Tips for Adapting Online Facilitation

Facilitators often tell us that in online spaces it feels harder to adapt when the unexpected happens or challenging dynamics emerge.  While the tools and strategies may look a bit different than in person, responding to what’s happening in the moment is absolutely possible online.

Instead of worrying that things will “go wrong,” we can expect that people will be people, our tech will be imperfect (just like so many of our in-person community meeting spaces are), and groups will surprise us!  Instead of holding ourselves to unrealistic expectations, we can value our ability to be present and adaptive as real signs of success.

How many times in your life have things – both big and small – not gone the way you planned or expected?  What helped you shift?  Maybe you got support from others, took a pause to sort things out, used humor or creativity, etc.  This wisdom that you’ve accumulated in your life is a foundation for the facilitation skill we call emergent design.

“Emergent Design” = choices and interventions you make as a facilitator to change your plan in response to what arises, while staying true to your goals.

Building our emergent skills or “flow muscles” is mostly about how you move through nervousness, let go of ego, and keep holding space.

In addition to the many possible technical challenges of online spaces (see this handout), the same range of issues may come up online that happen with groups anywhere.  For example: disengaged participants, people getting triggered, access imbalances, mistakes, tension, and conflict.

While there is no one right way to respond to these situations, online facilitators have a number of options that can help them navigate these moments.  The first step is being present and attuned with the group and the moment so you can assess what’s most needed. 

Options for when you need to change your plan online:

• Give yourself space to figure out what to do. For example:
  • Call a break
  • Send participants into a pair/small group so everyone can breathe and process a bit
  • Invite the group to journal on a question or topic for a few minutes
  • Get on the phone or hop into a breakout room with your cofacilitator or one or more participants while the group does a break/journal/breakout.  (Think of this as the equivalent of “stepping into the hall” with someone during an in-person session.)
• Meta-communicate: Be transparent with the group and model okay-ness with a change in plan.
• Offer a proposal to the group and check for agreement (for example a quick thumbs up/down or a chat poll). 
• Have plan B slides or extra slides in the slideshow you can use if you need them (see some template slides here for examples of what we keep in the back of a slide deck ready to adapt).
• Be flexible with visuals: Slideshows are not carved in stone!  During a session, you could: Adapt a slide, go back to a previous slide, reorder the slides, go off slides, or add a slide (from scratch or from template slides you keep on hand).  

Predicting and controlling every possible thing that could happen in your online spaces is an impossible goal.  Instead, build a toolkit of strategies you can use for various situations, and ground yourself in the values that most support you to move with your group.  Here are some examples of grounding values we’ve heard from folks in our workshops: 

What’s one thing you will do to prepare to be emergent in future online facilitation?