7 Tips to Facilitating Better Workshops
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Hey Reader, In the past months I’ve been running a lot of workshops live and in person and I had forgotten how exciting and fun they can be. They can also be tiring, both for the facilitators and the participants. I will not geek out today on the chemical and neurological reasons why, but everybody gets performance anxiety, people seem more afraid to talk, the engine starts slower than online. So today I’m going to share some 7 tips to facilitating better workshops plus a bonus one because generosity pays forward and I’m sure in this “back to school” time you are bound to have more and more workshops. TIP #1 Performance anxiety will disappear if you remember to be there for the people in the workshop, instead of worrying to try and seem intelligent for yourself. You don’t need to be the one who says everything: you can really prepare the activities with prompts and think more in terms of questions so that people join in the co-creation of the space with you. Example? Instead of telling people what Performance is, how about:
It’s a double win: you don’t need to be over smart, and you can accept and honor the intelligence of your participants. TIP #2 Connect your audience with the topic of the workshop early on: what they know about it; what they want to know about it. Make them write that down, which engages the body. It’s a kinesthetic approach to learn better. The key lesson here? Don’t waste time on icebreakers that have nothing to do with the topic of the workshop. Use each minute to get that engine accelerating from the start. TIP #3 On that note of connection, make your participants move AND connect WITH OTHERS as well just as early, by sharing their experiences and expectations, by pairing, by forming small groups, by forming lines. Chances are in an in-person workshop they will interact, so getting the awkwardness out of the way early and lightly, being comfortable with each other, pays off if you do that in the first few minutes. Do that even before you introduce the agenda for the day! Logistics can wait. TIP #4 No concept should be hammered on people’s head. You don’t make people learn more by telling them more. Talk a bit, but ask more, invite more. Let people’s own curiosity make the details of the content. You should know a lot about it, but you use only what you need. Then, after having people complete the “teaching” with their own knowledge, have an activity ready to really bring the concept home. I know some of us enjoy the “speaker” life. But workshops and work sessions are not a speaking gig. Separate the two very clearly to be successful in either. TIP #5 Make sure participants have plenty of time to interact with the materials and with themselves. It really frustrates people when they feel rushed through an activity. Whatever topic, concept, or idea you want to talk through, can be better understood by people doing things to “live” that concept. Example: Explain a sprint and have them run a fake sprint in the workshop with plenty of time for the execution and the debrief. TIP #6 Now that’s one we fall prey often: Make sure in the timing of your activities you include the time you explain AND answer questions before people jump into the activity. You know, we say certain activities take 15 minutes, but we underestimate how long it takes to explain things. Even if it takes 2 minutes, two minutes here and there can derail your workshop if you have a hard stop time. So, in a case like this, the total time for the activity would be 17 minutes. These odd numbers can do a mean math for you! TIP #7 Remember not everybody is very talkative or if they don’t know you, they don’t feel immediately safe to talk in a group setting. Hopefully the first few connection activities you did loosened people up. But in any case, think that people are also happy to contribute in their silent, calmer, protected way. Design your activities to ALWAYS include silent thinking time and or written contributions before opening for bigger discussions. This avoids over-dominance of the talkative ones, participation of the quieter ones, and everybody is heard and happy. BONUS TIP When time comes for feedback, pay attention to the PATTERNS. In almost all my events I have people who would say they wish there was more time… and people who loved the pacing! You may get conflicting or even surprising feedback. Because people are unique, it’s important to notice the ratios and trends. Otherwise, you are trying to fix a workshop that was slow and fast at the same time! And finally, be at peace that you will never get 5 stars from everybody 100% of the time. It is very rare, unless your workshop is short and on a very precise tiny topic. Or if people’s expectations are very low! Have a happy season of facilitation ahead of you! From the Blog A lot of us do workshops for actual teams. Some workshops are for team performance, for team start-up, for postmortems... A while back I wrote about team building and what actually takes to create effective, value-creating teams. So I'm re-sharing some of that material here with you that simply are never going out of style!
Because there is such a thing of right and wrong way of building and strengthening teams, especially self-organizing and highly driven ones. Happy read/watch! If you think someone in your network could benefit from this email, please don't hesitate to forward it or invite them to join our little community of agile enthusiasts. I'd love to have them on board! Stay curious, stay agile! P Are you on socials? Let's Connect! Never miss a read: allthingsagile.co blog
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