What is a workshop and what it isn’t?
A meeting or brainstorming session, for instance
In today’s dynamic work environment, collaboration takes many forms — especially for remote and hybrid modes. While workshops and meetings are common, there’s a whole spectrum of other formats that serve unique purposes. Understanding these different paradigms is crucial for choosing the right format for the goals and your team’s needs. Let’s dive into the world of collaborative sessions to help you navigate the diverse set of options.
The core differences: workshop vs. meeting
What’s a workshop?
A workshop is a hands-on, facilitated session designed to solve problems, generate ideas, or drive specific outcomes. Unlike a meeting, which often revolves around more passive discussions, workshops focus on collaborative problem-solving and active participation. They involve diverse expertise, learning from each other, working together in real-time to create or refine something, such as a strategy, design, or approach.
Workshops rely on structured facilitation and well-defined objectives. A facilitator (often trained and from outside of the core group) guides participants through exercises or frameworks to foster collaboration and creativity, ensuring the session remains productive. The outcome is typically tangible, like a prototype, an action plan, or roadmap.
What’s a meeting?
Meetings, in contrast, are generally more passive. The goal is often to share information, provide updates, or make some kind of simple/quick decision.
They’re typically less interactive and may involve a few people speaking while most listen. Meetings don’t result in the same level of hands-on collaboration or active engagement as workshops.
11 things that aren’t workshops (or meetings)
There are plenty of other formats that are commonly mistaken for workshops that aren’t meetings but aren’t. These include:
Training sessions
Training sessions are led by an instructor and focuses on teaching specific skills or information to participants, with limited interaction or collaborative problem-solving.
Seminars
Seminars are formal presentations or discussions on specific topics, typically led by an expert, with the audience playing the role of listeners, much more passive.
Webinars
Webinars are virtual, one-way presentations. They might have some engagement but generally not much. While informative, they lack the hands-on, problem-solving elements of a workshop.
Presentations
Presentations involve a single speaker delivering information to an audience. Unlike workshops, the primary goal is knowledge transfer, not active collaboration.
Lectures
Lectures are one-way information sessions, with the speaker delivering content and little-to-no active participation from the audience.
Brainstorming sessions
While brainstorming is often a part of workshops, on its own, it’s typically just a free-flow idea-generation exercise, lacking the facilitation and structured outcome focus of a workshop.
Focus groups, group interviews
Focus groups or group interviews are research-driven discussions aimed at gathering feedback from participants. They focus more on listening to opinions rather than collaborative problem-solving.
Team-building activities
These are designed for improving relationships and team dynamics. While workshops may involve team-building elements, they have clear problem-solving or outcome-oriented goals.
Hackathons
Hackathons are intense problem-solving sessions focused on coding or rapid development, often in a competitive environment. While collaborative, they don’t have the structured facilitation and outcomes typical of workshops.
Panel discussions
Panels feature experts discussing a topic in front of an audience. While there may be Q&A sessions, panels are not interactive or collaborative in the same way that workshops are.
Real-life examples: when a workshop is appropriate
Imagine your team is planning the next product launch. A workshop would be the perfect format for aligning team members, generating new ideas, and creating actionable plans. The team would work through frameworks like customer journey mapping or service blueprints, led by a facilitator, to solve key problems and finalize the roadmap.
As stated in an above caption, a design sprint is a kind of specialized workshop often used in product development. Developed by Google Ventures, a design sprint is a 4–5 day process where a cross-functional team works intensively to solve a big problem, test ideas, and develop a prototype. It’s an ideal format for fast-tracking innovation and reducing risk before committing to full-scale product development.
The design sprint process follows a structured timeline that includes understanding the problem, sketching solutions, deciding on the best approach, building a prototype, and testing it with real users — all within the span of a week. This workshop format is ideal for teams that need to validate product ideas quickly and gain insights before further investment.
In contrast, if the goal is simply to update stakeholders on the progress of the project, a meeting would suffice. This would involve a set agenda, where team members share their updates, and decisions can be made without the need for hands-on participation.
How to choose the right format
Define your objective
If you need hands-on problem-solving or idea generation, opt for a workshop. If you’re focused on information sharing or decision-making, a meeting may be the better choice.
Understand the level of participation
Workshops require active participation from all members, while meetings can tolerate a more passive audience.
Evaluate the desired outcome
Workshops should lead to a tangible result (e.g., a prototype or strategy), whereas meetings generally aim for shared understanding and action points.
Making the most of workshops
To ensure your workshops are effective, it’s important to:
- Set clear objectives: A well-defined goal will help keep everyone on track.
- Facilitate engagement: A facilitator should guide the session, ensuring all voices are heard and activities stay focused.
- Generate actionable outcomes: Every workshop should end with something tangible, like a roadmap or action plan.
The power of using the right format
Workshops and meetings serve different purposes in the workplace. Understanding the differences and knowing when to use each can significantly enhance productivity, foster collaboration, and drive creativity. By using workshops for interactive, problem-solving sessions and reserving meetings for decision-making and updates, you can ensure that your team’s time is spent effectively and efficiently.
Thanks for reading. Let us know what you think, drop a comment or get in touch some other way, we’re always open to hearing others’ points-of-view — if it’s different or the same as ours.
Citations:
- https://www.gv.com/sprint/ — The official page on design sprints developed by Jake Knapp at Google Ventures, explaining the process of this specific type of workshop
- https://www.nngroup.com/articles/workshops-vs-meetings/ — This blog post outlines the key differences between workshops and meetings, comparing the differences in purpose, scope, length, structure, and preparation time for workshops and meetings
- https://www.sessionlab.com/blog/what-is-a-workshop/ — workshops are structured, interactive sessions that enable teams to collaborate, solve problems, and innovate, distinguishing them from meetings or training through hands-on engagement and facilitator-led activities
