Elevate Your Facilitation Skills
Mastering the art of workshops
If you’ve already delved into ‘Why Your Next Meeting Should be a Workshop,’ the first article in this series, you’re equipped with a solid grasp of workshop concepts and their benefits over a typical meeting. Before we explore further ways to enhance your facilitation skills in this second part, let’s pause for a brief recap and uncover why prioritizing workshop sessions is a smart choice.
Five reasons why a workshop session should be used over a meeting:
1. Interactive engagement: Workshops are inherently interactive and participatory. They allow you to visualize the meetings and make decisions based on the data visualized around you.
2. Hands-on learning: The most effective approach to learning new things is through creative and hands-on practice. Participants can practice new techniques, tools, and methods in a supportive setting.
3. Harnessing creativity and innovation: If the goal is to generate new ideas, brainstorm solutions, or explore innovative concepts, workshops offer a structured platform and safe space for creative thinking and idea generation.
Note: I enthusiastically recommend the book “Gamestorming,” a valuable resource that inspires a wide range of workshops suited to different situations. This book was pivotal in my journey toward embracing workshops as a powerful tool for innovation and creativity.
4. Inclusive communication: Have you been in a meeting where the loudest person is always talking? Do you remember our example from the first article about one of the fundamental workshop exercises, Note & Vote, designed to prevent monopolizing conversations? Here, participants independently contribute ideas on sticky notes, fostering a silent exchange of viewpoints and then voting — ensuring everyone’s input is counted and considered.
5. Collaborative decision-making: When decisions require input and consensus from multiple stakeholders, workshops facilitate collaborative decision-making processes. Participants can work together to evaluate options and reach agreements.
Having laid the groundwork, let’s elevate your facilitation skills. To that end, let’s break down a number of tips and tricks to improve your workshop experience.
Tips & tricks for elevating your workshop sessions
Onboarding
With remote workshops, some people are uncomfortable using new tools. I have encountered that this could lead to push-back or resistance to workshop activities.
Refrain from assuming that just because someone has already participated in a workshop, they will know every tool feature through and through. To set the stage for a fruitful collaboration, I’d recommend spending five (5) minutes quickly covering the basic features and, even better, running a quick warm-up exercise after the onboarding — Miro has a good selection to choose from — where people can experiment and become confident.
Actively listen
Being an active listener in a workshop setting may sound like a cliche, but it’s vital for successful collaboration.
Practical advice
Practice active listening by paraphrasing and clarifying what participants say. Repeating back information to them the way you understood it. Ask good questions to gather more information and encourage engagement.
Examples of paraphrasing:
I think I am hearing…?
I think what you are trying to say is… Is that accurate?
So, if I understand you correctly… Am I understanding that correctly?
When faced with difficult or disruptive questions, use probing questions to understand the intention behind the question and gather more information.
Examples of probing questions:
That’s a really interesting question! Can you tell me more about that?
Would you elaborate on that point you just made?
How might your suggestion align with our overall goals?
You may encounter complex situations during your real-life experiences in a workshop.
Navigating challenging scenarios
How many of you have been participating in a discussion, and some participants have a negative attitude saying:
“This is never going to work!”
This can ruin not only your mood but the overall atmosphere of the activity. There are some tricks that you can tailor your approach according to each participant’s type.
Ideally, identifying the challenging participants beforehand and planning how to handle the situation will make your life easier.
In my workshop activities, I have experienced several participant archetypes worth highlighting. By understanding these archetypes, you can better navigate and engage with participants in your future workshops.
Here is a concise breakdown of a few fundamental archetypes and practical strategies to work with them:
Introverts
Some people are quiet. They will not openly speak up and actively participate in discussions. This could be due to their introverted nature or lack of confidence from limited experience. However, workshops can provide a valuable solution to address these challenges.
During meetings, you might have noticed that only a few people dominate the conversation while others remain silent. If your goal is to gather input from everyone without pointing them out with direct questions like, “Hey Ana, what do you think?” Workshops can be effective in this way. By conducting activities anonymously, participants can share their thoughts without feeling anxious or self-conscious.
To ensure their participation, it is crucial to provide clear instructions and guidelines. This sets the stage for everyone to feel comfortable and empowered to contribute their ideas and perspectives during the workshop.
Engage Introverts with clear instructions, examples, and a safe environment for their contributions.
Indecisives
I recall a situation when facilitating a workshop activity and a colleague consistently faced difficulties voting for specific ideas. Either he needed to research more, or he was asking for further details. So the voting part was extended each time he needed to make a decision. This indecisiveness often comes from a desire for safety and avoiding potential risks. What helped me in that situation was to give him a clear context and discuss the possible outcomes upfront before the activity. By doing that, I helped him feel he was making more informed choices.
Help Indecisives make informed choices confidently by addressing their concerns with context and consequences.
Leaders or experts
Having a leader or expert in your workshop can present unique challenges. On the one hand, they may take over the leadership role, disrupting the flow of the workshop. On the other hand, they might appear disengaged because they believe they already know everything and need an opportunity to share their expertise. Early in my facilitation journey, I faced a situation where one participant seemed unengaged, multitasking, just not actively participating, eventually leaving the session early. I learned that individuals with a leadership mindset need to feel important. If I had given this participant a vital task, he might have felt more engaged.
Leaders/experts are driven by power. They need to feel important. Take time, recognize their expertise, and provide opportunities to share their insights.
Negativists
You are lucky if you haven’t had the chance to meet the negativist. They make you feel nervous.
Imagine you have a great idea and want to share it, and the person on the other side says: “No way. We have been trying this approach several times. This is a waste of time.”
This archetype is driven by resistance.
I have another story about this kind of person. I have been working on a project where one of the stakeholders was very resistant. Once I identified this behavior, I started to chat with him regularly, often to keep him a part of the process and give him a chance to express his ideas at a very early stage. And guess what? This improved our collaboration a lot.
Proactively seek a negativist’s opinions, actively listen, and transform negativity into constructive contributions. Ask questions to understand the underlying reasons that may not be initially apparent.
To conclude, tackling the challenges presented by demanding participants during workshops has the power to unleash each participant’s full potential, resulting in more productive and successful outcomes.
The next time you’re preparing for a gathering or planning a workshop, pause momentarily. Close your eyes and imagine a vibrant, energy-filled space where ideas flow freely and participants feel accomplished. While it may seem like a dream, your mastery of running effective workshop sessions can turn this vision into reality.
If you’re just joining us, make sure to read the initial article, ‘Why Your Next Meeting Should be a Workshop,’ to get up to speed.
Feel free to reach out and share your workshop experiences with me. I am eager to hear your story! Comment below or find me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mina-djenkova/.
Other resources
- AJ&Smart — An agency specializing in design sprints and problem-solving through design thinking methodologies
- Miro.com — A leading digital whiteboard tool and collaborative online platform for visual collaboration, brainstorming, and project management
- NEON Facilitation Secrets — The secret to communicating with difficult participants
- A list of the best books around workshopping from the SoftServe design center of excellence (COE)
