 How do you keep the energy up in a workshop? What do you do if no one can understand how to do the exercises? And how do you get people to stop talking when you need to move on? Facilitating successful workshop or meeting isn't just about learning methods and exercises, but also about understanding that there are important soft skills and communication techniques that can elevate a good facilitator to a great one. Hi, my name's Dee and I'm a full-time workshop facilitator. I've run hundreds of workshops and trained thousands of people in facilitation. And over the years, I've collected so many secret tips and tricks that you can't learn anywhere in books and I'm going to share those with you today. While you're watching this video, if you have any questions about the tips and tricks I'm going to share, please write them in the comments below. So let's dive into tip number one. And as I go through all these tips and tricks today, they can apply whether you're working as a freelancer with clients or if you work in-house with your own team. Before you start a workshop, there are a few important things that you can do to make sure it really kicks off with confidence. And these are all about preparing and welcoming your participants before the workshop actually starts. The things that I really love to do are a few things to help my participants get to know me and feel like they know what's about to happen when the workshop actually starts. How I like to do this is by sending an email at least a few days before, but no more than one week before to make sure that they don't forget the information that you're telling them. And in that email, I like to write a few important things. First of all, introduce myself and who I am and the role that I'm going to have in the workshop coming up. So hi, MD, I'm going to be your facilitator for this coming workshop. Another thing I like to do is record a video of myself saying hello and telling everyone who I am. And this doesn't have to be a great film production. You can just use an online tool like Loom is one of my favorites to record a quick video and then share a link of yourself welcoming everyone and saying hello. And then I like to make sure they also know what the schedule is actually going to be like. How long is the session or perhaps multiple sessions? Is there going to be any other time from them required, for example, to do pre-work or in-between homework exercises? If I'm running a remote workshop, it's important to give them a little bit of an introduction to the tools that they might be using. And this isn't something that you have to record yourself. You can find videos on YouTube that explain the tools you're about to use and simply share the link with your participants. And here's a pro tip. Also in that preparation email, you can ask your participants to do a very quick five or 10 minute pre-activity to get them warmed up and familiar with the tool that they're about to use. For example, I like to do a very quick and easy intro exercise where each person puts their name and a bit of information about themselves in post-it notes in my mirror board. So you can share a link for them to do that activity in that preparation email. And that way people already start getting into the tool and using the workspace that you're going to use when you start the workshop. What this pre-activity allows you to do is to see who's engaging in your workshop board and who isn't. And you'll probably find it's about 50% of people that don't start engaging that first time you send the email. That gives you a chance to send another quick reminder email maybe the day before to get anyone who's not engaged yet into the board and starting that pre-activity and getting familiar with the tool. And this will increase your chance of actually getting people warmed up and ready for your workshop to about 90% of people. So that's what you can do before the workshop even starts to help kick it off with confidence and get people engaged. Now let's talk about actually facilitating the workshop. You've already onboarded your participants and got them ready with a pre-activity. It's always still great to start your workshop with something very simple to get people warmed up. So if you've already done a quick intro exercise as a pre-activity before the workshop started you'll want to run through this and maybe add on one more post-it that they can add to something or a way that they can take notes using post-its in the board to really get them again clicking adding post-its, writing in the board and engaging in what you're doing. And this will help them feel really comfortable with the tool so they can focus on achieving the objectives of the workshop and not figuring out how the tool works as they go through it. This brings me to my next tip. One of the most common and biggest challenges that facilitators face is when participants don't understand exactly what they're supposed to do in an exercise. And even if you know the exercise very well and you've explained it a hundred times doesn't mean that everyone in the room is going to understand exactly what you're explaining. I've run hundreds and hundreds of workshops and every time there's always a few people who don't understand because they may be process and understand information in different ways. So here's some really great tips to help you make sure that all of your participants feel comfortable and understand exactly what to do in an exercise. First, there is a formula for clear instructions and it goes like this. First say what you're going to do then say why you're actually doing it and then explain clearly how you should do it. Let's use an example to see how this formula really works and sketching concept ideas is a really great example because it's one of the more challenging types of exercises that you'll probably find yourself running in a workshop. So let's follow this formula, what, why, how. The what is simply the name of the exercise. We're about to do concept sketching. The why is the explanation of why we're actually doing this exercise especially explaining what it should look like at the end of the exercise and what we might use this information for after the exercise is done. So the why could sound something like this. We're all going to make individual concept sketches so that we can look at a diverse range of ideas and make a final choice. And the how is where you very clearly explain exactly how they should complete the activity. So for concept sketching, it's take a thick Sharpie marker and a piece of paper, look back at previous examples and inspiration and sketch your version of a concept idea clearly on the page. So you really need to explain what tools they use, how many of them and how they complete the task in the how step. It's also very useful while in that how step we're explaining exactly how to do the exercise that you visually demonstrate and show a clear example of all the steps that are actually involved so they can easily see how to do it themselves. Some other great tips to help your participants feel comfortable and understand exactly how to do each exercise are things like only giving one way to do the exercise, one clear definition that doesn't give them multiple different options or choices. Even though you might think this is actually being helpful, it'll confuse your participants more than it will help them. Give them one clear explanation of exactly how to do the step. Let's go back to the concept sketch as the example again. Years ago, I used to explain the concept sketch giving people multiple options in different ways that they could do it. I would say you can use one sheet of paper or you could use up to three if you have more to draw. You can use a sharpie marker or you could also use colored markers and highlighters if you want to. You can add post-its on the side, you can give it different names, you can do all these different things. Whatever you feel like would make a better concept sketch. And I thought I was giving people more options and more flexibility with how they gave their creative input but my participants actually felt more confused and less supported in how to do the exercise. So I started giving them one clear way to do it. One sheet of paper, a sharpie marker and three post-its on the side. And my participants were way more comfortable doing this exercise, asked far fewer questions and gave actually much better input into the concept sketching exercise when I would facilitate it. Giving your participants one clear way to do an exercise will help them focus more on the creative problem solving and less on trying to figure out how to do the exercise. Some other great ways to help your participants feel more comfortable to do each exercise is to show some clear examples. If you're using a digital whiteboard-like mirror, you can already put some quick examples into the board. For example, if they're writing how might we's on post-its, you can write one or two examples so they can see the phrasing format to follow. If you're up to the concept sketch exercise, what I like to do is post examples of other concept sketches from other workshops I've run into the board and they might not be around the same topic, but they can see how simple and clear the concept sketch needs to be. So sharing clear examples in each exercise will help people understand what they're aiming for. My last great tip for helping people feel comfortable doing each exercise is for the trickier, more challenging exercises or ones that people aren't used to doing is to make a short, simple video of you demonstrating how to do the exercise. This is especially useful if you've got an activity that you've given as homework for your participants to complete in between the sessions. So I've made a really simple video that I like to send to my clients to help them do the concept sketch activity and they can simply watch and follow along and see exactly how they're supposed to complete the activity. Now let's talk about maintaining energy during a workshop. And this is one of the most challenging things that a facilitator has to do, especially with remote workshops but also with in-person live workshops, balancing and keeping up people's energy and enthusiasm throughout the whole session is a very difficult and very important thing to do. My first tip with this is to use quick energiser activities whenever you start a session. If your workshop is only two hours long, you can start with a light introduction or energiser activity at the very beginning but you might not need another one. If your workshop runs over multiple sessions or has a long break in between, for example, a lunch break, it's really important to bring people's energy back up when they come back after a long pause. So use quick energiser activities after there's been a long break or if you have multiple sessions running over multiple days. And here comes my pro tip, another thing that I only figured out after years and years of facilitation. This is something that you need to think about before the workshop actually starts and make sure that you keep the flow during the workshop. This pro tip is balance out the active parts of the workshop and the passive parts of the workshop. What this means is you need to balance and spread out when the passive parts of the workshop are, so when people are passively listening and consuming and digesting what you're explaining and when the active parts of the workshop are, when they're actually practically putting post-its on the page or sketching something or voting on ideas. Anything where your participants are actually engaging in an activity is an active part and when your participants are listening and digesting information, that's a passive part. So you as a facilitator can decide in advance how to structure your workshop to create a nice balanced flow so that your workshop isn't too draining and isn't too boring. Another trick that I've picked up along my facilitation journey is to give people a little bit of information at the very beginning of your workshop to help them understand and be prepared for what might happen during the session. As they're a facilitator, you are responsible for making sure things stay on time, making sure the goals and objectives of the workshop are achieved and making sure that too much discussion doesn't go off topic. It can be really challenging to keep control over the whole group without sounding rude or unprofessional when you need to cut things off and keep the workshop moving. So what I like to do that makes this 10 times easier when I'm running a workshop is to explain the facilitator role and responsibilities at the very beginning of the workshop. It can just take you two or three minutes and maybe have something on your screen as well that explains these responsibilities and pre-warns people that you might cut them off during a discussion when the information isn't helping us move forward with the challenge. And you can forewarn people that it might feel a little annoying to be cut off when they're in the middle of a discussion. The magic is that they actually find it less annoying when it happens. So telling people a little bit in advance how something might feel and how something might go helps them be prepared for when it happens and it feels less confronting and less challenging and helps you run a smoother workshop. I like to be very clear when I'm explaining this in advance and tell people what that might sound like. So I actually tell people that I'm going to say phrases like we need to move on now or can we save this topic for discussion after the workshop? I tell them what I'm going to say when I know the inevitable will happen and some discussions will break out in the workshop. And then when they hear those phrases, they're far less likely to be resistant and challenging me to stop because they know that I'm going to say these things and they know why I need to do it. The way I do this at the beginning of the workshop is to say very clearly right near the start after I've explained the role of the facilitator is to say, so sometimes I might cut off conversation. Sometimes I might ask that we table a conversation and keep it for later discussion after the workshop. Does everyone understand that that's part of my responsibility and can I have your support with that during the workshop? And really get people to nod their head or say yes or give a thumbs up in a video call to really get that kind of verbal acknowledgement that they're agreeing to also participate in this during the workshop. There's a really great trick that I've been using myself for years that helps control the amount that people talk. In some situations in a workshop, you want people to share more and start speaking up to bring engagement into the workshop. And at other times, you want people to stop so that you can move on to the next activity. And I found some really fantastic, very simple word tricks to use to help with this. When you want people to speak more or share examples or share their thoughts, you can start off explaining the activity, sharing an example of your own to say, this is the kind of thing that I'd like you to share and then say the words, what else? Who else has something? Who's got something else to add? And this will imply that there are many more things still to share and people will be much more ready and willing to speak up and share them. On the other side of this, when people have engaged enough and maybe are now speaking too much and discussion is breaking out, you can close this off by using the flip side of this sentence. Is there anything else? I don't think there needs to be anything else. Is closing down the conversation and this makes it so much easier and people don't even realize that you're doing it. For you as a facilitator to elicit more responses from people or to say, that's enough now, we're moving on without having to tell people, please stop talking or please say more. So these great little phrases really help you subtly take control over the engagement in the room. Another thing that you'll always encounter is dealing with skeptics and difficult participants in your workshop and this can really throw a facilitator off and make you feel less confident and less sure about your facilitation skills. So something you can do to stay confident as a facilitator even if you're faced with this challenge is a commo of three things at once. And they make the person who's creating some disruption make them feel seen and heard use a parking lot to save topics for later and ask that person to take ownership and remember the topic that can be discussed later so that they feel like they're responsible and they know it's gonna happen. So this is something that I often need to say in a workshop when a participant is causing a little bit of disruption. It's always rooted in their desire to be seen, be heard, be understood and the feeling that they have something important to say and they need to explain it. So this is a sentence I often find myself saying in workshops when this happens. Thank you so much for bringing this up. This is so interesting and important. It won't help us move on right now with the voting exercise that we're doing but I want to make sure we save this for later. Could you please put this in the parking lot and make sure that we discuss this topic at the end of the workshop? So this whole sentence together helps the person feel that they've seen and heard and understood the importance of what they want to say. It's also created them as being the owner of whether that topic is going to be continued and going to be discussed. So they feel like they have some control over whether that is going to happen. If I say I'll make sure that we discuss this topic later, they still feel a little out of control of whether that's going to happen or not. So I ask them to be responsible for them to place it in the parking lot or to keep the note for later and then they feel sure that this is going to be addressed even if it often actually isn't because they don't come back with it later but they feel comfortable enough to sit back down and focus on the next activity. If you want to know more about how the parking lot method works, you can watch this video to find out more. So there you have it. Those are my top facilitation tricks to become a great facilitator. I hope you found this helpful. Let us know in the comments what you thought of these tips and we'd love to know if you've got any tricks or hacks of your own that you can share with us. If you like tips like this and you're interested in leveling up your facilitation career, we've created a free one hour training that teaches our 5-1-6 method that helps you become a top 1% facilitator. The link is in the description below. That's it from me and see you next time. Facilitating a successful workshop on... And I'm going to share all my secret tricks with you today. How are you? You have to do so much editing. I just don't know how you do it.