Four Exercises to try in your next Virtual Whiteboarding Session

Whiteboarding is a critical part of the brainstorming process that helps you realize the full potential of your ideas. With remote and hybrid work becoming standard across the country, virtual whiteboarding session have become inherent parts of the online workspace. And a few key techniques will maximize their effectiveness.

In this article, we will outline four innovative exercises that help provide direction to general brainstorming sessions and to specific virtual whiteboard instances. Whether you are using Fresco, Mural, or some other virtual whiteboard. These practices should help engage your team.

Virtual Whiteboarding Session Exercises

Workplaces like virtual whiteboards that people operate through to collaborate from anywhere. They provide a ton of features that teams can use collaboratively. To maximize their potential, however, you need to properly implement innovative exercises to engage your team. Here are some best practices to motivate your team and drive your whiteboarding sessions.

#1 → Implement Structure

Providing structure is crucial for a virtual whiteboarding session, and visual collaboration tools inherently emphasize structure as part of their programs. It can be easy to overlook structure as an intrinsic part of whiteboarding. Thus, it’s even more important to take it into consideration.

There are multiple ways to implement structure on virtual whiteboards. They range from different teams operating side by side to using specific pre-made templates for guiding your team’s collaboration. You can also create your own templates to fit the most unique scenarios. Implementing meaningful structure creates an environment of direction and creativity and gives people solid guidelines to help focus their contributions.

Especially when working virtually, by giving people guideposts to their collaboration, you support the entire team’s ability to work together and focus on the task at hand. Taking the structure of your virtual whiteboarding instance into consideration helps your collaboration take on real meaning and align with your values.

#2 → Clarify Goals and Expectations

It also might seem inherent to these innovative exercises yet emphasizing your goals and expectations can give crucial guidance to virtual whiteboarding.

Often during traditional collaboration, if you work closely with the people in the room, you can take the basics for granted. Transitioning to a virtual space, however, changes how your team operates and understands each other, and fundamentals can get lost. Emphasizing your team’s specific goals and expectations is vital.

Making an active effort to attach all your contributions to examples or overarching goals is a practice that keeps your team focused on the task at hand. Write goals on your board to remind people of the tasks or connect ideas or contributions to possible goals. This helps people think hard about what they’re trying to accomplish and keep focused.

Clarifying goals, like implementing a structure, is something so inherent to traditional collaboration that it could get lost in the scuffle of virtual whiteboards. Transitioning to a virtual workspace requires acknowledging all the important aspects that make up your collaboration. Actively engaging your goal with every contribution that you make is a great way to do this and helps keep your team on track.

#3 → Incognito Collaboration

Collaboration in general can rely on the contributions of a few rather than many. When using a traditional whiteboard, this can be difficult to combat. Especially when you rely on these contributions to keep the meeting moving forward. Transitioning to a virtual setting, people often feel less compelled to participate and may be distracted by other tasks. It is critical you work hard to engage your entire team to get the most out of your collaboration.

Virtual whiteboards have taken this into consideration and developed a way for people’s voices to be heard through the crowd. Most virtual whiteboards have incognito features, allowing everyone to collaborate without others being able to see their work. Where the strategy of clarifying expectations and goals is meant to narrow people’s ideas towards the goal, allowing people to make incognito contributions allows everyone to expand their minds and implement free thinking into collaboration. Everyone involved can think freely and contribute. This allows people who normally struggle to get their ideas through to participate.

Using incognito collaboration even for a short period may seem strange to teams hoping to build successful brainstorming. In creating a free-thinking and open environment, incognito collaboration mode is worth a try.

#4 → Be Prepared for Follow Through

One of the most critical aspects of collaboration virtual whiteboarding session lacks is easy and quick follow-through. This isn’t as important to emphasize when whiteboarding in person. Because it’s easy to transition when you’re in the same room collaborating with your team. Being in the same workspace allows you to quickly move from one workflow to another with your entire team present and can be an extension of your collaboration session.

When working virtually, transitioning your team to the next steps can be more cumbersome, so prepare your follow-through in advance. Virtual whiteboards grant the ability to pivot between templates easily or incorporate follow-through activities so organizing your next steps becomes an inherent part of your brainstorming flow.

When you prioritize your next steps, this also gives people a north star to guide their activities. Preparing your follow-through allows people to know where they’re going after they finish tasks, maintaining creative momentum. Preparation on a virtual whiteboard is easy, so prioritizing this frequently can make it a seamless addition to your collaboration session.

Conclusion

These innovative exercises and best practices should help you and your team collaborate freely and increase the productivity of your virtual whiteboarding session. Virtual whiteboards hold immense collaborative potential. By implementing these practices, you can use them better than ever. Knowing how to best implement virtual whiteboards is critical when working remotely, and this guide can help you do just that.

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This article was a guest post, authored by Paul VanZandt, Founder at Fresco.