Leading interactive workshops

We’re getting the hang of online meetings. But how are the interactive workshops going? 

If we just press the breakout rooms button and think that’s how to interact and collaborate ... that’s a limited view. 

Some facilitators use apps like Mural or Miro for interaction but still, it’s not about just choosing an app or breaking people into groups. 

The art of facilitating interaction involves:

📐DESIGN
and
📐DELIVERY
of the interactive workshop experience. 

Many workshops default to ‘now, go chat in breakout rooms’. These are usually poorly framed and then not debriefed, totally losing the gold from the group interactions! 

Breakouts are generative... they generate contributions. 

What will you do with all of the generation and contribution? Most of us do little, perhaps asking a ‘so, what did you talk about?’ question. 

Helping a group do great work together doesn’t happen via a button. 

If you’re leading a group in a workshop setting, sharpen up your skills for better group interaction. 

Consider the DESIGN of the experience. 
Then the DELIVERY. 

Give good empathy

"We apologise for any inconvenience caused."

It's such a bland, banal, cover-all statement. I'm just not feelin' it though. I'm not feeling that you've REALLY understood the lengths to which your stuff, has stuffed up my stuff.

Building deeper connections, trust and understanding with customers, clients, colleagues and users means you've got to give, first.

In a workshop I was facilitating with customers and users recently, I made a point of giving. Deeply.

While I'm listening - like all good leaders, managers, trainers, facilitators, coaches do - I really need to show I'm listening. I've got to 'give' good listening, to get good trust.

So in workshops, conversations, sessions, I give empathy. Big time.

Then when there's been 'an inconvenience' or 'any inconvenience', I'll take the time in a client, customer or user workshop to hear it.

"But it's not on topic," whispers a designer on the project. "And it will build trust," I say later, "you'll get more engagement, trust and truth, later."

It's called empathy. I think we need to show it more by naming what it is that might have 'inconvenienced' people in the past.

Often people want to tell you their 'story' about a situation or experience. I've seen too many people cut off in the prime of their story because it's not on topic, or we don't have time, or they're waffling on or I don't have an answer for it or I can't fix it or <insert another low empathy excuse.>

I'm sorry if this has totally stuffed up your calendar for the day. I'm sorry if this means you were expecting to do this, not that. I'm sorry if this has meant you've spent time doing this and feel like you've wasted that time. 

Wow that must have really been annoying. Gee that must have been frustrating and irritating. Ooooh that sounds like it was a difficult thing for you to have to do. 

Understand. Name the inconvenience. Go out on an empathy limb. Make them know you feel it. And don't be so quick to jump on to the next topic or story. Give.

How to explain your ideas…

Product design company Zurb was in Melbourne recently at a session on ideation. These creative people spend their every waking hour creating; they're constantly designing products, websites and online services. 

But it's not always a smooth path... uncovering your awesome ideas so you can get your thinking 'out there' to people in the shape of a product or service. 

My visual notes reflect some of the hottest tips on ideation:

• Use stories (more engaging than boring zzzzz features and benefits)
• Set a time limit or 'time box' so brainstorming time is constrained 
• Get user feedback to inspire and generate new thinking
• Use a Sharpie marker to sketch out your thinking
• Keep your sketches 'lo fi' and rough
• Go for quality ideas not quantity

Then once you've got some ideas down, group them together in chunks or clusters so they're easier for people to see, understand and digest. 

Go ahead and encourage some wild ideas with the team this week! It's the actual process of coming up with ideas, the 'ideation', that gives structure to creative thinking.

In the words of Albert Einstein: "If I can't picture it, I can't understand it'. 

Business Design and the Rise of the Toolsmiths

Responding to the complex and challenging environment most businesses are operating in today is about being adaptive, agile and nimble. 

But the trouble is, most of us are using tools that are from a bygone era. That's dated, rigid and stuck!

My sketch video and visual image this week looks at mutations, stories and visualisation. These are the tools of today. 

Join this "Rise of the Toolsmiths" and make sure you're equipped to respond!

Enlarge the problem space

I'm enjoying having a read through John Kuprenas' book 101 things I learned in Engineering School

It's a lovely hardcover edition and has plenty of great explanations of concepts applicable to normal life beyond engineering.

I'm no engineer, so I think there's something about how engineers, designers and architects think and problem solve that can be helpful to us, no matter the setting. 

One of John's 'things' is to 'Enlarge the problem space'. He says that "almost every problem is larger than it initially appears. Explore and enlarge it at the outset - not to make more work, but because the scope of the problem almost certainly will creep - it will grow larger - on its own. It's easier to reduce the problem space later in the process than to enlarge it after starting down a path toward an inadequate solution".


It's right in line with one of the creative and innovation tools I use in workshops which I call 'It's Bigger'.
I use the A4 visual I've shared with you this week to firstly write the issue, and then add in thoughts about what the bigger issue is, then the b-i-g-g-e-r issue ... and then the BIGGER issue.

From there you can come up with some totally new solutions.
The page is designed as a worksheet, great for thinking alone, in a group or mapping out some possibilities.

John Kuprenas say there is the problem, then the cause of the problem, then the cause of the cause of the problem and the cause of the cause of the cause... you get it! 

It's a process that let's you look at creativity, innovation and problem solving by making it bigger before you get your hands dirty.  And this is a tool I'll be using with a large retailer this week as we workshop some of their new ideas and initiatives. See, you don't need to build bridges or roads or machines to be an engineer!