I have been the sender of those workshop invites for many years, but 2020 takes the cake for number of virtual workshops in a year. I facilitated over 50+ sessions with different teams from around the world across IBM. Some sessions where centered around solving problems for users, some for team building, some for digital enablement, some for agile ceremonies and some for visioning what the future could be.

I have heard numerous times from session attendees “wow, I thought this would be a waste of time but it was really fruitful” or “can we do this again next week?” I won’t sit here and say I am a converter of people to these long sessions, but I do think magic happens when you get people together intentionally.

Three things all of my sessions (virtual + IRL) have in common:

(1) Clear outcomes

(2) Logical flow of the session with relevant activities and prompts

(3) The opening

I am going to dive into number three here and give you three tactical tips for opening your virtual workshop.

TIP 1 — Start with introductions and icebreakers to build trust. I always start with a quick intro of who I am and why I care about the work we’re about to dive into, it may be that I have an interest in the team succeeding or the product being built. Then it’s all about the attendees getting to know each other. Whether it’s a well established team or a brand new group of humans, icebreakers create space for human connection, which we’re all in a little more of a need for these days. Icebreakers also help to breakdown hierarchical divide — making the junior attendees feel comfortable in the presence of an executive, whom they learn is just a HUMAN!! I always keep it super simple and contextual to the work we’re about to dive into. Some examples of recent icebreakers: what’s the best tech innovation you’ve experienced the past year or what’s the best piece of advice you’ve been given (check out responses below). One of my favorites is to ask; what song brings you joy and as they respond I build a Spotify playlist for brainstorming music throughout the session.

Great icebreaker inspo: random question generator here and Mural warm-ups and energizers here.

TIP 2 — Give space to experiment with workshop tools. In a recent study by MITSloan Mgmt Review titled “The New Leadership Playbook for the Digital Age” 82% survey respondents believe that leaders in the new economy will need to be digitally savvy, yet less than 10% of respondents strongly agree that their organizations have leaders with the right skills to thrive in the digital economy. This study was published in January 2020, right before our world became digital-first. I share this because it’s important to understand that a lot of your virtual workshop attendees are still trying to understand how to use all the digital collaboration tools from slack to teams to zoom. For my workshops, I leverage Mural and Cisco Webex. I will send out a practice Mural board before the session as well as give people 5 minutes in the beginning of a session to get comfortable in the tool. I will share the basics; zooming, stickies and short-cuts and give them space to experiment and ask questions. Questions will range from “wait, how do I zoom in?” to “ummmm, where did my sticky go!?” In any other circumstance this may be embarrassing, but we opened up the space to not know and ask questions — and that has done wonders as leaders get used to these new tools to do work that was traditionally done in person.

TIP 3 — Share outcomes and set expectations. This is a no-brainer. Successful sessions only happen when there is a shared understanding of what we’re trying to achieve together. Outcomes should be aligned and understood by the leadership as well as every attendee of the session. Next up is expectation setting — this is especially important for virtual sessions. I like to put the agenda on the Mural board for the attendees to reference at any time, so they know when a break is coming or if we’re over time on a certain activity. I also like to make it clear if we have follow-up sessions planned and let them know that we’ll revisit the need for a follow-up at the close of the session. In 2020 I used the line “this will feel like rapid fire design-thinking at times and you may not feel completely done with a prompt, but I promise we won’t loose the points on the stickies and we’ll come to you for any clarification needed.” This is mainly because virtual sessions *should* be shorter than in-person sessions, meaning you shouldn’t have a virtual session longer than 3 hours and during that time you need at least two breaks aka time flies.

As humans we loose interest pretty quickly, especially when it’s easy for us to multi-task and focus on something else (like our social media or email), that is why your virtual session opening is EXTREMELY important (yes I am yelling!!) It is your role as a facilitator to catch the attention of the attendees and keep them focused on the work at hand, oh an have LOTS of fun while doing it.

I hope this is helpful for you and inspires you to put focus on the opening of your next virtual workshop.

If you want to learn more, check out my conversation with Design Thinking Ninja Jay Melone of New Haircut here.

I originally recorded this video for the Women at IBM NYC Humans video slack campaign. I wanted to openly share my 2020 focus; self-compassion and my road to get there. My goal was to inspire the community to share their stories.

I have been openly talking about Mental Health at IBM with the hope that to smash the stigma of talking about mental illness at work. “Stigma is still an enormous challenge: About two in five employees (42 %) answer “yes” when asked if they have ever been diagnosed with a mental health disorder. And, the shame of mental illness keeps many from revealing their affliction. In fact, in a confidential survey: 63 % of those diagnosed with a disorder say they have not disclosed it to employers.” (source)

Resources below:

1. Ask yourself these three questions if you find yourself in a negative thought pattern: Am I being kind and understanding to myself? Do I acknowledge shortcomings and failure as experiences shared by everyone? Am I keeping my negative feelings in perspective?
2. Check out WoeBot which a chatbot infusing artificial intelligence with the empathy and expertise of a therapist to create a powerful mental health solution.

I would love to hear about your journey, share in the comments!

While I know these articles spark ideas for me, they also piss me off. What if I can’t wake up at 5:30AM or I don’t want to drink a triple espresso while reading five newsletters — does that mean I won’t be successful? UGHH.

Something many of these articles / lists fail to provide is context and the fact that we’re all unique — our interests, our energy levels, our jobs, our home life. These lists in full likely won’t work for anyone, maybe one item here and there, but what works for someone else might not work for you and that’s exactly the way it should be. No one can tell you the five perfect things to do to make your day the best or most productive … only you have the power to do that.

I am personally a routine junkie and I absolutely love structure. Through asking myself some questions (listed at the bottom of this article) and experimentation I learned that there are three things I need to start off my day right: stillness, movement, and organization, all before breakfast and my first work call of the day.

Stillness shows up with meditation or a quiet cup of tea. This brings me joy and helps settle any anxiety or stress I am feeling in the moment. I use Headspace for guided meditation.

Movement shows up as some form of activity whether it be a yoga flow, run, or twenty minute workout. This helps get those endorphins flowing, which all the smart people say is great. What I can tell you is I am happier and more focused during the day when I get my heart rate up in the morning. I use DownDog for yoga and Nike Training Club for workouts.

Organization shows up with me planning the day ahead. I choose three targets for the day, since it’s near impossible to get the 100 to-do list done. This helps me feel accomplished when I close out the day knowing I got done the three things I set out to do. I use BestSelf Planner to keep me accountable and organized. (There is a ritual I complete the night before that sets me up for this — more to come on that!)

Sometimes my morning routine takes me two hours and sometimes thirty minutes. I learned the term “Flexible Consistency” from Anne-Laure Le Cunff of NessLabs and use it religiously. Here’s how I think about it: I am consistent in making sure my key elements show up every morning but the amount of time I do each is flexible, based on the amount of sleep I got, the time of my first call, and how hangry I am! Practicing flexible consistency takes self-compassion — don’t forget to be kind to yourself if you didn’t get a full 2 mile run in — it’s okay.

This work for me, but might not work for you and remember, that’s perfectly okay. If you’re thinking of shaking up your routine, instead of looking at what your friends or colleagues are doing, take some time to think about what gives you energy. Test, experiment, reflect on what’s working, what’s not and adjust. Your routine is as personal as your relationship with yourself, no one but you can find the right mix.

A couple of questions to ask yourself as you’re building or evolving *your* rituals:

• What lights you up?
• What calms you down?
• What gets you focused?
• What gives you energy? What drains your energy?
• Are there certain parts of your day that drive you crazy? Why?
• Is there something nagging at you about your days / weeks / months? How can you identify some small habits to help chip away at this?
• Do you do anything today you should be doing more of? Can you fit that into an already established habit / action?
• Do you do anything today you should be doing less of? Are there healthy alternatives?

Most importantly, don’t forget to be kind to yourself as you experiment!

//

Traveling helps to put life in perspective. Your “normal” is not the “normal” somewhere else — the experience, food, environment and …Chinese bathrooms are different….very different! These past four weeks I got a serious dose of perspective on the art of language, communication and translation.

I’ll start from the beginning …

Active Listening is one of the most important aspects of a being a consultant, and on this project, it was no different … except that the client didn’t speak English!!!!! This posed a couple of challenges for the team and me:

1. We couldn’t get a full grasp on the answers to our questions
2. We often walked away from conversations with gaps in our understanding
3. We sometimes struggled to get our point or question across (we could tell by the confused facial expressions!)

This quickly got us to pause, think and come up with some strategies to communicate better. The best idea we had was to leverage our Project Assistance (PA) as best we could (they were basically our master translators / communicators). Rather than just have them translate word for word, we taught them our process and our thinking. We brought them along on the journey, asking for feedback and input ALL THE TIME! Not only did this help them walk away with a great understanding of the work (so far two of them talked about IBM Design Thinking during job interviews!!), but also they were able to speak to our client from their mind and not just their ears —( i.e., repeating what we said without thinking about what we meant.) This was a beautiful thing to witness; they all grew in confidence and it was a true highlight of my CSC journey.

A couple of things I learned in the process:

1. Patience — a conversation that normally takes me three minutes in America took ten minutes in China. You speak, it’s translated, the client answers (and sometimes there is some dialogue back and forth in Chinese), it’s translated — imagine this back and forth for an entire interview / presentation / dinner! I had to be okay with not knowing the response immediately and to be honest — I loved it!!! It gave me a chance to really think and take in all the expressions and body language.
2. Trust — we had 4 weeks … that’s not a lot of time. While I knew our Project Assistants were some of the smartest students I ever met … they never had exposure to or an experience like this one. Processes, tools and methods that came easily to my IBM colleagues and me were confusing and sometimes out of context for them (of course!). We had to trust each other and make the PA’s feel comfortable to say “Elaine, I have NO IDEA what you’re saying!” We also had to trust they were understanding and communicating with the client effectively. This one was very hard for me, as I know words are powerful — one wrong word in a sentence and the entire meaning of what you’re trying to say changes. I had to really put my trust in our PA’s, trust that they understood and could communicate. In the end, even though I really had no clue what they were saying, they spoke with confidence and I saw head nods in the crowd — so I truly believe they captured our voice and shared it flawlessly.
3. Lastly, focus. Like I mentioned there was basically no such thing as a super quick chat the past four weeks. With all the distractions — cell phones, computer — and the inability to understand basically half the conversation, it was super easy to loose focus and wait for when English came back into the conversation. Rather than give in to the lure of technology, I made it a point (or at least tried REALLY hard) to not get distracted. I did my best to look in the eyes of the person talking as if I understood every word. By staying focused, I got a sense of their emotion while they were talking, of their comfort and body language. After each discussion I would ask the PA’s “how do you think that went?” to see if my impression was far off. We almost always agreed on how the meeting went based on their perception of what the client said and my observations of how the client felt.

I could go on for hours about how incredible our Project Assistants were, but I have a feeling you would all stop scrolling — so I’ll leave it at >> the women helping us these four weeks made it possible for us to deliver great work to our host organization. They also taught me so much and I am so grateful to have traveled on this challenging and fun journey with them. Thank you Ada, Vivian and Christine for being rockstars and #ladybosses!

One of the cool experiences every IBM Corporate Service Corps (CSC) team gets to take part in is a community day. Community days take many different shapes and sizes, but at the core they are about taking time outside of the four week CSC client assignment to give back to the community as one IBM team. I was really looking forward to the China 42 community day, as it was all about meeting local IBMers, local students, and local elderly men and woman to raise awareness and educate the community about cognitive impairment.

We all woke up a bit early for a Saturday morning (6:30!) to head to the location of the event. The drive was a fun one, the cab weaved in and out of Hutongs (small alleys that are common in northern Chinese cities + really fun to explore). We arrived at the Beijing Dongcheng Care Service Guidance Center and immediately got a tour. The center is owned by the government and is working to help the elderly in the community — whether it be conducting a gym class, sharing new gadgets that can help them with everyday life or assessing them to provide a personalized assistance plan.

Once we finished the tour we made our way to the main room to start the event. Local IBMers, 50 students from a local public welfare vocational school and about 20 elderly men and woman from the community joined us. Naturally, I made friends immediately with the coolest #ladyboss. She is over 80 years old and has more energy than me (crazy, I know). Even though we couldn’t understand each other with our words, we figured out a way to communicate and it was one of the highlights of my day. Check out some of our pictures below …

The event officially kicked off with the President of the Beijing Dongcheng District Women’s Federation and one of the staff members of CAJ, a local home care service agency. Then one of the CSC team members, Tommey, spoke beautifully to the room about why we were all spending our Saturday together. The next part of the event was a bit more personal, as one of my teammates, Angelo, spoke about his experience with Alzheimers. Unfortunately, his dad suffers from the illness and has struggled for some years now. Angelo spoke about how his local community in Italy has helped him and his family out tremendously. The story really hit home and brought to light why we need to build awareness about cognitive impairment and share information on early warning signs, tools and technology that can support, as well as communities that have education and information to help.

All the attendees then broke out into teams to work on “missions.” Each mission was unique and challenged teams to think of creative ways to educate the room on cognitive impairment. After 45 minutes working in small teams we came back together to share with the room. Some teams did skits, some did games, and some recited Chinese poems. It was a creative way to share some learning on cognitive impairment and I think we all left feeling educated on the illness, the impact and ways we can help. We closed out the day with a lot of selfies and hugs. Hoping this event is the start of many more in the community.

The rest of the day was filled with exploration and a birthday dinner for Bernhard, an amazing colleague from Germany! (yes we are eating pizza…see below). It was AH-MAZING and a nice break from the hotpot, duck and dumplings.

What we’ll be doing >>

The IBMers in Beijing for this CSC Deployment are all working with clients whose mission is to help the elderly with care-giving to assisted living. While The Third Affiliated Hospital welcomes patients of all ages, a large portion of the patients are 65-plus. We are partnering with the hospital to impact the elderly patient experience from the moment they are in need of a service, to the consultation and treatment plan. We are also providing management training to the leadership at the hospital, focusing on soft skills and communication. Lastly, we are developing an elevated strategy for their marketing and PR — to help increase awareness among the elderly about the services that the hospital provides as well as some preventative care that can help all citizens stay healthy.

The hospital released an official statement on their website (which many of you will need to translate within the Google Chrome browser to read) about the work we are doing with them. I can’t wait to see the impact we’ll have!

The team >>

I am on a team with three awesome IBMers from around the world to deliver this project. Krishnan is from India and is an expert executive coach and trainer, Angelo is from Italy (working in Poland) and is a master at security and client relationships, and lastly Chris is American (living in Australia) and is a rockstar sales and delivery executive. The four of us together will take our experience and differentiated skills to build a true cross-functional team! Our team also has project assistants. They are eager students who were selected to help us through this experience. Christine, Ada and Vivian have been such an INCREDIBLE asset to our team thus far and I am excited to see what else we can learn from each other!

How we’ll be working >>

As a consultant I am familiar with adapting to new teams, working under intense timelines, and dealing with ambiguity … A lot of this has been and will be put to test throughout this experience. All CSC teams are tasked to deliver to a client that doesn’t necessarily speak your language…while living in a foreign country, with a team from all different backgrounds and cultures. Our team realized very quickly we were all visual communicators — so we went straight to paper and stickies to get out our thoughts and ideas! We started with a Social Contract, which is one of my favorite Agile practices — since it really gives everyone on the team a chance to share what they believe will make the team powerful. At the end we all signed the contract, to make sure we keep each other accountable.

We also decided we needed a team logo (because why not!). I will go into more detail on that next time. Then, we created a “Wall of Work” to help us visualize what we have to get done daily and a “Parking Lot” to make sure we remember all the ideas that come up in conversations throughout the day. We are using a fusion of IBM Design Thinking, Agile, and whatever else we can to make sure we are collaborating and delivering.

Before heading to karaoke Friday night we closed out the week with a retrospective, which was all about what worked well and what we want to do better next week. It was amazing to hear and see the progress we made in just ONE week in Beijing. I have already learned so much about my working style, my communication style and my leadership style this week — I can tell I will be a better person and consultant after this experience. Until next time…

On Sunday we had the official orientation that was orchestrated by the Pyxera team. We talked logistics and some things to expect, the main lesson I walked out with… ‘go with the flow’ (which is great, as this is something I need to work on.) One my favorite ice breakers we did with the team was the “Life Map” exercise. We each took some time to draw / write some highs and lows from our lives and then shared them with a partner. I partnered up with Michael, the first team member I met in the Detroit airport on the way to China! It was so great learning more about his life and how he came to meet his wife and join IBM. This made me even more excited about all the personal connections to come.

We closed the day with an overview from Winnie, one of the IBM Corporate Citizen team managers in China. She explained to us the “theme” of all of our projects would be about increasing the quality of life for the elderly here in China. Two interesting facts:

1. In 2025 the population of 60+ year olds in China is expected to be 300 Million
2. The direct translation of “Dementia” in Chinese has a very negative connotation, meaning something like “of lesser IQ”. The translation has evolved since, and those in the medical field translate Dementia to Cognitive Impairment.

All of our host clients and projects will be addressing different impact areas as they relate to the Elderly and Dementia care in China. We all went to bed Sunday night with some serious excitement for the weeks to come!

Walking to breakfast the next day, the entire team looked sharp! We all dressed up for the Official Corporate Service Corps (CSC) kickoff, which is where we would all meet our clients in person for the first time at the IBM China HQ in Beijing.

During the kickoff we heard from all of the host organizations about their work, mission and some of their expectations in the four weeks to come. All of the IBMers and Project Assistants (PAs) got to introduce themselves as well. I have some serious respect for our PAs, as translating on the spot doesn’t seem or look easy at ALL.

My team is working with a Beijing hospital that creates personalized treatment plans for patients, fusing western and Chinese medicine together. As someone who LOVES acupuncture, I was super pumped about this!! While I was excited, I was also very nervous — I have never worked directly with a health care provider and wasn’t sure what to expect. I will spend more time talking about the specific work we are doing in the coming weeks!

We then went to lunch with our client and had some traditional Beijing cuisine. In an effort to not make your mouth water, I will just share something unique we started with — a “pear” soup / tea that is great for digestion, plus delicious! Then off to the client site to meet the hospital leadership. My teammate Krishnan said it best — it was a day of firsts. We had a formal meeting with the President, Vice President and additional senior leadership of the hospital — none of whom speak English. Meanwhile on the other side of the table was my team and our amazing PAs. The PAs translated the clients words and then ours back to them, I can only imagine how hard that must have been! We took pictures and then we were off to get a tour of the hospital and it was an experience I will never forget.

We started in the “recovery” hall, where Chinese medicine is the predominant method used to help patients heal. We saw things from acupuncture to herbal treatment. We then went through three additional floors of some things you would expect to see like pediatrics and neurology but also some unexpected things like the dentist unit and a VIP acupuncture room. As we were finishing up the tour we walked through the pharmacy where patients can get herbal Chinese prescriptions on one side and then Western medicine on the other. The Vice President that walked us around was so proud of the hospital and the doctors / students working there, it was so inspiring to see.

I am looking forward to working with the team to deliver some strategies to increase patient satisfaction, reimagine their marketing and branding strategy and train their staff on some leadership and soft-skills.

I surprisingly slept pretty well and woke up the next day ready to explore the city!

While in Beijing, each of our sub-teams will have Project Assistants which are typically students from around China. Not only will they be our Project Assistants, they will also be our translators, navigators, and WeChat experts aka our lifelines. All of the teams Project Assistants met us in the morning for a day of sightseeing. We were led by our fearless leaders, Tian and Yuying Li, from Pyxera Global, the organization facilitating our assignments over the next month. We boarded the bus and drove to our first location: Beijing Olympic Park.

The park is where the 2008 Olympics were held. We walked around and got tons of pictures of the “Bird’s Nest” and National Aquatics Center. We even spotted the IBM Beijing HQ — check out the selfie, see the strange looking building behind us — that’s it! And if you’re wondering…yes we did use a bright pink selfie stick to capture this shot…

Next up we stopped for lunch or you could call it a feast. We got fish, pork, beef, rice, noodles, salad, veggies…and so much more. I love how most of the restaurants here are family style , so you get to try a little bit of everything. We had time to roam around a bit and a couple of us stumbled upon the cutest photo-booth machine, see evidence below…

Next stop was Jinshan Park, which was beautiful and, I imagine, peaceful, when there are less tourist around. With rather high amounts of pollution in the air, the view from the top of the park was hazy, but still beautiful.

By this time almost everyone needed a nap, so we drove back to the hotel. With just over 17,000 steps for the day, I needed to put my feet up! Tomorrow is our offical orientation to learn more about what‘s to come in the next month and prepare us for the kickoff with our clients on Monday. I am so excited to get to work!!

Wondering what IBM Corporate Service Corps (CSC) is? Each year, IBM selects about 500 employees to implement pro bono projects around the world, serving nongovernmental organizations, small and medium enterprises, cultural institutions, governments, and others. The projects vary across locations, agencies, disciplines, and business challenges, which means every team deployed has a different experience in the program. Each CSC team is comprised of 13–15 IBMers from different parts of the world — talk about a CULTURE JAM!

Requirements for being accepted into the program include at least two years at IBM and having consistently positive performance reviews. Additionally, the application asks about qualities that make you fit for the program, how you will fulfill one of IBM’s core values — “Restlessly Reinvent — our company and ourselves” — and to share a story of a personal or professional challenge you overcame.

It took me about 10 drafts and multiple peer reviews (thanks friends!) but the final application I submitted last year was one I was proud of. When I got the the congratulations email that I was accepted, I felt a jolt of excitement. I also got this slight nervous feeling … I mean I would be leaving my day-to-day job and team for 4 weeks, traveling to another country, working with people from around the world — how could you not be nervous?!

That congratulations e-mail sketches out only a few details. I learned I’d been accepted to the “2018–2019 class” but that I’d have to wait to find out where I was going, who I’d be going with, and what we’d be doing. Waiting my turn, I got more and more excited (and nervous) watching Twitter / Facebook / IBM.com and seeing all the amazing teams that were being deployed. I got the news mid-summer about the assignment and since then I have been on weekly calls with the team and our CSC Mentor discussing what to expect, team dynamics, and the Chinese Culture.

And now, I am less than one month away from getting on a plane to embark on an experience of a lifetime with a team of incredible people! I will continue to write about my experience, sharing what it’s like to consult clients pro bono, work in a country where you don’t know the language (bet there will be a lot of funny stories on this point), and finally collaborate with global IBMers who come from different parts of the organization.

Stay tuned for more posts about the adventure, project, and volunteer work we get into in Beijing!

#CSCCH42 #CSC

Learn more about the program: https://www.ibm.com/ibm/responsibility/corporateservicecorps/