“We have come together despite the distance,”
“Great format”
“Good orientation for my leadership work,”

That was the summary of a virtual leadership conference (divided into four two-hour online sessions) with 52 division and department heads of a leading insurance company.

The moderation software and professional online moderation enabled:

• Virtual small group work
• Moderated dialogues with live documentation
• Live voting
  Proxy discussions
• Working on joint planning templates
• An emotional conclusion

The content and emotional results motivate the participants to actively assume their current leadership responsibilities.

The content and format of online conferences and the overall process should be tailored to the respective situation. In this case, online training “leading teams with a home office” follows next.

“An exciting experience – both in terms of content and technology.”

That was the summary of a virtual world café with 25 employees of an IT service provider. The aim of the event was to critically reflect on the path to a strategic target and to formulate recommendations for further action. In the virtual World Café – as in the “real” World Café – three different questions were addressed in virtual breakouts by changing group constellations and finally summarized in the plenary session to produce concise recommendations.

In every round new input for strategy implementation

The special thing about the World Café is that there are “guests” who change the (virtual) table after each round and hosts who remain seated at their table. At the beginning, the hosts briefly share the most important results from the preliminary round and encourage the guests to connect their ideas with the previous table discussions!

Further feedback about this event included:

• “I found the event extremely organized and structured.”
• “It was fun, you meet on equal terms – very good!”
• “I thought it was cool to jump into the different rooms. I didn’t miss the analogue.”
• “It worked surprisingly well! Great ideas!”

Effective (leadership) team development often includes discussing and clarifying mutual expectations. In face-to-face events, the expectation market has proven itself to be successful. Does this method also work virtually?

As part of a virtual management dialogue with 20 managers from three sales teams of a medium-sized company, we adapted the format of the expectations market to the circumstances.

The implementation of the new leadership principles and the changed virtual collaboration played a special role in view of the Corona lockdown. The aim was to coordinate shared leadership behavior and to give employees orientation, especially in these turbulent times.

The expectations market was conducted in 4 rounds:

1. In the first round, the functional teams define their expectations of the other teams in breakout sessions and determine their own contribution to meeting the expectations.
2. In the second round, the teams present their expectations to each other in a virtual plenary session and clarify any questions of understanding.
3. In the third round, the functional teams discuss again in their own breakout sessions which of the expectations they accept, reject or which they need to clarify again and derive concrete measures for implementation.
4. In the fourth round, the teams present their results and implementation plans and make concrete agreements for the next steps.

A total of 25 specific expectations were clarified and implementation planned. The unanimous feedback from the participants was:

“It’s nice that we were able to discuss the topics in this way – now it’s up to us to implement things.”

Conclusion: The expectation market for team development also works virtually.

“I wrote down 6 pages of tips and tricks.
I’m glad I was here and took part. Thank you very much for that.”

This is just a quote from the feedback from a 2-module online training entitled “Effectively designing and moderating virtual meetings” in the financial industry. Communication training was originally planned, but the current challenge of effective online moderation in internal workshops and especially in customer meetings has noticeably increased.

Two modules lasting 3 hours each were developed together with the human resources department. Here the participants experienced effective, dialogic online moderation live and expanded their digital moderation skills. The following content was trained tailored to the existing meeting tool GoToMeeting:

Module 1: Basics of effective online moderation

• Success factors for effective online moderation
• Gain role clarity for moderator and host
• Structuring interactive meetings – from preparation to completion
• The importance of dialogic elements in virtual meetings
• Operate and use basic functions

Module 2: Design online meetings in a goal-oriented manner

• A targeted directing plan
• Effective charts and instructions
• Interaction elements for all phases: breakout sessions, surveys, whiteboard, shared documents and much more.
• Sample schedules for typical meeting occasions
• Proven practical tips

The participants brought in their practical challenges and were able to actively work on them with their colleagues and trainers. Afterwards, everyone received a Powerpoint file with professional moderation templates for free use as part of their moderations.

More participant quotes

Initial situation

The organization was faced with the challenge of holding an online conference with 350 managers for the first time and at the same time realigning itself strategically.

There were the first concrete ideas for implementing the virtual conference. Content-related voting should take place with all participants, the results of which will be further deepened and developed in small groups with internal moderators. At the end of day 1, the results should be clustered and prepared so that they can be further processed in workshops the following day.

Further goals were dialogic participation and a high level of interactivity over 1.50 days of virtual conference.

Our approach

Based on our experience in numerous virtual conferences, we have:

• A feasibility check of the existing concept was carried out
• A tailor-made concept developed based on the existing concept
• Designed technical solutions and ensured the technical implementation of the meeting
• A qualification for internal small group moderators was designed and carried out
• A virtual presentation training (personal performance in front of the camera + handling of technology) was designed and carried out for input providers/lecturers
• Dress rehearsals were carried out with those in charge
• We took over control of the entire process (including the technology hotline) during the event
• Hosted the meeting
• Acts as a back-up for the internal moderation team

Results

The following results were achieved through the dialogue-oriented concept in virtual space:

• Real commitment to the realignment
• Cultural development of the entire organization
• Dialogue participation of participants also in virtual settings
• Understanding of virtual collaboration was strengthened
• The quality and importance of moderation for virtual meetings has been strengthened