The 10 Elements of a powerful workshop

On the latest episode of "Here's an idea worth playing with" I share the 10 elements of a powerful workshop.

You can listen to the podcast here, or read the transcription article below.

The 10 Elements

Please note : a computer did this transcription 😄

In today's episode, I'm going to share 10 different elements of a powerful workshop. Now, I know it's an idea worth playing with and I'm sticking 10 in here but you know give me a little bit of freedom and liberty here to to play with this.

And the reason these 10 came around is I, you know, maybe 7, 8 years ago ran a communications workshop at a conference and it won best tutorial. I ran it again at another conference a few months later and it won best tutorial, and this was a theme that carried on. I even went back to the same conferences and ran the same tutorial again and yep, guess what? It won best tutorial. And this workshop has been run somewhere in the region about 300 times for various different companies.

And of course if you want me to bring this workshop to your company then please, get in touch.

Now the workshop in question is the communication superpower workshop. The thing is it's a huge amount of fun to run this workshop and it's just an absolute joy.

Let's jump into 10 ideas. Now these are not complete, there'll be other ideas that you want to build on, and that's the whole point of this podcast is these are just ideas to play with. There's no absolutes, these are the 10 that I apply to every workshop. That includes my zero to keynote ones, my releasing agility management one zero ones. Everything that I do when it comes to a workshop has these sort of 10 elements weaved into them.

Purpose, Audience and Context

So element number 1 is, obviously, when you're building the actual workshop itself is to consider the thing that you're trying to teach. I guess this is the element of this is what is the purpose of the workshop?

Who are the audience that you're building this for? And then what context is it gonna take place? Is it an online workshop? Is it an in person sort of workshop or tutorial? Is it more of a seminar based type thing where you do a lot more talking than interactive stuff?

Always coming back to that, you know, key principle of communication is that all communication has a purpose, an audience, and a context. Now getting super clear about that is really important. What are you trying to teach and who are you trying to teach that to? Because when you're building the workshop and this is really probably the hardest part of a workshop is actually building a really good solid simple clear workshop. Is to think about the purpose, the audience, and the context.

And depending on who the audience is you may have to have multiple versions of the workshop. You know the communications one for example, I have a version that is for conferences, I have a version that is for leaders and managers who, we're gonna jump into some, I guess more specific areas of their potential growth and learning. And then I have a general one for, you know, anyone in the business. And so I have these 3 versions and they're all based on this idea of purpose, audience, and context. And if you go to cultivate to management.com you'll find a post called the 11 principles of good communication.

And there are these 11 principles and one of them is this purpose, audience, and context. Very very important that you start with that. Otherwise, you know, you run the risk of building a workshop that a, doesn't hit the purpose, you're not teaching something, or you've designed it for the wrong audience, or actually you're trying to achieve too many purposes with too many audiences and it just gets very overwhelming confused.

Now, I've sat in plenty of workshops where there's no obvious purpose, there's no obvious thing that you're gonna learn. The title might say, you know, you're gonna develop skills in x y zed, but actually when you come into the workshop it's it's just too much.

There's too many ideas, there's just too much there. So obviously, you need to have something worth teaching that's the whole point of a workshop. And the more specific you can get to that, and the more that you can focus on I guess 1 or 2 really core elements of that with a really tight purpose for the workshop, the better I think you're gonna be when you come to design it. So that's all I'm gonna talk about when it comes to design in the workshop. So obviously, a lot depends on what you're trying to teach and, you know, what your skill level is and, you know, how big the workshop's gonna be.

So there's all that kind of context that sits around it. But the key is it's got a purpose, it's got an audience, and it got a context, and you need to design and build it for that in mind. And don't try and cram too much in, and obviously just make sure you've got something that you are trying to teach.

Are you qualified to teach them - the introduction

So on the actual day of running the workshop and this is where I'm really gonna focus on the next 9 elements is you've got to really start with an introduction.

If I'm teaching people to do keynote talks or presentations, I would encourage them not to do a very long introduction because you might only have a talk for half an hour, maybe 45 minutes, maybe an hour max.

And the audience really don't care at that point about you until you've demonstrated that there's something worth caring about. You've done a good talk.

With a workshop it's slightly different because with a workshop you're probably gonna be, you know, consuming that time, energy and attention for way more than an hour. It could be a 3 hour workshop. It could only be an hour workshop actually, but usually most workshops sort of at least half a day. In my case, communications workshop is pretty much a full day.

So before you consume their time energy attention, it pays to have a really solid but I guess short and concise introduction. Now the way that I do this is I actually have a slide that's called "Why am I qualified to teach you anything?"

On there are facts and information about me and my career and my history so that people know that I'm actually in a place where I am actually, I guess, qualified to teach people the subject I'm teaching them. You know, I've won awards, I've studied this, I teach this, I consult on it, my business runs on this.

Whatever it is, you need to give that proof and evidence that you are qualified to teach them. I have sat through many tutorials and workshops at conferences and companies where the person teaching it isn't a specialist in the area that they're teaching. They've taken a sort of generic, I guess learning plan and agenda and idea, and they're just teaching it by the book. Somebody else has created it and they're just rolling it out at scale with anybody who can stand up in front of a group. And so when you ask difficult questions about the subject, you come up blank.

There's no expertise there. And that really is I think a bit of a shame. So, obviously, I'm hoping you're going to design and build this workshop, and teach people something that you are an expert in or you know very very well. In which case, provide a little bit of evidence at the front to prove that you are qualified to teach people what it is that you're teaching them.

Create a safe space

Idea number 3 here is to create a really safe space for people to experiment, explore, share their opinions, challenge things that you're saying, of which you will get some.

Now the way I do this is I run what's called a Purdue creativity test. It's a very very simple exercise takes no more than about a minute to run. I get people to draw of the person sat to the left of them. So, you know, you might have a bit of logistics depending on the room layout in order to make sure everybody's drawing a picture of somebody else. And what this does is it highlights a couple of things.

Number 1 is when I ask them to do this, there's an immediate round of sort of laughter and engagement, but whole load of excuses about how bad their art is gonna be. Now that's an important lesson. And then once they've drawn it and shown it, there's lots of laughter and fun and usually a load more apologies as well about, you know, I'm so sorry I'm not very good at drawing pictures of people. And what this highlights is a couple of things. One is, we're often extremely afraid to share idea ideas before we share them.

And we're often when it comes to creativity, we are often extremely afraid of the reaction of other people. And what this little exercise does is it just breaks the ice, it gives people a little bit of energy, it gives them a lot of fun and a lot of laughter, but it also tries to help them to come out a little bit and explain that it's a safe space to share your ideas. Don't worry about it. It doesn't matter whether it's you think it's a good idea or not, challenge, you know? And obviously a lot of that comes down to you as the facilitator of the workshop, but that's a really nice little exercise.

Get yourself online, there are tons and tons of icebreakers, you know cocktail party, this that and the other, that's there's tons of them. This is one that works for me because it sort of embeds in it a kind of lesson as well about how we're often very afraid to share ideas. And in a workshop you want people to contribute ideas, you want them to challenge you and ask you difficult questions. Because if you are an expert and you are very very very good at what you do, you should get no question that you can't at least deconstruct and give a good answer to. Okay.

You will get it wrong

Next one, moving on. You will get it wrong. Now I have yet to run a workshop where I've satisfied every single person in the audience when it comes to that blend of interactive stuff and lecture or seminar based stuff.

Now, of course, if your entire workshop is, you know, learning how to code something and it's all interactive and it's working on your own or maybe in small pairs, then that might be slightly different. But mine are usually group activities with some lecture style delivery from myself.

In that situation, I always broadly say, and it is not scientific of course, but 50% of the audience want way more interaction, way more activity than I will deliver, and the other 50% want way less than I actually did deliver. I've never actually been proven wrong with that. Maybe it's not quite 50/50, but there are always some people who say, oh, there was too much interactive stuff. I didn't wanna join in. I was didn't enjoy it or it's just not me. And then there's another group of people that would be like, oh, you needed way more interactive stuff in there.

So I actually always start every tutorial with that caveat that I will not get this right. It kind of shows a bit of vulnerability, but it also clearly articulates to the attendees that I'm going try and get the balance right as we go through this. But there will be times when maybe you're not quite happy with the interactivity in either way.

So it kind of sets a stall out there and it actually, you know, it is very realistic that there will be people that want more interactive, more games, more activities, and there'll be people that just want sit there and learn from you as you sort of, you know, more of a seminar lecture style.

Repeat Things

The other thing is keep repeating learning points. I actually have a couple of slides in mine tutorials that keep saying "we will repeat stuff", more as kind of like a running joke that we will keep repeating the core lessons that we're teaching.

So we keep repeating it, we keep going back to the main theme, that main idea, those main sort of 2 or 3 points that you're trying to teach the audience, and keep repeating them because we learn through repetition. And if we can keep pulling our stories and our anecdotes and all of the activities back to these lessons and keep repeating them, then I believe there's a lot more chance that people will take on board those ideas.

Bring Energy

The energy in the room comes from you as the facilitator.

I think a lot of people make this mistake assuming that the audience will bring the energy. No, it's up to you. They will have energy that if you get them in a safe space and you have a lot of fun doing it, then they will bring their own energy to it. But you've got to drive that. The momentum of the workshop comes from you.

You're gonna get people in the workshop that maybe don't want to be there, they've been sent by their company. You've got people that are in there that want to learn but don't want to interact, and then you've got some people that will try and dominate and take over. The energy, the momentum, the pace that all comes from you as the facilitator.

Be prepared to bring energy

So that leads on to the next element which is to be I guess physically, psychologically and emotionally prepared for a workshop. When I run an all day workshop, it is one of the most tiring things that I do in my career.

It is staggeringly tiring. I mean I cover anywhere from 15,000 to 20,000 steps during this workshop because it's very interactive and demonstration based, and it's a lot of fun. So there's a lot of energy there. That's tiring. If you've had a rough night the night before, you've enjoyed the socials at the conference a bit too much, or you've had a early morning travel to get to the business that you're you're running the workshop for.

That all takes its toll and you've also got to deal with people that will be asking difficult questions, you've got to try and get people engaged a little bit more, you've got those quiet people that you really wanna try and get their ideas into the room, you've got the loud people that you've got to try and control a little bit so they don't dominate the day.

You've got all of these dynamics and then you've got your own sort of physiology, your own mental health at that time. It can be very tiring, very draining, very difficult. At the end of one of these workshops, I typically just go for a beer, decompress on my own, don't wanna talk to anyone. It's just draining, but it's super enjoyable and the energy that comes from it is is vast.

But it does take its toll, so being prepared, making sure that you're on your top game on that day, that you've got the energy, you've got the motivation, you've got the drive, and you're physically prepared for what is gonna be a pretty tough, kind of tutorial. So there you go, that's another element.

Listen, study, observe

Now playing off that one, there's another one here and this is element number 9 that we've got to here, is to listen, study, and observe because you're in control of that room so to speak.

You've got to listen to people intently who are asking questions. You've got to listen to how people are interacting. You've got to study and see and observe how people are playing the games or how they're, you know, disengaged, maybe they folded their arms and pushed the chair away from the desk because they disagree with a point. You can call that out, you can pull that forward, you can study and observe. This is what great communicators do.

And the essence of a good workshop is that everybody feels like they've got something from it, and it's your job to to play to that room. This is a skill that is pretty tough to develop, but it's something that you really got to keep an eye on.

You can't rely on standing at the front and just presenting unless it's a seminar and then it's not a workshop in my view. If you're just gonna present that's like a talk and that's fine. But if it's a workshop, and you're going to get people interacting, then you need to understand how they're interacting and whether anything needs to pivot or change.

Do you need to do something different? Do you need to listen more? Do you need to talk more? Do you need to throw in another interactive exercise? And having those extra exercises and extra pivots in your back pocket is gold, because it's up to you to study that room and make sure that the energy is flowing and that you're responding to the needs of the people in the tutorial or the the workshop.

It's all about them ultimately and it's your job to pay attention to them by listening, studying, and observing.

Take aways / calls to action

And then finally we come on to takeaways or calls to action, and this is really making sure people have something to go away with.

I started to create these really nice looking printouts that cover those key points that we keep repeating, along with a few exercises. Nice simple things that people can do when they go back into their workplace or back into their lives after that workshop. And then of course there's a link to my website where the slides from the workshop are available to download, which is a very positive thing for people who really want to dig into it a little bit more.

I always produce an ebook as well or at least a blog post or maybe a podcast to support that topic as well. For those that are really really interested they can go and get a list of all of the scientific articles that I've referenced, all of the books that I've referenced, and then all of the extra blog posts and content from myself as well.

So there's a rich trove of treasure for them to go and explore afterwards. As well as that little cheat sheet, that little handout that they can work through at their own pace with a couple of really fun activities in there.

Conclusion

Those are the 10 elements that I bring to a good workshop.

Now as I said these aren't scientific, they're not necessarily absolutes at all. The whole point of this podcast is just ideas for you to play with. So, you know, let me know what's missing. What would you bring to a tutorial or a workshop? I hope they're helpful for you.

Take care. Bye bye.