My formula for running a successful workshop (or any other meeting)
Every meeting depends on being well prepared. Having the right input, the right stakeholders, and the right expectations before everyone shows up. Here's how I make sure it comes off smoothly.
I’m sure you’ve been to a few meetings that seemed like a waste of time. Maybe you’ve even held one, pulling everyone together to solve a problem, only to struggle keeping them on task.
Staging any kind of group exercise fills a lot of people with trepidation. How do you make sure everyone shows up prepared? Make sure they come away valuing the time spent? Or actually solve what they came together to solve? Just thinking about it can be a pressure cooker.
In this article I’ll show you my sure-fire formula for putting together a successful workshop, meeting, or presentation.
Workshop planning is essential. The Delivery Playbook features almost as many collaborative working sessions as it does chapters, and there’s good reason: Delivering any product demands high-functioning collaboration.
I recall the first few times I had to pull together a workshop. Mostly, the outcome always fell short of what I wanted. People showed up without knowing exactly why they were participating, or with differing goals. The discussion topic often headed off in unplanned directions. Sometimes the meeting was entirely hijacked, making no progress toward the intended outcome. And just about every single time, I ended up scheduling more meetings to accomplish what I had actually intended.
Years later, I wanted to improve my leadership skills. I started getting involved in networking groups and exploring some coaching programs. One program stands out as tremendously valuable. It was about learning to communicate in a “genuine, compelling and engaging manner for any audience.”1
Planning a workshop isn’t necessarily about public speaking. But it turns out the course I took provided me with a lot of the tools to hold a successful workshop: excellent preparation, good moderation, a guiding hand when it comes to communication, and focused, specific outcomes.
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I made this connection when my boss at the time suggested we have a workshop for our team. The idea was to get the team excited and prepared to speak at conferences and step up our presence in the industry. The company had a standing policy: If you could get your topic accepted, they would happily pay for first-rate conference attendance. Having our team on a stage, talking about us, and our tech, was well worth it!
That’s how I found myself wondering how I could put together a workshop that would get everyone to come out of their shell and do some public speaking. And enjoy it.
My past experience told me I had a lot of challenges to overcome:
How could I get everyone involved, keep interactivity high, and make sure everyone was completely present and not distracted?
My team was mostly introverted techies, so this workshop would be a new experience for most. How could I make sure it wasn’t a waste of time?
There would be some preparation needed — for everyone, not just me — how would I make sure we all had the time we needed?
I wanted to make sure it was an engaging workshop that really maximized learning, gave everyone a solid take-away. That was going to be a challenge to plan out.
We didn’t want it to be a “one and done” kind of thing where nobody would take any action. That meant establishing clear outcomes, and actions to take after the workshop.
Perhaps most important, what was the actual goal and how could I make sure we met it?
The more I thought about this, the more I realized it really wasn’t any different from every other meeting, design session, and workshop I plan. Every time I pull the team together, these are exactly the concerns I have.
It just felt a bit more intimidating because the topic was new to me. I wasn’t pulling the team together to talk about solving a data pipeline problem, or do event storming with a customer — both things I can do in my sleep. This was “new,” because I hadn’t thought about speaker coaching before. But it was “old hat,” too, because I needed to approach it in the same way I approach any working session.
Preparation is everything. With the right preparation, any workshop can have stellar results.
Preparation is everything
One of the first things I like to think about when I plan a workshop is “why.” Specifically, why are we having this workshop? What is the intended outcome?
The worst case is that everyone gets together, talks about stuff to fill an hour or two, and then goes away without any specific actions. Having clear outcomes is key, and one of the best ways to find your outcomes is to ask the question, “what should we be doing after this meeting?”
Goals and impact
I approach this by thinking about goals and impact. It’s really important to understand the difference between these two:
Goals are what you’ll be going during the meeting. These are your actions, or the meeting agenda. “Our goal is to practice speaking,” or “our goal is to make sure everyone understands event streaming.”
Impact is what we want to accomplish, a tangible outcome. I find it best to express this in the present tense, so that we’re stating a fact that has been established. “The team is more comfortable speaking in public,” or “we share an unambiguous understanding of event streaming.”
An impact statement can be a little tricky. It’s easy to write something like, “We get more speaking opportunities.” But that’s actually a goal, it’s not an impact statement. The impact could be, “We are better able to increase our industry presence.”
Creating clear impact and goal statements ahead of time clarifies the purpose and value of your workshop. It also helps to clearly express that purpose to your attendees. You’ll want to include both in your agenda, so attendees can quickly assess what it’s all about.
Define your audience
It’s also important to think hard about who you invite. You don’t want anyone leaving feeling their time was wasted. If that happens, they’ll be ignoring any future invitations.
Invite people who have some stake in the outcome. This is really about aligning your attendee list with your impact statement. Ask yourself, does the impact matter to these individuals? Will they want to have a say in how we move forward? Will it impact their work in some way?
It’s easy to define the audience when planning an all-hands team activity (like my speaking workshop). But what about something without such clear boundaries, like a workshop to explain what event streaming is? Here, it’s important to think about your target audience.
A helpful exercise can be defining personas. Who will benefit? What are their needs, pain points, interests? Why will they come? Then validate your assumptions by talking with people in that role. You can start by asking about their motivation for attending the workshop.
For example, on the topic of an event streaming workshop, here’s a persona I might like to start from:
CxO. The CEO/CSO will better understand the business benefits of leveraging an event stream. They need to understand how we can capture and manage business events, audit those events, and have the ability to review (audit) past events. They’ll gain a better understanding of our business capabilities, and get a better grasp on our technology foundation.
With that persona in mind, I can focus on building a workshop that actually benefits my audience.
Of course, you might have several personas. Recognize that you may not be able to satisfy everyone at the same time. The workshop I put together for my CxO team is probably going to be very different from the one I run for my junior team engineers who need to get into the engineering details.
Establish clear outcomes
Just as important as what goes into a workshop is what comes out of it. Your impact and goals set your objectives. But the impact only happens if it is acted upon.
Usually this means making sure there are clear follow-on actions from the workshop.
You’ll likely have many things to follow up on, and it’s easy for those things to get lost. I’ve seen too many meetings brush right past them. “Great, so we’re agreed, we all want to attend conferences and host a speaker! Fantastic, let’s be sure to follow up on that.” No. That just brushes it under the rug.
Instead, create specific action items. “Great! So, if we’re going to sponsor a conference, we need to pick a conference and identify the right topics. Who’s going to take that on?” Make sure no ball gets dropped. Someone needs to have it on their to-do list.
Team preparation
Preparation is not just about being prepared as the moderator. It’s also about making sure everyone else is well prepared. This is where most of your planning time is likely to go.
You want your workshop to provide value to every attendee, ideally for every moment they are there. Spending the first half-hour talking about the agenda, rehashing material some team members already know, or making sure everyone has information on-hand is a waste. Ideally, everyone knows why they are there, understands the topic, and is familiar with any background information they’ll need.
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