Trust

People are attending your workshop, because they want to contribute. They want the workshop to be a success. Initially, a workshop starts with best intentions.

Bear in mind that this trust is connected to a certain result. It’s like a contract where you get trust right away but in turn you have to deliver outcomes. This is why workshop design is crucial. If you have a well prepared workshop, the process itself will guide you. Whenever I start a new activity, I always repeat what we did before and how this is connected to the next activity. Participants want to understand why they are doing something and where those actions lead to.

The very first workshop I run by myself was a Design Thinking Workshop. It was a funny situation. I had prepared the workshop with a design thinking expert and at that time I was still learning the skill. The idea was that I will facilitate one part of it to experience it also from the facilitator’s perspective. Then something unexpected happened and the expert could not attend the workshop. This happened only three days before the workshop and I was asked, if I wanted to facilitate the workshop by myself. I was scared, really scared. On the other side, everything was perfectly prepared and I just needed to go through the flow step by step. Additionally, he assured me, that the process will guide me and I should not worry about it. I did it. I didn’t believe in myself and suddenly found myself in front of people starring at me (at least in my memory theater). But there was something very powerful. The walls were full of posters and there was a logical order how all those posters were connected. When I explained the goal, how we will work and showed them, by walking from poster to poster, outlining what they can expect, I felt the power of the process. At this moment I learned my lesson: a well prepared workshop flow is your best ally. They participants totally trusted me as they could see what will expect them and what they will achieve on that day. Was it the best workshop I ever facilitated? For sure not, but participants are very forgiving as long as you don’t run them through boring exercises that have no meaning for them. This is were people get hostile but if you can show the value that you create along a workshop, you have their full trust and attention.

Scheduling

Time is the other part of the contract between you as facilitator and the participants. They trust you that you will finish the workshop on time.

Cutting content

If you run late for more than 10 minutes and there is no buffer left, start thinking what parts of an activity you might skip. For example, the best way to do a proper clustering is to ask the participants how they would group it. If you run this exercise as facilitator it will take half the time or even less. You can also speed up voting sessions by limiting the number of votes to one per participant, etc.

When you prepare your workshop think already what parts of an activity you can also executed fast paced in case you run into time issues. The most painful action is to skip a whole activity. This is never easy as your workshop follows a certain flow. This is the ultimate action to take if the schedule cannot be changed.

Ask for permission

Asking for permission to extend the workshop is not easy. There will be some participants, that have already planned their next meetings, etc. Therefore, don’t just ask to extend the workshop, but additionally provide some assurance that they will not miss out on anything. Typically, you offer to send them a summary of what happened when they needed to step out.

Momentum

By momentum I understand a kind of impulse, a certain movement that drives a process among people once established. In Design Thinking momentum describes a kind of bond and force that drives the participants along. I know, this is hard to understand if you have not experienced it yet. Just think about cycling in a group or going for a long walk with some friends. After some moments you acquire a certain understanding of rhythm and speed between you and the others. Momentum is nothing else: it is the natural flow that drives a group and it is a key skill of a good facilitator to recognize when it happens and to utilize it.

Be precise

Phrase each task in a simple and very precise language. It is also helpful to have the instructions written on a poster visible for everyone. This will eliminate meaningless discussions and confusions. If an activity consists of multiple steps, let people already know what they will do next.

Examples: