What a workshop isn’t:  someone standing at the front of a room with a blank flipchart and a marker pen while people shout out ideas.

What a workshop is:  people working small groups with energy and focus to create intelligent solutions.

People overuse the word ‘workshop’, often to make a meeting sound more interesting, but that gives workshops a bad name. It’s not enough to invite the same people, with the same information, to the same meeting room and hope they think differently because there’s a blank flipchart in the room and a couple of post its and sharpies on the table.

What is a workshop?

A workshop is a collaborative working session in which a team achieves an agreed goal together. That goal could be to solve a problem, generate ideas, work through an issue or find agreement between team members. Workshops use a structured approach, a clear agenda and rules of engagement, and are designed and facilitated by a workshop leader.

3 symptoms your workshop is really a meeting in disguise

  1. One or two team members do most of the talking, make most of the decisions, and decide what is written down
  2. It’s a debrief or download of information and the team is there as an audience only
  3. There’s no plan – except to brainstorm
  4. It feels routine, boring, stressful or chaotic

6 ways to turn your meeting into a workshop

  1. Invite the right people – not just the same old people.  Diversity of perspective will benefit your session.
  2. Prepare inspiration – make sure new, fresh information stimulates the thinking – an easy way to do this is setting a prep work task for every participant to do before they walk into the room.
  3. Create space – whether online or in-person, set aside dedicated time (don’t just tack it on to the end of a meeting!).
  4. Structure the thinking – never brainstorm, always design a thinking journey of careful exercises that elicit deep, focussed intelligence to answer specific questions.
  5. Ensure maximum participation – avoid plenary sessions that leave just one person talking by rotating people in small squads, each with instructions and templates that keep people involved and engaged.
  6. Facilitate on behalf of the group – the workshop leader should never be the main decision-maker – they need to manage the group to ensure maximum collective intelligence in every moment.

For more on diversity in workshops, as well as example session plans and trusted tools and templates, read Chapter Four of the second edition of The Workshop Book by Pamela Hamilton

If you’d like help structuring or facilitating your next workshop, our team at Paraffin would be very happy to set up an introductory call to discuss your project.