Mental Set-Up
What’s your mental preparation for a workshop or a collaborative session?
How do you prepare yourself in order to have a successful workshop? Imagine you’re an empty cup: The content of the conversation is the information you need. The audience is your key. Just be present and go with the conversation. A lot is about curiousity. Curiousity gives you the drive or the attention to listen. The main task of a facilitator is to figure out how to listen: Listen to understand and not to speak because that’s the key ingredient of how to engage with each other.
“We are the channel of the message. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes, just be present and go with the conversation and be like empty cups: The content is the information, they are the key word — and we are just the supporting roles.”– Jayce Lee (Value Web)
Make sure you have a free mind in order to being able to listen carefully. Organize a strong environment and the right tools in advance and then focus on the listening and observing. Take up the role of an observer of the conversation and your audience. You have to listen carefully between the lines and you need to be open-minded and interested in order to learn from each other. It helps to catch the most important informations out of a discussion. At the same time try to think team-independently. Free from prejudices and habits. Structure a conversation and think in images in order to visually represent ideas. And try to get as much information and ideas as possible from the conversation.
Try to entertain people, because then hard topics seem much more easy and the fun factor helps people to access more easily. Collaborating groups need to be involved in decisions because then everybody feels ownership of the produced ideas and then each and everybody will aboslutely care about the result of the conversation.
Key Takeaways — 12 tips for a successful workshop:
- Curiosity
- Listen to understand and not to speak
- Listen carefully
- Listen between the lines
- Observe
- Entertain
- Think independently
- Be open-minded
- Support an open communication
- Free from prejudices and habits
- Structure a conversation and think in images
- Involve the collaborating group for decisions
“I think one of the main things of collaborating is to involve the collaborative group for desicions, like how to solve a problem or how to build something. If you do a design and planwith the group, then everybody feels ownership of that design and is a lot more interested than when it’s just the boss telling everybody what to do. Everybody is part of one team, part of one group and then they will absolutely care.” — Alicia Bramlett (Value Web / Art all along)
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