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Do some of your students multitask while you’re trying to train them? Are many reluctant to speak up? Do you actually have the ability to read the room and respond accordingly?

There’s no doubt, disengagement is a pesky problem for those that lead customer and employee software training in virtual environments.

So, in an effort to help our customers overcome training challenges, we hosted an interactive online workshop for our user community featuring renowned engagement leader Jan Keck. Jan called his workshop, The Engagement Spiral.

Throughout the workshop, Jan not only taught the group several principles and tactics he uses to enhance engagement, he applied every one of them.

The interaction began immediately

Everyone who participates in online meetings, trainings, courses, and such knows they often begin with the host telling those who arrived on time they’ll need to sit tight for the others who will soon straggle in. Such was not the case for this event. Jan advocates for instant interaction.

In the span of the workshop’s first minute, Jan interacted with participants who had voluntarily turned their cameras on and asked attendees to submit answers to the question, “What are your biggest challenges with online training.”

Seconds later the responses were presented in the form of a word cloud (thanks to some magic from the interactive presentation tool Mentimeter). While a good variety of challenges came forth, a common thread was clear: keeping trainees engaged.

FYI: Jan employs many tools to help make his workshops engaging. Check them out here.

The engagement spiral: reflect, connect, and collect

The engagement spiral, according to Jan, is not a downward spiral. It’s an upward spiral based on the idea that you engage the people in your audience with a small and easy task and aim to get increase levels of engagement with additional layers.

• At first, you introduce a simple prompt, such as a question. It should be something everyone can tackle on their own. Jan categorizes this as “REFLECT,” that is, think.
  
  Earlier, Jan had asked attendees to take a minute to think about an answer to his question and write down their ideas. He added you can ask the people to draw something—or even pick from a selection of choices.
  
• The next level is “CONNECT.” In this part, it’s about partnering with at least one other person, or a small group where the goal is to share ideas. He talked about research done on “psychological safety,” the notion that sharing thoughts in a small group makes it feel safer. The theory has also proven to give the individual greater confidence to share ideas with a larger group.
  
• The spiral concludes with “COLLECT,” meaning the goal is to collect every participant’s contribution and inspire the sharing of the ideas. Jan claims he often asks participants to nominate another person’s idea. He added that the facilitator might also ask those who commented via chat to elaborate on what they wrote.
  
  The idea at work with these tips is to remove the friction of putting people “on the spot.”

How do you read the room?

Jan poses the question, “If no one has their camera on, how do you read the room?” Attendees offered several answers including: use the reaction buttons (on Zoom), ask for chat responses, and assign tasks and check-in on the progress.

One user mentioned, “If you’re using CloudShare you can see their screens.”

Jan also introduced the “cat scale.”

He said, “I often use this as a way to check in—maybe at the beginning of the session, or after something that was really intensive to see how people are feeling. It makes it a little bit more fun.”

And, of course, he asked the attendees to select the cat that best expressed how they felt.

He also introduced the “Mood meter.”

Source: Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence

The vertical axis represents emotions, pleasant to unpleasant, top to bottom. The horizontal axis represents energy, low to high, left to right. Jan and the group concluded the aim is to shoot for top/right/middle, such as “ lively, upbeat, enthusiastic, and energized.”

He concludes by suggesting meeting hosts should “facilitate like a thermostat.”

“If you never measure the temperature, you’re basically driving blindfolded. You want the energy to be great. You want the engagement to be high, but if you’re never checking, then you don’t have any idea if it is high or low.”

Create micro-engagements

Jan moved on to what he called “micro-engagements,” which he stated was his technique for frequently checking in and taking the room’s temperature.

He said he simply asks for a:

• Thumbs up
• Click response
• Raised hand
• Head nod
• Finger wiggle
• Chat response
• Survey or poll response

The idea is to begin with a small ask. Then you take a step forward and ask for something more. He presented his micro-engagements ideas with a slide:

And finally, it’s time to dance

Jan ended his session by explaining he’d like to run an experiment. He asked everyone to turn their cameras on (if able to) and raise an index finger. Then he asked for a finger from the other hand.

Next, he asked for a little finger wiggling and queued up a dance song. “Move to the music,” he said… “What if your wrists get loose?” “What if your elbows loosen up?” “What if your head loosens up… then your shoulders?”

And then Jan said, “Although these are not the world’s best dance moves, I just got you to join a little finger disco.”

Jan and the community members discussed what just happened. What didn’t happen was a group of strangers dancing together on Zoom. He said that asking would intimidate people. The idea is that the group took small, easy steps, and gradually climbed a bit of a mountain.

Finally, he concluded, “That’s the way I think when I’m designing a session. How can we gradually build engagement elements so it almost becomes invisible? People don’t even notice that it’s happening.”

In this session, it happened. It was an entertaining, educational and fun event for the CloudShare user community.

Would you like to see “The Engagement Spiral” in its entirety? Watch the recording of our CloudShare Community workshop here.

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