Fostering Connection in Live Courses with Jan Keck

jan-keck-ari-iny-abe_full_length oct 25, Wed, Oct 25, 2023 6:18AM • 29:02 SUMMARY KEYWORDS people, session, cohort, breakout rooms, share, group, person, building, participants, starting, feel, teach, create, easier, message, ideally, trust, content, connected, yawn SPEAKERS Jan Keck, Abe Crystal, Ari Iny Ari Iny 00:00 Okay. All right. So we'll kick off with our intro. Hello and welcome to course Lab. I'm Eleni the director of growth at Mercy. And I'm here with my co host, APE crystal, the co founder of resu. Abe Crystal 00:14 Hey there already. Ari Iny 00:16 Today we welcome Yan kick to the show, yawn. Keck is a master facilitator of connections and the creator of ask deep questions. Thanks for joining us today. 00:27 Nice to be here. Ari Iny 00:29 So to kick us off, could you give us kind of a 30,000 foot view of yourself and how you came to the course building industry Jan Keck 00:39 30,000 foot view and probably also 30 seconds right? Ari Iny 00:44 Or a minute. Jan Keck 00:49 I recently started introducing myself as a recovering Shy Guy. Because I realized that there's things that happened when I was growing up, that led me to where I am today and all the work that I'm doing right now. And a lot of it had to do with being a person, let's say in class that definitely had the right answer, but not the courage to raise my hand. And I feel like there were lots of places where just being shy or being more quiet felt like it was holding me back from doing the things that I wanted to do. And there were only a few times where there was a person, let's say the person was facilitating was standing in the front of class who would actually probe me and invite me to contribute and make sure that I feel part of the group. And now I'm realizing, hey, that's, that's what I want to teach others, I want to teach others how they can make sure that nobody feels left out that all the voices in the room are heard that we don't force people into doing something that they're not ready to do. And one of the things I'm focusing a lot right now is talking about icebreakers. And how for some people that just moves way too fast. And I probably was one of them when I was growing up, where I had to introduce myself in a fun way. And the closer it gets to being in my turn, the faster my my heart would beat. And the more anxious I would get, because I didn't know what to say. And I didn't want to be the center of attention. And I just kind of said, Hey, I'm young, and get it over with and try to move it to the next person didn't really want to be that, that center of attention. And now, when I design workshops, when I design trainings, when I run courses, which mostly are live code based courses, I keep that in mind that there are people in my session that might not be the ones who unmute, and like raise their hand and share and contribute. So that's kind of the short story in kind of how I got to where I am today. Ari Iny 02:51 And your programs. So tell us a little bit more about the program. So is it for you know, those people who are trying to create connections and be not be the Shy Guy as it were? And or is it something that around something else. Jan Keck 03:09 I've mostly focus on working with people who run either meetings, trainings, or workshops. So I can already see it's quite a large group. But at the same time, I say they have to value the connections between the participants. Like if there's someone who just wants to deliver content and has like a PowerPoint slide deck ready to go, and they're just going to talk for an hour without any interaction. That's not a person that I can really help. But once you start making it interactive, once you start connecting the participants to each other, then I think you can unlock so much more learning and create more of an experience for for everyone. Ari Iny 03:50 Yeah, creating community a feel is, you know, one thing that can make a huge difference in outcomes for people. So can you tell us a little bit more about how you support the facilitators and the trainers to actually do that within the groups that they're working with? Because I'm assuming some of the groups are working with or working with for a long time. And sometimes it's just, you know, a one off? Jan Keck 04:13 Yeah, it's a, it's a very wide range of kind of areas that people people work in, some of them work with organizations, and they come in to do a workshop with a team that knows each other really well, but they don't have trust built with them coming in as the trainer or the facilitator. And then other times, it's ongoing cohorts, kind of like what I'm doing where they need to build trust, ideally in the beginning, and then that hopefully carries on the further you go down the road. And when I think about building trust, not only with a group, but also between people, I often think about the trust battery. I don't know if you've heard that term before, as something that was made popular by the CEO of Shopify. And he talks about the idea that when you first meet someone, or when you, in general meet a person, either your trust battery is all the way empty, meaning like you don't trust anyone, they have to really build up that trust with everything that they do and have to make promises and then hold there promises to kind of fill that battery up. Other people, their battery starts all the way full. And whenever they disappoint you, the battery goes empty a little bit. And then there's people who are like, it's 5050. Like, I'm not going to decide right now, just show me what you got, and with every interaction that either increases or decreases. So when you're thinking about that, in your head, how do you start building trust with people, you have to assume that some people, they're already full, some people are starting to empty, and some people are starting right in the middle. So ideally, you will be setting the right expectations, and then meeting those expectations. So I talk a lot about that, especially in like online courses where I know some of my clients, they've realized that people just drop off when they start saying, Okay, everybody, we're gonna go to breakout room. And half of the time, I think it's because everybody was just with their cameras off folding the laundry, just listening in to the content thinking, Oh, this is going to be like a typical webinar, I can do other things, I can do multitasking. And then when they have to go to breakout rooms, they're like, Oh, but I wasn't ready for that. I don't know I'm dressed in my pajamas, I can be on camera, and then they drop off. So if we set expectations ahead of time, that this will be interactive, this will be different, then you'll have a lot more people sticking around. Ari Iny 06:46 Is there anything? So I mean, that's one as the beginning of it setting expectations, so they all come prepared. And primed. Is there anything else that you would recommend just as an example, to the our listeners around their own journeys, with course creation and building community interests within their cohorts? Jan Keck 07:09 Yeah, there's one more thing I would say is maybe one of the bigger mistakes I see people make. If it is people who run courses, but also anybody who hosts a meeting or a gathering of some sort, which happens in the first couple of seconds when the first people join in. And that is the sentence, let's just wait until everyone has arrived. I'm sure you've heard the sentence before. Maybe you've said it before. I have said it before. I've heard it way too much. And there is one big problem that kind of comes from that, which is all the people who showed up on time. What, what what are they going to do now? First of all, they feel like I'm being penalized for showing up on time, you said it's going to start at 8am here at eight. So why are we not getting started. So they start to get into a little bit of a bad mood, then they're probably gonna get their phone out, start checking their emails, surfing on social media doing something else. And when you actually want to get started once, let's say everyone is here, the majority is here. And you're gonna have a really hard time getting them out of whatever they're doing. Like if you're in the middle of responding to an email, and I know that for myself, I'm not going to like I want to finish that email, before my attention can switch again. So those first few minutes to me are really crucial in setting the tone for what's about to come. And if it is going to be interactive, then we need to be engaging people as they're, as they're logging in. And there's lots of different things we can do. I would say the easiest is start off with a question, have people comment in the chat, and just respond to a simple question that you can then comment on. There's other tools that I love to use that create word clouds that are a little bit more visual than just using the chat. And whatever you do, again, it sets the tone for what it's about to come. So you don't want people to multitask during your session. You want them to pay attention. You don't want them to be doing something else and being disengaged. And I think you can find things easily that are connected to the content that you're about to deliver. So it feels like you're starting on time. And for the few people who show up a few minutes later, because back to back meetings need to run to the washroom, they're still able to join the session. Like there's some things that you're only going to talk about Once everyone is here like your official start. So that's why I often call these first few minutes the unofficial start, let's say the first five, six minutes. Ari Iny 09:50 Interesting and it sounds like through that kind of engagement. That unofficial start you're creating trust between the people you're presenting to When the presenter, is there an element also creating trust within the group itself. Yeah, and that is, Jan Keck 10:09 because when people start engaging in, they start sharing, they will notice similarities between them. Ideally, if, of course, people have their cameras on, and you can see people's faces, it's going to be a lot easier to spot. Different similarities. If you asking people to share, let's say where they're located, it's not the deepest, not the greatest question to always start out. But if you notice, oh, we're both in in Toronto, we're both in New York, then. And the audience is international, you'll feel a little bit more connected to that person. And if you then get into your breakout room, hopefully sooner than later, with that person or with someone else, you feel like, okay, I already know a little bit about who else is here. Ari Iny 10:56 And you mentioned breakout rooms a couple of times now, you know, so having that process of time within the group for themselves to interact with each other? How important would you say that is kind of within course building and kind of giving those opportunities versus just teaching outright. And leaving it there. Jan Keck 11:21 I would not ever do a course or a session or a workshop anymore. Without breakout rooms, I feel like that's the part that is the most powerful in people learning or not only from from me, like, in most of the rooms that I teach, or the most of the Zoom calls, or whatever platform you use that I am in, I feel like I'm not the only one with expertise and wisdom here, there is so much more knowledge in the room. And if I'm the only one talking, then I'm kind of taking something away from what the group could learn. And most of the learning, I think happens when you hear an idea, or you experience something and you have a moment to debrief it. And it's very often much easier to debrief with a smaller group rather than doing it with a large group. Going back to making sure that nobody feels left out. If I say okay, I know who has a question who wants to share something, it's probably always going to be the same to three people that will raise their hand throughout a cohort photo session. And I noticed that too, and I'm very thankful to those people, because without them, it would be much quieter. But at the same time, just unmuting. And sharing your opinion is not the only way they can, participants can contribute. We have the chat, we have breakout rooms with different polls and tried to use a wide wide range of different methods. And breakout rooms is just the one that I feel like, has the ability for every person to share something, ideally get acknowledged and feel seen and heard by the other person was there. Because I can't do that for every single person in the main room. Like if we have 30 students, 30 participants, and everybody shares something, even if it's just for a minute, that's going to be half an hour. So it's not very time effective. But in breakout rooms, I could do pairs. And if I wanted each person to share for a minute, that's two minutes for the whole group of 30 Plus, of course buffer and time to send them to the breaker and but it's going to save a lot of time. And I think it will be more impactful on the participants. Ari Iny 13:36 Have some more questions around this. But Abe Crystal 13:41 he I mean, there's a lot here, right? There's a lot of ideas, a lot of directions people could go in. So you know, for people who are newer to this, maybe people who are looking to you know, add live sessions live facilitation to a course are already doing or maybe they're starting from scratch, right? Maybe they're creating their first pilot course, for example. Do you have kind of a framework or a way of thinking around like, where do you start, right? Like, how would you? How would you guide someone to sort of plan say, you know, the first kind of live class, they're going to teach in a cohort based course or the first live workshop they're going to do? Yeah, I'm just wondering if you have a way of helping people think about like, how do I get into this? Where do I start? Jan Keck 14:30 Yeah, to me, a lot of the work that I focus on is the beginning of a session or the beginning of a cohort, because everybody's content is going to be different. I don't have much to say about how to structure your content. But the one thing I always go back to whenever I'm designing something is an you might not be able to see this because you're just listening to your podcast, but I have a little campfire behind me. That is that I built and to me creating an experience is Much like building a campfire, where I might have this big log that I want you want to light up because it will provide the most warmth, that will create the biggest fire. But if I just held a lighter up to that log, nothing would happen, just too big for that small flame to do anything. So I have to start with something that was very easy to burn, let's say my paper, my Tinder, and then add little sticks, little bigger sticks my kindling, all on top. And by the end, I can put that big log on the fire. So when I designed something I was thinking about, well, what is that big log? What is that thing that might be the most uncomfortable for my participants for my students to do, but also has the biggest impact on the session? And that's kind of where I'm working up towards. So I'm kind of reverse engineering. Okay, what are the things that I need to do before that, and what I need to do before that, and ideally, the first thing is going to be very easy. It's not going to involve a lot of risks for people to take. And then I'm slowly increasing the risk, let's say, if I just have them share something in the chat is much easier than connecting with someone in a breakout room, it's much easier to then speak in front of the whole group and unmuting unmuting yourself. So I always layer it in that way. And like I said, I spent a lot of time making sure that I build up in the beginning to get there. Abe Crystal 16:29 Do you have a good example of that, you know, you're from one of your sessions or something like that you've seen a client or when someone when you're pregnant is to use it, kind of make that Jan Keck 16:38 call? Yeah, people. For example, let's actually take the session that I'm teaching right after this interview today, I'm in the middle of a cohort that is teaching people how, basically is teaching that concept of how you build that campfire. It's called ice melter. So it's kind of taking icebreakers and flipping that on its head, like breaking the ice is way too fast for a group if you want to want them to feel connected and get more comfortable. melting the ice is a slower process, it takes longer. And we're in a session where we talk about this big log, and I want them to experience what that big log could be. So in this session, we're actually going to have a conversation about what are some of the things that worry each person right now the most in your personal life in the world, and kind of being where we're at. I know this is going to be a very vulnerable conversation to have. And I know people will not be ready to have that. If we just started. Everybody come in. Nice to see you. Okay, what's the biggest worry that you have right now? It will not, it will not work. So I'm kind of building the session up and we will talk about how do you build trust with another person. Because in the end, that's the reason why I want them to share this is when we share something as vulnerable as this. My intention is we'll realize we're not that different from each other. We all worry about similar things. And we all want similar things out of our life. And it doesn't matter what the things are on the surface that kind of we deal with every day. So that's kind of the lesson I want them to understand. So everything that I do beforehand needs to be aligning to that. And will be, for example, using the tool that I'm using to collect these, these answers, which is going to be anonymous. So it makes it easier for people to be honest and truthful. I will be using that tool at the beginning of the session with a different purpose much easier just like checking how connected you feel to each other right now for on a scale from one to 10. Later, we'll be using it for them to actually share. And I'll give them time to kind of write their answers. And after that we do the breakout room where they get to debrief with one or two other people. And after that, that's when the first time we'll have a conversation with the whole group in the main room. So we're kind of layering it up to that that conversation at the end that hopefully will lead to the the learning I want them to have. And I think that's going to be a much more impactful way to teach this rather than saying, Okay, if you want people to learn something, have them experience it, rather than telling them right, that's kind of the lesson that I could teach, but it's going to take a much longer time to get them to actually have that experience and hopefully draw their own conclusions from it. Ari Iny 19:40 Something that comes to mind to me is that for a thing that a lot of entrepreneurs who are going into course building are starting to teach might not have a lot of experience with it. Their immediate reaction might be to take away As the interaction just because you can't control what people will do, like, I don't know what people are going to do in the breakout room, I don't know how that's going to. So a couple questions there. A, what are your thoughts on that and be? Do you put any thoughts into kind of mitigating issues that could happen when you're not in control of the learning experience, because the moment you invite others into your learning experience, there is a certain level of wildcard there. Jan Keck 20:33 Yes, I totally, totally get where, where this is coming from. And the idea of not being in control can feel really scary. Even for myself, I sound like for today's session, I am not quite sure what will happen. But this is also the fourth training session I'm doing with the same group. So I feel like I've already built trust, I build the connections with them, I feel confident that we can go there. But if you're just starting out, that definitely can feel scary, like just allowing people to unmute might be already a scary thing to do. I'm going back to the reason why I want this to be not just me talking is I feel like on one hand, I'm the expert. I gathered everyone here, I'm teaching some content. At the same time, I'm also a student, I want to learn what other things are in the room and I want to get feedback from people. What are you? What are they taking away from the things I'm sharing? To me, this is all a lot of experimentation. And I'm sharing something I'm asking did this land? How would you apply this? And that will then make my next cohort even better? And I'm kind of doing this iterative process where, to me it's a conversation between me and the participants. But you were asking, How do I make sure that it's not going going all over the place and turning into chaos. I set this up from the very beginning I for this specific cohort, they know this is the first time I'm teaching this. And in every session, I'm running experiments, I'm trying something I've never done before. And everybody opted in to basically be the guinea pigs and give me feedback. And together we will find the learning. So for this court, that's kind of an extra level. But even if I run a course that I've run many times, let's say around virtual facilitation skills, I have one of the first sessions where we talk about group agreements, or community agreements, like what are the rules that we want to follow to make sure that we can learn better that we can work well together that we respect each other. And that's where I will talk about things like take space and make space, making sure that everybody has a chance to contribute, especially in breakout rooms where I can be in, I want to make sure that it's not just one person talking for the full time, everybody should have a chance to speak. So if you're a person that takes up a lot of space, maybe step back every once in a while and let other people take the floor. And if you're a person that usually doesn't speak that much or contributed as much, I'm going to invite you to challenge yourself and maybe contribute a little bit more without making it feel completely uncomfortable and, and make you want to leave the meeting, right? Everybody is in the end, in control over their own experience. So if you want to get more out of it, then maybe you put more into it. So those are some of the things and depending on the group and the type of session, I will have different agreements in that list that I will go over with my group. Awesome. Abe Crystal 23:49 Anything else that you'd like to share any other lessons learned you want to share with our our listeners before we wrap up? Jan Keck 24:00 I'm trying to think, and this is probably a question that I want you to edit out. But let me just ask you for some feedback. Do you want me to talk more about what to do with the groups once they're in? Or should I share one thing that I did in launching this current course that I feel like I want to apply again? Actually, no, let me think because you're if we're wanting to talk to the people who are just starting out that might not be as relevant Abe Crystal 24:31 I think there's a mix there. Yeah, there's definitely some people who are just starting out but there's also people who are running courses and are looking to make them better. Jan Keck 24:39 Right, I'll I'll share one I'll show one thing that I do in my courses that I have not seen anybody else do the really delight your students that can't be their life because anybody knows if you're running a life court, you know not going to get 100% of students always showing up to every session, I always make sure that I send out a recording. Now with all the AI tools, I'll make sure that I get get them the AI summary with timecode. So that they can skip around sometimes even auto creates chapters, depending on your platform, right. But there's one thing that I always add to my recordings when everybody gets sent to breakout rooms, because this is my moment when everybody has left the main room that I'm there by myself. And I can talk to the person watching the recording. So always leave these secret hidden messages, sometimes with fun instructions, or just like, hey, if you're watching this recording, here's what I want you to do right now. So they still get a benefit of like not having, like they're watching the recording, they couldn't be their life. But they're still getting the benefit of the lesson that everybody else is doing in breakout rooms. Or sometimes it's literally just hate sent me a quick message, if you seen the secret message, and I'll send you a little gift or I'll send you a video message back, just so I create this moment of surprise for them. Because what I think most people do is either you edit out the time everybody's in the breakout room, or you just leave it in, and it's just this black screen and people skip over it. So I keep adding these secret messages, which also for me as the course creator is a way for testing, hey, who actually watched the recording. And whenever I get one of those responses, or those messages, it really makes me makes me really happy that somebody's actually watching it. And not just, Hey, I couldn't make it live. And then you have access to pre recorded content. Most people don't, don't even bother watching it. So it's a it's a little kind of test for me to make sure that it's working. Ari Iny 26:46 That's really cool. Thanks for sharing. Thank you. Jan Keck 26:50 And if I want to connected to building trust and connections, I mean, I'm now building a one on one relationship with that person who sent me the message. Because now I can actually continue the conversation. And to me, those are the moments that make when you're part of a large cohort as the student and the person who's leading it sends you a personal message. Even if it's for everyone, like I'm speaking directly to that one person, it feels different, like you're going to connect with that person differently. Ari Iny 27:23 You have people who attended live watch the recording just for those messages. Jan Keck 27:28 Now that they've caught up that this is happening, they are actually going to, like I've heard from some people, they're scrubbing through to find the hidden messages, because in other cohorts, I've done a little competition with a bingo card of like, here's like the challenges you need to complete by the end of the course. And then we're going to do a big raffle. And one of the challenges would find this hidden message. And some people have messaged me at the end of the course I'm like, What's the hidden message? I haven't seen any. And that's when I would refer them to have you like watched any recording because I know you were there at all the live sessions. But if you watch the recording, you might find one of those. So they actually went and watch it just because of that. Ari Iny 28:10 Awesome. All right. Anything else? Abe Crystal 28:16 No, that was great. Thank you. I'm just gonna do quick results. And then we will say say our side goodbyes. Alright, so yawn. Keck is the creator of ask deep questions and the virtual facilitator training program that we discussed today. You can learn more about him and all he's got to offer over at yawn keck.com That's eon cak ke ck.com. Ari Iny 28:43 Thank you so much, John, for taking the time with us. 28:46 Yeah, thank you both for being available a little bit earlier than your usual time slot. I know we did some rearranging. So I'm very thankful for that. Ari Iny 28:56 Yeah, no problem.