5 Essential moderation skills for modern leads

Future oriented leads need moderation skills to get more out of their teams and themselves by supporting an autonomous working style.
If you learn how to moderate your meetings and workshops better you will be able to:

• get better and more ideas
• gain more trust between your teammates
• reach more commitment and motivation
• get more “we-feelings” and by that psychological safety
• support individual growth
• establish better decision making processes (where you don’t need to be a part of anymore)

The more autonomy an individual in a team is supposed to have, the clearer the goals, rules, values, own motivation and self-responsibility should be.
We need to make sure that we have everyone on board and on the same page. Having the feeling of being part of the team and being heard. Therefore it’s important that leads learn to create situations where the team takes the stage, has time to work together in a structured way and feels comfortable and guided to shape their own project, team and business future.

1) Learn to prepare better team workshops and meetings
If you want to find inspiration on how to create well structured team experiences you can have a look at one of the online whiteboard vendors you find out there. Nowadays most of the companies we are working with already have a tool at hand. They offer well made templates for almost every meeting or workshop situation you might be able to think of. From simple standups and retros to whole project planning tools and business modeling or team culture reflection you’ll find tons of good stuff out there. On top you should think about team-fitting warm-ups and simple take-away exercises.

2) Learn the proper usage of (digital) tools
If you let your team try out new ways of working it would be great if you would feel comfortable and safe using new tools. Either learn your (digital) skills step-by-step or try them out upfront in a smaller circle. But please don’t start blaming the tools that you haven’t learnt to work with yet. Take a little time to understand how to create breakout rooms and how to use an online whiteboard for example.

3) Learn to build rapport within the group
If you want your team to start sharing ideas they need to arrive in the room and have the feeling that they are seen. As long as they don’t feel comfortable showing themselves and their precious ideas you will be wasting your time. So please frame upfront what you expect from them. For example: “I want you all to take part today and speak up. This is a vision workshop so feel free to dream and let’s not be critical for the next 30 minutes”. Observe and become the group's referee enforcing the rules in a charming way.
Please learn to use warm-ups. No loooong exercises where half of the group feels uncomfortable. Explain why you are doing the warm-up, get comfortable with it yourself and find team-fitting things that the team enjoys.

4) Become a timekeeper
Making sure that you as a moderator are responsible for staying in time is essential. It’s your role to interrupt people. Otherwise the team gets distracted and you lose the group's attention and by that motivation. No, from my point of view we don’t have to let everyone speak until they think they made their point. Instead we have to find a respectful way of how to interrupt someone in front of the whole group. Tell upfront that you have to interrupt when timers run out. Set timers and give your teammates time to prepare - and let them get used to it. Make a running timer (on an online whiteboard or a tablet in the room) visible to everyone - this gives the group a better sense of time. It’s your job to create challenging exercises and learn to adjust your timing to the group's needs. Otherwise notifications might grab their attention or some might drift away in their stream of thoughts.

5) Let go and let your team work
Are you paid to have all the answers or to serve your team to get to the answers themselves?
You will have to learn to hold your thoughts back here and there and feel appreciated without being in the center of attention. Your job is to shape the environment to let your team grow and reach their goals. You will fail on your way of becoming a better moderator as well as your team will fail on growing into their more autonomous role. That is part of the game going towards perfection :) Every team is different - don’t overwork right away.

Take your time to become a better moderator day by day and don’t think that your first meeting or workshop needs to be all different right from the start. Change slowly and continuously and your team will be able to follow.

And if you want to learn more about it - let me know!