WLP282: Asynchronous Facilitation and Collaboration in Remote Teams

In today’s episode we bring you an in-depth interview exploring the connection between facilitation and collaboration, and the importance of asynchronous working - with lots of inspiration for every remote team participant.

Simon Wilson, FACILITATOR (CPF MASTER)

Simon Wilson is the co-founder of Wilson Sheriff, and there he consults, supports and enables collaboration. He trains others in facilitation skills and more, and he is a certified facilitator with the International Association of Faciliation (IAF), where his extensive and diverse experience designates his mastery status.

More recently, he was part of the team that helped transfer their whole certification process online. (You can find out more about this in episode 30 of Facilitation Stories.)

Simon defines his facilitation role as working with groups to support them in achieving their goals successfully. So, he is not typically a subject expert, but focuses on the process - which is increasingly now online. He’s been working with the online space as part of his practice for many years, and co-authored Virtual Meetings a Practical Guide.  

ASYNCHRONOUS COLLABORATION

Asynchronous collaboration goes beyond ‘the meeting’ clearly, and affects the facilitation role. Sometimes it requires a more directive approach, but he describes his own leadership approach as facilitative - enabling and questioning participants to reach their own outcomes and conclusions.

His experience with async also evolved from work with international teams, over many years, during which the technology has clearly improved - as has the potential for truly participative experiences. 

Simon Wilson

Coming from a knowledge management perspective, he has always been aware of the elements either side of the meeting itself - such as sending out agendas and reminders. Being online together is now so frictionless, as well as part of everyone’s lived experience, that the technology and familiarity barriers are mostly superseded.  We need asynchronous touchpoints between the scheduled conversations, and facilitation takes place beyond the meeting increasingly frequently, and we need to get the balance right.

This balance required varies, and some teams may never need to meet synchronously at any time. This is not just dictated by geography and timezones - all teams and projects can benefit from asynchronous elements, which serve different personal collaboration styles. Obviously people contribute at their best when they’re awake and alert, but the priority should be designing around the project itself - when do we need to come together, set expectations and systems, then input reflectively and individually, before reviewing and concluding? 

Part of the facilitator’s role is to set and manage deadlines for the different phases, nudging things along so that everyone contributes effectively, perhaps with stimulus additional material. Simon points out that a lot of the practical/timekeeping elements can be automated - Slack can remind people about their need to revisit a whiteboard, for example - so the facilitator can focus on keeping the thinking moving along, as much as the essential processes.

Collaborating in this way also lets us control the pace and cadence - knowing when to pause a conversation, in order to see external input, take a breath, or ponder a point individually. This supports people with different communication styles and power relationships to truly come into their own, and contribute in the way they find best suits them - ensuring no voices get lost along the way.

Asynchronous communication is also an important part of culture and teaming, going beyond the work to build relationship and common purpose. This can be overlooked, and requires intentional cultivation. Having a little bit of connection and communication before you meet synchronously, can make things flow better and improve the way people get on in ‘real time’ - which is a challenge to some established ways of ‘team building’. And we can use different kinds of sharing (eg photos, videos) to support this.

Working in this way also challenges the way people often think about hiring facilitators, which typically used to mean bringing someone in for a meeting or single session - whereas what is needed may be a longer-term consultancy intervention, to manage a more evolutionary and developmental process, as teams discover things for themselves.

THE BARRIERS TO ADOPTING “ASYNC”

Simon regards the practice of asynchronous collaboration as being still in its infancy, and there’s still a popular conception that meetings are the rhythm of work, with other kinds of collaboration trying to find their place in and around that schedule. People are not so good at blocking out the time for asynchronous work, for prioritising it within their day - making their input sometimes hurried and perfunctory. 

A real culture shift is needed, and a change in expectation about how we use time and work better together, without having to show up in real time. This should lead to better meetings too, because we’ll show up better prepared and with clearer expectations, instead of relying on others to steer the agenda.

Of course many people enjoy meeting face to face, so they find it easier to commit to this, but for asynchronous work people have to manage their own time and attention to get things done. This is hard, particularly when people are burned out and exhausted. It takes mental and creative energy, and should be role-modelled effectively by leadership. Managers should respect time allocated for deep work and asynchronous tasks, and not jump in with urgent demands on their people to reprioritise and respond to things immediately.

Above all it’s about finding the right mix for the team, and for each project, of the different ways we have available now, to communicate and collaborate. Blending asynchronous and synchronous approaches in a facilitative style will help teams achieve more together.

Connect with Simon on Twitter, and online for more, and please contact us, or you can tweet Virtual Not Distant, or Pilar directly, with your thoughts and ideas and feedback.

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