Building your visual collaboration and facilitation skills takes time, practice, and a network of support — and doing it remotely requires taking these skills to the next level.
That’s why we love shining the spotlight on our MURAL community members who are leading the charge when it comes to remote working. Their professional knowledge and expertise of visual collaboration ranges from facilitating impactful meetings, to being trusted thought-leaders in the industry. And they do this all agnostic of time and place with the power of Mural.
Build deep connections
Remote work requires trust and connection. In a virtual world, deep connections matter most and as journalist, designer, and lecturer Slava Shestopalov highlighted in his recent blog — icebreakers build connections fast.
The community has been brainstorming some fun Icebreaker Topics to help energize any meeting or workshop. My top three include:
- 3 things my pet hates 🐶
- Question mystery doors 🚪
- Animal affinity identification 🐬
Speaking of puppies, our Templates team released a new ULTIMATE Scrum Meetings template recently. It’s easily customizable, and BONUS, our community members keep sharing adorable pet photos in the comments. 👏
Know what success looks like
We dream big. We believe remote collaboration and teamwork transcend time and space and can be more effective than in-person meetings. Our community of facilitators are out in the world making this dream a reality, and who better to learn from than people doing the work right now?
An inspirational highlight to callout is Chris_W who used MURAL to empower 600 consultants across the Middle East and Africa with remote collaboration software. When asked how he would characterize the impact that this work ended up having, Chris noted that out of all the software he uses, he felt that WebEx and MURAL have had the greatest penetration because of their adaptability — and while Slack was a close third, it was really only powerful for the teams who used all of its functionality.
“The biggest impact [was] clients seeing us using these tools,” he says. “MURAL in particular was a big hit and has produced a lot of valuable use cases.” Even when working remotely, Chris says he’s been able to have plenty of opportunities for connection and to be able to work and play together collaboratively through the use of MURAL.
We’d love to hear examples of inspirational sessions you've facilitated or participated in MURAL.
Find the method that works for your team
It has been said that “the best tools are ones that work for your team.” It’s all too easy to feel the pressure of picking the perfect MURAL template or icebreaker for your next meeting or workshop.
Picking the one you think resonates for your team, even if it’s not out-of-box, is critical to achieving successful outcomes. This came up in conversation recently when Robert_Sk asked the community if “anyone [has] a use case for MURAL being used for wireframing?”
ryannee shared a wealth of knowledge from his five years of experience with wireframing in MURAL. He opts for MURAL over a more purpose-built wireframing platform and pointed out that “[it] forces [him] to not fiddle with details too early [which is] perfect for wireframing.” He also recommends creating a kit of parts, including all the pieces needed to structure your wireframe from idea to solution.
🚀 We've launched Template Ideas in the MURAL Community! We’d love to hear what you want and need most here, so post your requests and upvote others! Adambacon uses "Lean Coffee Sessions" and would love to see some templates to help facilitate these quick chats.
Embrace creativity to meet your needs
With a platform as flexible as MURAL, finding new ways to use existing functionality helps you collaborate better. Yuval shared a feature idea to have a visual “time’s up” reminder, demonstrating this creativity perfectly. “Sometimes the timer isn't enough to pull people back from breakout rooms. I've been using the Celebrate feature as another nudge.” The timer goes off, and Yuval sets off the fireworks as a reminder to head back to the main room. Is it a work around? Yes. Is it effective? Yes. Can you vote on the idea to help advocate for adding this into future MURAL product releases? Yes!
Using all the capabilities of a solution in new and unique ways places your teammates first, and makes you a better, more collaborative teammate.
Remote collaboration — a skill that you build
Mural understands that becoming ‘the best teammate you can be’ is part of your unique, professional journey. The better we get at remote collaboration, the more trust we build within our teams, the bigger the problems we can solve together.
