The workshop and facilitator de-coded

Designers, have you ever gotten asked to host a workshop but didn’t know where to start?

Design teams often get requests from their product owners, executives, or stakeholders to conduct a workshop, and feel like they must jump right in. Many times teams don’t take the time to determine what type of workshop (if any!) is needed. This is a problem because there may be easier ways to reach your intended outcome, like a product demo, prototype critique, or backlog grooming. The first step to workshop planning is confirming it’s the right activity for you!

There are two types of workshops, in-person and virtual. This article will address both, taking a high-level look into what makes a great workshop and facilitator, and helping you determine how a workshop could benefit you and what it takes to make it successful.

What is a workshop?

A workshop is highly collaborative. Participants work together to understand human-centered problems and any potential solutions. A workshop takes time to plan, which requires concentration and engagement from every participant to execute well.

A successful workshop can help teams:

• Create alignment around user and domain knowledge.
• Synthesize research outcomes.
• Ideate solutions for a product.
• Engage users to get feedback.
• Reflect and improve their process.

Signs of a successful workshop:

• Participants are aligned and understand the workshop goals.
• Participants have done their research and know their users.
• Participants are radically collaborative and determined to deliver strong outcomes.
• Participants are engaged, immersed, and focused.
• Participants’ conversations stay centered around the user experience.

Signs a workshop has gotten off track:

• Participants do not know what they are doing or why they are here.
• Participants are not engaged in activities, they are forced to listen to facilitators’ presentations for an extended period.
• Participants engage in side-bar conversations, multitask, or walk away to be on the phone.
• Participants talk often and only capture ideas with sticky notes after the discussion.
• Participants often go into off-topic discussions, resulting in the workshop moving very slowly and needing more time to reach the expected outcome.

What is the role of the facilitator?

Anyone can learn to be a facilitator with some practice! A good facilitator is professional and approachable and guides the workshop participants to reach their outcomes by observing, making, and reflecting. They include intentional steps in their workshop plan to help the participants reach a business goal. Facilitators pay attention to the dynamics of a group and are able to anticipate and address problems as they come up, creating a safe space for collaboration.

A successful facilitator can help teams:

• Spot and address barriers, whether from people or circumstances to participation, for better workshop planning.
• Make sure the decision-makers and the right participants (5-in-a-box) with diversity in disciplines are included in the workshop.
• Understand the workshop objectives, and help the participants remain engaged to reach the goal.
• Create a safe space for participants to share ideas and respectfully build on each other’s ideas.
• Facilitate meaningful conversations and guide participants to stay on track if unrelated discussions happen.

Signs of a successful facilitator:

• The facilitator asks questions to fully understand the problem the workshop is set to solve and the expected outcomes before planning the workshop.
• The facilitator focuses on the outcome by picking the workshop activities that best help get to the outcome with the participants and can create new activities innovatively.
• The facilitator repeats what they hear before synthesizing to confirm what the participants say to ensure the rest of the participants hear the same thing for alignment.
• The facilitator understands the roles and responsibilities and what should and should not happen during the workshop.
• The facilitator follows up with the stakeholders after the workshop is done and gets feedback on facilitation improvement opportunities.

Signs a facilitator has gotten off track:

• The facilitator lectures participants during the workshop.
• The facilitator dwells on one question or discussion for a long time and needs to catch up on the time to move on to the next activity.
• The facilitator makes decisions without involving participants, especially those who act on them.
• The facilitator only does something if conflicts arise between the participants escalate.
• The facilitator sits and watches but does not support participants in doing their thinking.

Let’s test out what you know

Based on the information shared above, for an in-person workshop, which of the scenarios indicates what a successful workshop should look like?

Six scenarios of four team members gathering in one workspace

A. Four team members face a whiteboard and add their thoughts onto sticky notes to craft a user journey on the board.

B. Four team members talk about the stock market. They share their opinions and information with each other while they make decisions before the market closes.

C. Four team members sit around the table. Two are booking flights for the upcoming vacation and two are talking about the latest Netflix tv series they just finished watching.

D. Four team members read and group the sticky notes they collected to synthesize the outcome and share the findings with the workshop requestor.

E. Four team members look at the tasks and priorities on the project management board and create task issues for the team members to work on.

F. Four team members look at the sticky notes on a user flow and discuss to make sure they align with the user needs to solve the right problem for the users.

(Drumroll, please!) The answer to the scenarios that indicate a successful workshop should look like are A, D, and F.

Collaborative problem-solving through a workshop is a fantastic experience. By now, I hope you have a better idea of what a workshop is and what a skilled facilitator should look like.

The workshop is not only for the participants but for you as well. Enjoy this experience to test your skills and learn new things to keep improving. The secret to becoming an outstanding facilitator and workshop planner is truly by “doing.”

If you are interested in knowing the detail of workshop planning, whether in-person or virtual, leave a comment, and I will be happy to share them in the future. What are some workshop tips you have?

Please share, and happy learning!

Jenny Hsiao Sanchez is an Enterprise Design Thinking Coach and Design Lead with strong Visual Design background for the Transformation & Operations Teams at IBM, based in Austin, TX.

The above article is personal and does not necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.