How to Create Engaging Virtual Training

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

Learning – specifically training – and team meetings can help you build the skills your people need to thrive in this environment, can facilitate trust building and collaboration, can add value to your organizational culture, and can improve communication and relationships among team members.

This is true, even of the virtual environment.

But it doesn’t always happen that way.

What Virtual Training Often Looks Like

We often end up with a lot of 😑, 🤐, or even 😟.

You can picture it, can't you?

Joe falling asleep. Maria making coffee in the background. Blank stares all around when the facilitator asks a question. Crickets.

So how do we go from 😑, 🤐, and 😟to 🤩?

That's exactly what I shared at my interactive session at the Virtual Summit for Nonprofit Changemakers this week.

How to Create More Engaging Virtual Training

Let's break it down into three easy-to-manage steps:

1. Make it relevant.

2. Make it meaningful.

3. Make it fun.

Make It Relevant

Relevant means the training can directly tie back to your organization's priorities AND the audience's job.

To do this, we have to start by being clear about our organization’s priorities. Maybe this is in your strategic plan. Maybe you need to spend some time defining your priorities. Either way, we need to be clear about what we are trying to achieve.

Once you know what your organization’s priorities are, you can align your talent practices to those priorities.

Relevant also means the training is actionable.

Often I see organizations determine a need for training and then the training becomes an information dump from the SMEs.

But knowledge does not equal behavior change.

I mean, I know I should do laundry daily if I don’t want it to pile up, yet every week I end up with a load of laundry so large, I question how many people live here.

People know they should eat healthy and exercise, but that doesn’t always mean they follow through.

So focus on the action you need your staff to take. Do you need your staff to interact with your “clients” differently? Do you need them to use a new software? Do you need them to tell the story of your organization to raise money?

Give your staff and volunteers an opportunity to practice taking this action in the safe environment of a training.

Make It Meaningful

Part of making it meaningful is making it relevant and actionable – what’s in it for me?

But part of making it meaningful is meeting deeper human needs.

Like the need for connection and the need for reflection and exploration.

Make It Fun

Everyone has a different meaning of the word “fun” so know your audience. For some, solving a problem is fun. Collaborating is fun. For others, working in a more casual environment is fun, or games are fun.

But no matter their definition of fun, one thing you can do is keep the training engaging and interactive.

Use features like:

• Chat box

• Improv

• White boards

• Breakout groups

• Polls

Use outside tools like:

• Kahoot

• Virtual collaboration spaces

Use techniques like:

• Story telling

• Analogies

And get people hands-on whenever possible. When people are engaged, they have more fun.

Facilitate Well

The tips above are all focused on creating the most engaging virtual classroom experience, but even the best design will only take you so far. You must also facilitate the training well. And facilitating virtually is different than facilitating in-person. It requires different skills, confidence, and comfort with the technology. When you're ready to begin facilitating virtually, grab my free Virtual Facilitation Formula for three easy-to-implement ways to enhance your facilitation.