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. 

The world needs us to think and work differently

Here’s a resource full of ideas, inspiration and practical wisdom on how to do that. 

It’s all coming together in the full colour book ‘Better Ways of Thinking and Working’. 

I’ve collected, selected and edited many of the ideas I’ve shared that are relevant for these times of change, evolution and revolution. 

Now they’re coming together in the one place. 

Order via my website or shop 

‘BETTER WAYS OF THINKING & WORKING: How changing the way you do things, changes what you can do’. 

Applause to the synthesizers

To those who make sense of mess.

Who connect the dots and help us understand what’s going on. 

To those who just look at a spreadsheet and know what’s going on. 

Who can succinctly summarize the outcomes of a meeting, the key points of a presentation, the plot of a film. 

We applaud you. We so need you. 

You work out what the key pieces are and deliver them to us with clarity, precision and brevity. 

You cut to the chase, get to the point, and bring things together so we can move things along. 

Your way of distilling and reducing, integrating without losing meaning and holding the important bits together is needed. 

In all of the information, you find a way through so we can follow. 

And then together we can decide and act, putting ideas into practice. 

To the synthesisers who comb through complexity and are able to bring a lot of information together in one piece, thank you. 

Please keep doing what you do. 

Look around and listen out for the synthesisers who help bring disparate pieces of information together, help build understanding and help make collaboration easier ... thank you. 

Know a great synthesiser? Get in contact with them and say thank you. 

Engagement myth : ‘Once you lose them you lose them’.

It’s not true. 

We lose focus and attention all the time. As leaders, speakers or trainers, we can’t hold people’s engagement all of the time. 

So yes, we will ‘lose them.’ We all drift away. But it doesn’t mean they are forever ‘lost’.  

Attention ebbs and flows. We can’t give 100% attention, 100% of the time. 

The task becomes: how do you get them back... and when they come back, how do you catch them up with what has been happening - whether they’re ‘gone’ for 15 seconds or 15 minutes?

The work then is to firstly DESIGN for engagement. 

And then to invite, welcome and DELIVER for reengagement. And repeated reengagement, because our attention lapses. 

Rather than the control freak in us expecting or demanding 100% attention, work to earn engagement and to hold it, understanding that it will leave at times. 

And then work to always encourage and welcome re-engagement, whenever it comes. 

Ease is an accelerator

How easy do you make things? 
And what do they need you to make easier?

The weekly status meeting is often a summary of “here’s what going on”.  

Rather than going around the table - or the screen - hearing an update about what’s going on, why not find out what they need made easier? 

Leaders who take on the role of a facilitator - today’s leaders of ease - are focused on making things easier for their team. 

That means helping to identify and remove barriers, blocks and obstacles. 

Get to it! Find out where the sticking points are and help free them up. Release the build up, move the blockage out of there and make things easier. 

This is some of the best work a leader can do. It can be one of the most impactful, supportive and memorable things about a leader. 

It reduces friction and frustration and allows the team to build up momentum, speed and flow. 

Go now ... go make something easier.