How to beat ‘breakout bounce’ in your online workshops

by Judy Rees

“No breakouts! No breakouts! Just no!” This new client was absolutely insistent, even though they said they wanted lots of group participation in their online event.

So we asked a few questions.

It turned out that they’d been embarrassed by ‘breakout bounce’ in some of their recent events.

You’ll have seen the breakout bounce, too: it’s when the online event leader announces there’ll be small groups for the next activity… and hurriedly, lots of people drop off the call.

The new client had lost almost his whole audience in one event. He thought it made him look silly in front of an important sponsor. No way was he going to repeat the experience!

But we discovered he’d made a very common error: lulling everyone into an ‘audience’ role by talking at them for ages, before springing breakouts on them as a surprise.

Unwittingly, he’d created exactly the situation he wanted to avoid.

In the circumstances, the participants’ bounce response was pretty reasonable. Remember that frequently-quoted old New York Times survey that placed death third in the list of people’s biggest fears, with the top two responses being 1. walking into a room full of strangers and 2. speaking in public? He’d triggered those fears in real time.

And online, of course, it’s really, really easy to bounce. If anyone ever asks, you can always blame a broadband failure.

But you rarely see a significant breakout bounce in the online gatherings that Rees McCann designs and facilitates.

So what are we doing differently? Let me explain.

Whenever we design an online workshop, conference or other gathering, we make sure to set up what I’m starting to call a ‘participation on-ramp’.

At every opportunity – before, during and after the event itself – we set things up to make active participation the default state: easy and comfortable.

And, importantly, we make the earliest steps super easy and super comfortable, building gradually to more challenging forms of engagement.

It starts before it starts. Promotional materials might invite people to participate in conversation and dialogue rather than listen to a star speaker, for example. And we always let people know that they get the most from the gathering if they join ready to be heard and seen – from a quiet place, with a webcam and headset and decent internet.

During the event, we make sure everyone has the chance to participate early, at a level that’s appropriate. In a medium-sized professional-networking gathering, the Magic Waiting Room comes into its own.

It’s vital that any early breakouts are small and short, with simple instructions. Easy and comfortable. And optional: it turns out that giving people a chance to opt out of the breakouts, but stay on the call, makes them more likely to join the groups.

Once people are comfortable with that, it’s OK to build a little.

By now, participants who initially registered just to grab some quick information may have started to get more deeply interested in how the topic applies to them, to build relationships, and perhaps even to enjoy themselves. We can shift to bigger groups. More complex topics. Slightly longer segments.

And as the event comes to an end, they’ll want to stay engaged, to stay connected. You’ll see people volunteering their LinkedIn profile links in the chat, or suggesting another get-together to discuss a specific aspect of the topic…

And so the conversation ends whenever and wherever it ends, well after the event itself.

It just works. When things are set up correctly, people actively participate, and enjoy doing so. And that means that our clients get to involve more people, more of the time, in the important social-impact-work they do.

Why not try it out yourself?