Bringing your team together for an Align conversation in a remote or hybrid situation just got a lot easier. (And if you haven't yet run an Align with your team - here's advice on getting that set up).

Our Discussion Space tool walks you as the facilitator through every step of the debrief conversation. It also allows members of your team to type ideas, upvote others' ideas, get customized tips, and engage in the discussion through their own devices.

Here's everything you need to know in the video below (Click here to view this video in your browser)

To access a handy checklist for your team session, click here.

Additionally, we're happy to have a call with you ahead of your discussion to prep for it together. Schedule time with us at https://valence.co/coaching.

In order for your peers to come prepared for the discussion, it's important for them to have a chance to review the Align results. If you haven't done so already, share the results with people a minimum of 24 hours ahead of the meeting.

A modal will appear, allowing you to share the results with the entire team. It will also indicate the specific information that will be shared.

A critical part of your conversation will be having the right people involved! So in the minutes before your meeting:

A modal will appear where you can select who you would like to invite to the discussion space and how (copy the link and share it yourself or have Valence send them emails).

If you'd like to see how the tool works ahead of the meeting, we've got you covered:

At the bottom of the page, you'll find a blue card on which you can run a preview mode of the discussion. This preview mode reflects your Align results but is fail-safe and nothing you do here will impact your real discussion.
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In your Align report, click on the 'Team Conversation' tab, and then click on 'Begin Exploring'.

The discussion space walks you through four steps sharing major takeaways, prioritizing focus areas, exploring key points, and finalizing the next steps.

At each step, you can type in thoughts and then discuss

Each section has fields that accept anonymous text comments. Every member of the team can input their thinking for all to see. No more hijacking by the loudest person, everyone gets a chance to contribute their ideas.

Pro-tip: if you are an admin on the team, check out the "Facilitator Help" tab for advice on what to do in each step.

At the beginning of the conversation, you should ask each person to take 1 minute and type in their #1 takeaway from the results of the exercise.

If they didn't fully read their report they can access it in the top left, by hitting the "View Align Results" button.

Take only 1-2 minutes for people to type their initial thoughts, then get talking! There's plenty of time for people to finish typing and upvoting others' comments with the thumbs-up buttons, so get people talking and get the energy going early on.

Here you can select a few of the key statements to focus on for a deeper discussion. Give teammates a chance to both vote with the thumbs-up buttons and also talk about why they would like to focus on any specific area.

Then, simply click on the statements you want to focus on. Often teams focus on the lower-scoring statements but hear what your team thinks is most critical to discuss and improve upon.

Pro-tip: try to limit this to just 1-2 key areas; the goal is to help the team focus on what really matters most, and trying to cover too much will feel overwhelming.

Now for the best part - The deep dive into the key topic(s).

Similar to the Share/Warmup, you can give everyone on the team a couple of minutes to write their answers to all the questions that pop up. Then start talking again! This is the meat of the conversation and where you'll get to the important steps of

Pro-tip: Try to focus the conversation on what your team can influence/control. Often times you will identify areas that may be external to your control - think about what aspects you can change and what you can't - this will help you create more realistic and feasible solutions.

Now you're at the last step where you can drive commitment to the next steps the team should make to get better. You'll notice that any "Action Items" identified previously on the Explore step are carried forward here.

Clicking the "Finish Discussion" will bring you to the page seen below, where you can directly import your actions from your discussion and set up a Habit to keep yourselves accountable with reminders and tracking over time.

Read this article to learn how to make a team Habit and see a sample report of the Habit tool here.

Pro-tip: End things on a positive note! By design, an Align conversation will tend to focus on identifying improvement areas, but there are usually a lot of strengths and things to celebrate as well. We recommend ending with a round of shout-outs or celebrations for what's been going well with the team.

We hope you have a great discussion so please let us know if you have any other questions

Here's a handy checklist that you can use to make sure you have everything for a great team conversation.