I thought I was totally prepared for my first workshop facilitation, after getting tips and tricks from users here.
But pretty quickly, during the new user onboarding, someone who was trying to copy and paste stickies copied and pasted a whole (LOCKED) frame. Multiple times. It felt like anarchy. Continuing to facilitate with frustrated, embarrassed new users (don’t know who messed it up) while also cleaning up the board threw me off my game and took the wind out of the session.
What did I do wrong or what could I do differently? I am gun shy about going back for round 2 (with some of the same participants).
Hi @Jeff,
Ok, welcome to the club of best-laid plans going wrong in Miro! I have had a few sessions blow up on me and totally put me off my game. Was facilitating a session with some new users and had a married couple who were sharing a computer squabbling about what to click and do. They couldn’t figure out how to zoom and see the content, but they did not listen to instructions, just argued and totally dominated the session. They were not being mean, just typical backseat driver quibbling. It was hilarious in hindsight, and I learned a lot from the experience.
Don’t let this session get you down, using a new tool in this way can be very challenging, and you should be commended for trying!
Here are a few tips to keep in mind.
- Set clear ground/house rules at the start of the session. This is a no-brainer. If we were in a live session and I just started walking around the room and writing on all of your carefully prepared flip charts or sticky notes, you would flip out. Start with the simple ones, mute your mic, save your questions for the noted times, and don’t mess around on the board until directed.
- Give new users something to play with. On my boards, I always assume that users are new and provide a space or a full board for folks to play around on. I set up some easy exercises (sort shapes by size, turn squares into circles, change colours, etc) so they can play around, and I don’t care what they delete or duplicate. Just try to put some structure in the play area and you will soon learn which people are going to follow the rules and which might try to go crazy figuring out Miro. Make sure you teach everyone how to UNDO is paramount to success in Miro based workshops
- Set up a Staging Template. Create your workspace and then duplicate that board, or duplicate the workspace and hide it on the same board. If someone destroys your template, it is a simple copy and paste from your staging area to the live board to fix the issue.
- Acknowledge the newness of the tool. If I am new at something, I usually admit this to the group right away. This makes me more human, but also changes the feeling in the room from judgement to empathy. If things go great, you are superhuman. If things go wrong, well oops, I’m new at this too so let’s learn together.
- Retrospective and Lessons Learned. At the end of each session, do a quick retrospective. Have your attendees tell you what worked and what didn't, and you add to the mix as well. Then, make your adjustments, and if you have returning attendees, make sure to highlight what you are doing differently to improve on the experience. Customers appreciate it when you acknowledge what is wrong as long as you are taking steps to fix it.
Those are a few of my thoughts. We have your back, so feel free to share more and ask for advice here in the community!
Jon
