a little bit, you need to look at the faces of your participants, or particularly if you, for example, you're Roberta, you were speaking, when you're speaking, I'm looking at you because I want to see you. Yes. At the beginning, I look at the camera and I try to give you the feeling that I'm just speaking to you. And then I start switching. But not forgetting about the camera and what effect it can have is super important. I do know that a lot of people, for example, work with two monitors. I personally rarely work with two monitors. And what do you often see in company contacts and meetings? Mm hmm. Right. And there's just a lot going on. Exactly. So... Be aware that connecting in the virtual setting is possible, but you need to be aware that for you, it's also you need to train yourself to look into the camera. I have a lot of coaching clients who, for example, sometimes at the beginning when they train themselves, well, you can always look at the blue light or whatever kind of light your camera has, right? But sometimes people feel more comfortable if they place a picture behind the camera or if they place a post-it with a... smiley over it and behind the camera so that they're looking at something, they think it's nice. Sometimes that helps for you to remember to look over there. And of course, as I'm saying, you're not always looking there, but be aware that the first three, maybe four minutes of a presentation of a meeting, meeting opening of a keynote, it's important to look there to connect. And then how do you get the 20 screens looking at you? How do you get them engaged so that you're not just giving this lecture for 20 minutes, half an hour? Yeah, I think for me when I train keynote speakers or meeting facilitators or presenters or educators, trainers, whoever, my personal message is always that everything starts with you, with your digital body language, with your virtual presence, right? Think about trainers, educators and keynote speakers. It's about the content. It's about how they present it. but it's also about how they act on the stage. How do they convey the passion? And even though for me at the beginning, it was also weird talking, looking into the camera and trying to convey the passion that I have for the topic. It helps a lot if you train that by recording yourself at the beginning. It helps a lot because then you see how you come across and this is where everything starts. You see me, I'm looking at you. I'm trying to keep a positive attitude. I'm using also my hands. Very often we do see in the virtual space only like the upper part of the body, no hands ever. But we do know that hands and the way that you use them to underline your messages, even in the virtual setting, it is quite important. Of course, in the virtual setting, we need to be aware of one thing, right? So if we're too expressive with the hands, we only have this small window. Totally. That also happened to me. I still remember years ago. It happened to me when I did one of my first webinars and I was trying to be interactive and engaged and I'm used to big stages. So I was using a lot of gestures like this. And well, of course this was making my participants slightly nervous because I was covering my face. It could make them even like, it's too much overwhelming. So keep your hands with yourself, which looks slightly weird from the side, right? If you're talking like this, but that's the way it is. Keep your hands for yourself, fingers closed, that's the same as with a normal presentation, and smaller gestures, smaller gestures. Yes, or somebody will take the thumb and then bring it closer to the camera. And look how big my, look how scary that is for you. And also don't forget, even in the virtual space, we have some sort of personal distance that we'll feel comfortable with. The closer I get to the camera. the more participants might feel uncomfortable with me approaching them, even though it's just a virtual space. And don't forget that for you as a speaker, also being as close to the camera can be more exhausting. So keep this hand length at least to the camera or even more. The farther away the camera is, the more you can use your body to interact with the audience. If you stand up for example, or if you use a computer, like I have it now, farther away, you can show yourself more and use more body language. That depends a little bit on how you like to be present in a virtual setting. That's for when you are speaking. What about when you are facilitating a meeting or a workshop? How do you get everybody else engaged so that they don't start to feel like this is a lecture? Yeah. And as you're saying, that's exactly the point. It shouldn't be a lecture. Even a lecture shouldn't be a lecture, right? There is one great quote that I always like to bring up at this point. The one who's doing the talking is the one who's doing the learning. So a lecture is not very effective because we do know that people don't learn by listening. So what I would always encourage is, and that's also in our trainer courses or trainer meeting facilitator courses, what we encourage people to think about is how can they create purposeful interaction? And with that, I don't mean that every 10 minutes we need to send our participants into a breakout session because there are many, many other ways that we can create interaction depending on the size of the workshop that I'm on, training, or the keynote that I'm giving. So even my keynotes that I am sometimes talking in front of 400 people in Microsoft Teams, I always design them as interactive as possible, just using the chat or reactions or emojis. You know, people can just by also like here on Zoom, just by asking them to give me sort of an emoji that we can then sort of see in all the windows, it is already an interaction and creates engagement. And when we talk about creating engagement in any kind of workshop, but particularly virtual settings, I would always recommend as a rule of thumb, maximum seven, eight minutes without any interaction. Always plan for interaction. And as I said, if it's just like clicking the button of a reaction emoji, asking them to give me a thumbs up if they agree with a proposal that I'm doing, That's already something that participants need to sort of move to the keyboard and do something. It can be a quick interaction that is via a chat, yes or no. It can be a reflection activity where participants are getting six minutes to reflect by themselves on a topic while everybody is working on a mirror or mural board or any other whiteboard tool. But it can be always also just in the big room. If I have 300 participants, if I don't have a lot of time, I don't send them into breakout rooms, but I rather use the tools that I have at hand, like the chat or the reaction buttons, or in Microsoft Teams, for example, you can also use stickers or more fun stuff there at the end of a meeting, right? Yeah, yeah. And to create a reflection question on the topic by using those features of platforms. Of course, if I have time in longer workshops, I do use breakout features so that also there is some sort of social peer learning happening among the participants. We do know that not everybody feels comfortable speaking up in front of a big group. So the moment that you have participants that don't feel comfortable speaking up in front of the big group, they might not be as interactive if you ask in the main room people for their opinion. But if you send them into smaller breakout sessions... into smaller breakout rooms, we do know that the louder voices amplify the lower, the softer voices. And that's really a very nice activity. And therefore, I always encourage to look at liberating structures. The web page is liberatingstructures.com, where you can find a lot of facilitation techniques and among them, the one, two, four, all technique, which means don't throw participants not even always into breakout rooms of five. Sometimes not everybody is prepared from the main room to go into the breakout room and then immediately discuss something. Sometimes it's just more effective to have them reflect or brainstorm by themselves. One, send them into pairs. Two, then encourage them change again the breakout rooms into four people breakout rooms. And then in the main room back discuss and synthesize what came up in the different breakout rooms, for example. It's one, two, four and all. And that is really a nice way of creating interaction where you make sure that even those who don't feel comfortable in bigger groups are having the possibility to speak up. One, two, four and all for breakout rooms. Very brilliant idea. Now, speaking of the chat, is it distracting if you have a facilitator and then somebody in the group virtually just makes a comment? Because I've been in those with... They just make a comment. Sometimes they just encourage, you know, they're saying something sweet. There's nothing against the statement itself, but is it a distraction or should they wait for facilitator to say any comments, any questions, and then everybody jumps to the chat? Oh, that's a really tough question, Roberta. I personally, as a speaker or as a facilitator, I prefer people to put their questions in the chat when the questions come up because otherwise they might be forgetting them. If I'm using Microsoft Teams or Webex, in Webex they have a personal notepad. So I encourage them to use that function. In Teams or here in Zoom, they don't have that. So I usually ask them, please post the questions whenever they are into the chat window and I will pick them up, but I decide when to pick them up. I think a good presenter and a good facilitator or a great presenter, a great facilitator needs to be able to look at the presentation. to have an eye on the chat window and then decide when picking up the question that floats or comes in. So I never sort of stop my conversation flow or my argument and say like, ah, there's a question coming in. Of course, that's like what? Okay. No, it doesn't make sense. I finished my thought. Of course, that means I need to be pretty multitasking, right? Finish my thought, looking at the audience, quick reading the question that comes in and then decide when I pick it up. I tend to pick up the questions when they are still sort of hot questions, but I also always embed them in my argument, in my communication flow. And I think this is pretty important because I always get the feedback that it is very engaging if the question is like, for example, I'm talking about the camera angle and how important it is to look at the camera. And then I'm picking up like... Oh, and there is Roberta asking what kind of camera would be the best for this? And I would love to answer that because I would recommend camera XYZ. And I tend to always even use the name if it's not too many questions or too many people. I use the name of the person who asked the question because also that creates a personal connection between me, the speaker, the facilitator, the trainer and the audience, the participant. So it doesn't mean just that the specific time is it, okay, now put your questions in the chat, I'm ready. It doesn't have to be as robotic as that. It is a multitasking exercise. Yeah. I think the bigger the group, the more frequently you have a co-facilitator, somebody who helps you manage those questions. And this is important, yes. Can you then last tell us about the train, the trainer program from your company? Absolutely. So what we do have is we have a virtual and a hybrid and an in-presence face-to-face trainer program that we have been running for several years already. We offer it B2C, but also in-house for companies. And sometimes companies even, it's not a trainer program, but it's rather a meeting facilitator program. So where companies train their managers on how to design, facilitate, and follow up properly on meetings. And all of that. in an in-presence virtual or hybrid context. And what we do is we prepare, usually in a certificate program, between four to six modules, we prepare the managers, the trainers, so that they are able to transform what they were doing in an in-presence setting to a virtual or hybrid setup. And depending on the technological tools, the platform that the company is using, we're using more or less tools throughout the program. For the trainers, what we do is we have an approach to show them how to change their learning design and how to properly design for learning transfer in a virtual setting. For the meeting facilitators, so managers, for example, who are not really training or providing knowledge, but they are meeting their facilitating meetings, what we do with them is we show them different ways on how they can improve. meeting design facilitation and decision making in their meetings. And the decision making, do you assign who's going to do what at the meeting prior in order to save time and what decisions are going to be made upfront so that people know what is expected? Because things like, let's take the first 10 minutes, everybody must tell us where they are in the project, things that you feel like would have been covered before or shared on Slack instead of wasting their time. Yeah, exactly. That's what we are encouraging managers to do. All those kind of status updates, like where you are in the project, that's something that you can easily communicate beforehand, whether it is through a project management system that you're using, a Trello board or a sana or whatever, or whether it is through short videos that you send around that people can watch or not watch, whatever. I would try to not do that. Instead, I would try to always, particularly if you're working in a virtual team. I would always try to have at least a five minute social check-in. And that can be very different. Like it can be depending a lot on the team size, on the company culture, but I would always focus on that, maybe not where you are logging in from, but can be also a fun thing, but something fun and personal to share with the team, to create and keep that. bond in the team and the personal connections. I do think that this is pretty important. I'm working in a team with two more colleagues, another one from Spain and from Austria. And sometimes our social check-ins, they take up 20 minutes. Yeah, sometimes that's really like one third of the meeting time. We do a lot of work asynchronously, but we are strong believers that our team has such a strong bond because we do invest a lot of time on the team building at the beginning. And yes, indeed, what we also know is we need to be very explicit on what is the topic or the topics of the meeting and what needs to be decided upon and how long do we want to assign discussion time for each topic. And I do believe this is very important. In many teams, this is just not happening and meetings are overrunning. Then people are getting nervous. People are starting to multitasking and people need to run or... log out, log in to different meetings and which is just not nice. We used to have that as well where you would have the agenda and we'll have this item. We're going to do it for 10 minutes. Item number three, we're going to discuss this for five minutes. I think it should be about as clear as that because you have this conundrum of should we check in? Are we macro managing if we check in? Should we do the meetings as often as you said earlier? So I think that's just a lot that they need to juggle. Last words of wisdom, Barbara. Well, I think for both topics, whether it's virtual or hybrid meeting facilitation or virtual or hybrid training workshops, I really believe that it's time to upskill. And upskill means take your time to go through a program to really gather and train and reflect and get feedback on your practice. I do understand that many people believe there is not enough time in their workday and they rather just watch a two minutes YouTube tutorial. but sometimes you're just lacking the feedback. And always you can ask your team for feedback on a regular basis, but I think getting better at what you're doing is important to sometimes join a community, join a program and really up skill by getting feedback and learning new skills that you will need. Virtual hybrid is not going anywhere. We do see a huge demand, not only for virtual, but... also particularly for hybrid because hybrid will be the way forward for many organizations and hybrid has some new challenges compared to virtual. So also here look out for experts in the field, follow them, engage in other hybrid events to see and learn on what other meeting facilitators or trainers are doing but also upskill seriously by taking a course. Poets of Wisdom from Barbara Corvarrubias, Managing Director and Founder of Virtual Space Hero, which does digital transformation for organizations, virtual and hybrid teams and helps teams communicate. Thank you so much for joining us today. I'm glad you accepted the invitation. This was wonderful. Thank you so much, Roberta. Fantastic host, great conversation. Thanks a lot. My pleasure. Don't forget to subscribe, give a rating and a review on iTunes and Spotify. and stay tuned for more episodes to come. Before you go, Barbara, where can we find you on the interwebs to learn more about Virtual Space Hero? You just connect with me or on LinkedIn, you look out, LinkedIn.com slash BarbaraCV, or you go to virtualspacehero.com, and you can find all the other social media links over there. virtual space hero.com, Barbara CV on LinkedIn. Thank you, Barbara. Thanks.