And I am not talking about icebreakers
This article is part of an edited transcript of a great conversation with Jim Sill from Deploy Learning about facilitation and workshop leadership skills.
This section explores what it takes to create a workshop, training or meeting space where participants are heard and valued.
I share my approach to starting workshops and how I make the most of the first five to ten minutes.
Jim Sill ↘︎
When working with large groups, it can be challenging to create a space where individuals are heard and feel valued. Can you talk about your approach to that? How do we value the individuals in the room? How can we help them be heard?
Tom Barrett ↘︎
It starts with intentional design. Pay attention to the experience.
Yes, to content, for sure. Know what we are working on, but also recognise that everybody’s going to experience something together. So be intentional in the design of the experience.
Try to think through what the experience is going to be.
- How will I gather feedback?
- What am I doing at the beginning?
- How do we transition into the first activity?
At the beginning of my face-to-face workshops, when I first started facilitating, I met people at the door as they came in, making sure that people in the first five or ten minutes were spoken to and were greeted with warmth and kindness.
I know that sounds obvious, but it’s easy to forget.
When your projector or display is not working, when you are trying to get that website running, you start to forget those things.
There’s been plenty of workshops where I’ve been in the middle of tech support, crunched over my laptop with a conference technician trying to get on the network, and people have started to come in. And I’ve just left it, and I’ve just gone and spoken to people because that’s what I’m there for.
One of the things I do to ensure that the workshop space is intentional is to set very clear protocols. Even in an hour session, I take five or ten minutes to talk about, ‘what are we here for?’ Let’s talk about that. Let’s be clear about that. If I need to do any sharing about agreed expectations, I would.
I also set a range of workshop protocols which are to do with participation and feedback. One of them, for example, is stepping up and stepping back. So I say at the beginning of the workshop:
“There’s an expectation on everybody today to step up and contribute. Today’s session involves your participation. You’re going to be part of it, but also notice the times when you need to step back. So step up and step back. Try to balance that.”
We need to communicate to workshop participants; these are the expectations to manage those expectations throughout the session then.
Invariably, when I take that five minutes to set protocols, there is a much higher likelihood of a successful workshop.
People might sit back too much, or they’re not going to participate in the intended way. And so, at the beginning of a meeting or workshop, talk about, “what are our protocols?”
We’ve all experienced this with generic staff meeting scenarios. We’ve got to switch our phones off— I’m talking specifically about how do we participate effectively? How do we contribute to this work? How do we cue our participants into what is expected of them so that they can be successful?
I might say things like:
“Today’s going to be a pretty creative session. So I was hoping you could tune into that part of your mindset, where we’re going to be quite creative. There’s a section later on where we’re going to be working on ideas together.”
I might even throw a follow-up question in there, “what might help us tune in to that type of participation?”
What I often say, Jim, is we take the time to talk about the talking. At the beginning of the workshop. Talk about the talking you’re going to do so that the expectations are clear in people’s minds.
In the first five minutes of your workshop:
- Talk to as many people as you can, connect with them and learn their names or something about them.
- Establish clear expectations about the workshop participation journey. (This is easy to communicate when you are intentional in your workshop design).
- Set protocols about participation — talk about the talking.
