We were honoured to present a lunchtime webinar on behalf of CIMA on the subject of inclusion in the post-pandemic workplace. Our host very kindly said that it was ‘a truly wonderful presentation, very thought-provoking,’ adding ‘I’m sure everybody will get some very valuable takeaways that they can implement into their personal and professional lives.’ We’re not really used to delivering in the webinar format, so it was a bit challenging for us. Here are some reflections on our experience.
We have a lot of experience working in real life in actual rooms with actual people where we can see their faces, hear their voices and observe their interactions. Since the pandemic, we’ve adapted well to delivering over Zoom or Teams, and make sure we keep our audience engaged with a variety of interactive activities as well as plenty of screen breaks. But this event for CIMA, on a platform where we could only see and hear ourselves and our PowerPoint was definitely going to be a challenge!
Part of our approach was to make use of Mentimeter at the beginning to get a sense of our audience’s thoughts and feelings on the subject of inclusion. While we had a sticky moment where the results weren’t displayed, we did get a fantastic picture of the audience’s perspective which helped us to tailor the rest of the presentation. You can see the results in the picture.
While we presented some facts and figures, research and suggestions, it was important to engage the audience in a bit of storytelling. We created a story about being called out for a microaggression and used Mentimeter again to ask how the person being called out should respond. You can see the results in the picture below. Once we’d gathered the responses we offered some suggestions of how to respond in a way that avoids putting the responsibility on the person who has felt offended.
There was one further interactive element built into the webinar, the Q and A. We had some time to take questions at the end. These had been sent to the host who read them to us. This was the most challenging, but most interesting part of the event. There were great questions about the pros and cons of categorisation, how to deal with bullying, how to support people, how to measure impact, and others.
Overall, it was a challenging event for us, but really rewarding as well, and something we’d love to do more of.
Thanks for inviting us CIMA!
