We’ve all become accustomed to using the likes of Zoom over the past few years.

Thankfully things like video quality and interactivity have come on in leaps and bounds too, meaning the overall experience we can now have ‘online’ is a much richer and rewarding one.

It’s also one of the reasons ‘online practice rooms’ have started becoming more and more popular as the need for being face-to-face with a colleague, team member or manager has lessened in the new hybrid or remote working world.

So how exactly does an ‘online practice room’ work and what are the steps we take here at PRO to get an ‘online practice session’ set up? 

Steps to get an online practice session set up

Here at PRO, we like to keep things simple! So getting an online practice session set up really is as easy as ABC.

  1. It’s up to you when you want to have your session, so you can fit it in around other work and personal commitments. All you need to do is decide on when you want to have it!  Then, get in touch with our Booking Team (by emailing bookings@practiceroomonline.com) who will get everything set up for you. And don’t forget, the session can be in English or your local language – we can deliver in 12 different languages!
  2. Within 24 hours of connecting with our Booking Team, you’ll receive a calendar invite for the session itself. Please accept this invite.

As pre-work to the session, you’ll need to either:

  • Read the scenario which you have been set, or
  • Create your own scenario by completing and submitting our online form, for example, this could be that difficult salary conversation you need to have next week

And that’s it, you’re ready to go!

Should any change of plan crop up, just get back in touch with our Booking Team to rearrange your session. You can make any changes up to 48 hours before the session time.

“We don’t always have the resource in house to offer 1:1 coaching so PRO is a great way for us to support our leaders in a growing business with practical learning. PRO really does feel like an extension of our Talent Development offering!”

Hannah Burke, Senior Talent Development Manager, Matillion

How the online practice session is run

The day of your practice session has arrived – in just a few short hours, you’ll be walking away from the session feeling more confident and inspired about how to handle that difficult work conversation you’ve got coming up!

Once again, getting on to the session itself is really easy.

  1. When your session time comes around, just click on the link in your calendar invite and join the session. Your Practice Coach will be there waiting to greet you!
  2. After some intros, you’ll need to briefly discuss with your Practice Coach the scenario you want to cover and what your goal is. And don’t worry, they will put you completely at ease and explain how the session will run. This part typically takes about 10 minutes.
  3. Next, you’ll run through the conversation with your Practice Coach, taking approximately 15 minutes to do this.
  4. You’ll then take a pause and get feedback from your Practice Coach on how the conversation went. Here, you’ll be encouraged by your Coach to think of different ways you could tackle the scenario. This part takes about 15 minutes too.
  5. Then, you’ll try the conversation again – implementing the feedback and starting to feel much more confident about how it’s going. You’ll spend a further 10 minutes doing this.
  6. Finally, another break of about 5 minutes where your Practice Coach will share some final thoughts and discuss with you what you did better in the second run.

And there you have it! A valuable hour with a trained Practice Coach spent practising that difficult conversation you have coming up. You’ll come away with a ton of useful feedback and feel more confident about how to have that conversation in real life. Oh, and you’ll get the recording of the session in case you want to watch any parts back again in your own time.

Why not check out our video to see a snapshot of a practice session in action!

See it in action