How to take off your workshop like a champ

and set yourself up for success

Photo by Jonathan Ridley on Unsplash

1. Intro and warm up

A vital part to your workshop’s success is getting people to feel engaged and switched on right from the start. If you don’t make sure your participants get an energetic start from the get-go, you’ll risk people getting bored before you’ve even started.

Always start with an easy, ice-breaker exercise to activate the group and set the tone for participants to be engaged.

There are a variety of warm-up exercises that do a good job of energising people in the room. The one we use is called “Who’s Sitting Next to You?” and it works by asking the participants break into groups of 3-5 and each person says their the name, their favourite super hero / comic book / TV serie / movie character from their childhood (e.g. Spider-man ), and why that character.

I love this exercise because it works well whether the participants know each other or not. The room always fills with laughs and smiles, and participants become activated.

2. Set Ground Rules

This is so important yet very easy to miss. Luckily, it takes very little effort. All you need to do is make your ground rules clear to the participants up front.

You’ll save yourself a lot of questions that would otherwise interrupt the flow of your workshop. Moreover, if you don’t make ground rules clear up front, your participants might be annoyed when you tell them that there is a no-devices rules when you see them using their phone during the workshop.

Do it all up front and you’ll be able to remind people of the rules later without losing the trust of your participants.

3. Set Expectations

This step alone will make your workshops a lot smoother to run. Your participants will have to work hard to keep their concentration for long periods of time, take in a lot of information, and then put it into practice.

It’s natural for people to assume that they are the only one feeling overwhelmed or finding something difficult. Those thoughts can distract them from the workshop and dial up the pressure.

You can reduce this simply by telling people what to expect, and how they might feel during the process. Saying a few sentences about how participants can expect to feel throughout the day drastically improves the smoothness and feeling in the room.

It’s very important to say these things before participants feel them. If you say it after, it’s already too late.

Here are a few examples of what to say to set the emotional expectations:

• “It’s common that this might feel too rushed”

• “Often it will feel like we’re losing ideas”

• “This might feel uncomfortable”

• “It’s normal to not have any ideas yet”

• “It’s normal to feel like it’s not going to work”

4. Get Expectations

Equally important to setting expectations is getting them from your participants. Asking your participants what they hope to get out of this workshop will make them feel heard and help you know which topics to focus more attention on.

Here are the sentences we use to get people to share their expectations with us:

• “What are you hoping to get out of this?”

• “What will make this worthwhile for you?”

• “Why did you come here today?”

5. Agenda and structure

It’s important to communicate the agenda of the workshop, either by displaying it physically in the room or by repeatedly showing it in the slide deck.

This will give people a sense of orientation so they never have to wonder about where they are in the workshop or how much more there is to go.

It also helps avoid people asking what’s coming next, which can break your flow and confidence as a facilitator.