Empowering everyone to be able to share their gifts with the world

Penny Pullan joins Joanne Lockwood to explore what it takes to design and lead workshops and meetings where everyone can contribute their best work. Drawing on her early shift to virtual working after 9/11, Penny explains why effective virtual collaboration is more than simply stacking video calls, and how asynchronous working and better meeting design can be both more productive and more inclusive.

They discuss practical techniques for reducing the drain of back-to-back meetings, creating the right conditions for participation, and avoiding assumptions about what people need. Penny shares a simple planning approach that starts with purpose, then people, and only then process, plus a “magic six” set of meeting start-up questions to clarify aims, roles, ways of working, breaks, and what happens next.

The conversation also highlights inclusive communication and accessibility considerations, from avoiding culturally specific metaphors to checking for participants’ needs such as subtitles for deaf attendees or adaptations for blind participants. Throughout, the focus stays on making workshops work in person, virtually, or in hybrid formats, so teams can turn discussion into action.