What makes you anxious when you participate in a workshop?

Will you be embarrassed? Will you be bored? Will you be disrespected? Will you waste your time? Where’s the door?

As facilitators, it’s our job to head off those fears of our participants.

I’ve learnt that the first 10 minutes are where we make that happen.

Those 10 minutes can create 4 vital conditions for success. (P.S. This is core practice for me. I do it quite rigorously!)

1) PURPOSE
Participants know exactly why they’re there (= a crisp purpose statement)

2) RESPECT
Participants feel respected (= each person has been listened to, with respect, by at least one other person via an enjoyable 1:1 icebreaker)

3) SAFETY
Participants feel safe (= they’ve signed off on ground rules that protect and respect them, so they know they’re in good hands)

4) EXPECTATIONS
Participants know what to expect (= we’ve reviewed the running order).

Now the thing is, let’s not treat these like optional steps. Do them RIGOROUSLY. Write them into our plans, and continuously improve on our practice.

Now the fun bit

We can do all these steps interactively as a “call and response”. * See the sample script below. This lets us simultaneously convert our people into ACTIVE participants, not passive observers.

Now their fears have been calmed, and they’ve already begun to participate.

We’ve set up our workshop for success!

* We’ll practice each of these steps in the Facilitate with Confidence training on 24-25 October.
Booking and details here: www.enablingchange.com.au

P.S. Don’t drone on or elaborate. Get to the point quickly. That proves you also respect their time.

Here’s a sample script for the first 10 minutes:

“Welcome!“

1) A CRISP PURPOSE STATEMENT. For example:

“The purpose of this workshop is [just say it]. Are you in the right workshop? Show of hands!”

2) AN ENJOYABLE 1:1 ICEBREAKER. For example:

“Before we do anything… please stand up. In the next 5 minutes, how many people can you introduce yourself to and find something in common with? Go!”

3) GROUND RULES. For example:

“I’d like to suggest some ground rules [insert favourite ground rules]”. After each suggested rule, check “Are you OK with that? Show of hands!” [that locks it in].

4) RUNNING ORDER with timing. Review the order and make sure everyone has a copy. 

Of course there’s more involved in the success of the whole event (like food, fun, strategic purpose, motion, variety, good questions, time for deliberation, and commitment to follow up)…but I’ve found that so much of the good stuff happens in those first 10 minutes.

There are still places in the next workshop (as of 17 Sept):

Over two enjoyable mornings: 24-25 October. With a great bunch of colleagues.
(This time there’s a special emphasis on creating enjoyment and physical motion in workshops.)

All details and registration here: www.enablingchange.com.au

Here are the five essential facilitation ‘do’s’ I’ve learnt.

1) Start with a crisp purpose statement

Every workshop happens because of a problem, need or opportunity. So state it, briefly and simply.

Of course, your client might have trouble identifying the purpose, or maybe it’s mired in strategy-speak, or too sensitive to be written down. As facilitator, you’ll need to ask some questions to uncover the real purpose. 

My routine questions for the client:

“What’s the problem, need or opportunity?”

“What’s the output?” and

“Who will act on the output, when?”

These questions generate a succinct purpose statement: “The purpose of this workshop is to tackle XXX problem/need/opportunity by producing a strategy/action plan/whatever that will be acted on by XXX over the next 12 months.”

Another good question is “What’s this meeting supposed to change?” Explore that for a while, and you’re sure to strike gold.

Purpose also includes boundaries, so I’ll want to know what’s set in stone and can’t be changed by the event, for example, the timeline, the implementation budget, the decision-maker, legislative and policy constraints. All those go under the umbrella question “What are the non-negotiables?”

Now, once you have a crisp purpose statement you can go on to design the event, promote the event, and introduce the event to participants so they know why they’re there. 

And, really critically, the strategic questions that form the framework of your event will fall naturally out of a good purpose statement. So you can see why it matters.

2) The 10-minute rule

Your participants will always arrive feeling anxious (iced-up) because they’re not sure how they’ll be treated during the workshop. 

The solution is: within 10 minutes of the start of the event every participant should be genuinely listened to, with respect, by another person. I like to use fun, simple methods like “In 5 minutes how many people can you walk up to and find something in common with”. This is guaranteed to melt the ice and transform people from reluctant audience to willing participants.

3) Never tell when you can ask

The best way to educate a group is to ask the participants what they already know. Inviting and liberating their hard-won knowledge demonstrates your respect for them, and peer-validated wisdom is always more credible than any expert information.

True story: a road safety officer tried asking a room full of road offenders to share their road safety stories and lessons in pairs, and selected a number to share with the room. She discovered she didn’t need to be a top-down educator any more, and the whole atmosphere of her workshops switched from negative to positive.

4) Blow their minds

Having said that, it’s immensely valuable to ensure participants have their minds blown by inspirational possibilities and stories before they start putting their own ideas down. Usually I do a 20 minute slide show of best examples I research off Google images, but sometimes even a whole morning of cutting-edge leaders expanding on what’s possible. 

Why? Because without this input, your participants will tend to produce familiar, safe, conservative ideas because of their natural fear of being embarrassed. We always need to slay that fear before the great ideas come. The effect of mind-blowing stories is to re-set expectations and get them competing on a more daring level.

5) Be genuinely curious

If you’re truly curious about people’s ideas and stories you’ll naturally tend to be a good facilitator – you’ll respect your participants, use silence well, make eye contact, and elicit the most valuable knowledge. 

Of course there’s a lot more to good facilitation than these five practices. And it’s best learnt through doing.

Or you might like to do some training.

Les’s next Facilitate with Confidence training is 3-4 May 2023. Booking and details.

Les Robinson is a professional facilitator and facilitation trainer. His web site is www.enablingchange.com.au

Two weeks of panic attacks. 

That was my first experience of running a Zoom workshop, right at the start of Covid. 

I had a client that wanted to shift their Changeology training online, so I gamely said ‘yes, I’ll do it!’ But, really, I had no idea. 

The client had no idea either. So they set up two 1-hour dress rehearsals, one with 18 people and one with 8 people, so we could all figure this out together. I stuffed up the rehearsals: I left the workshop twice and closed it once. But everyone waited patiently for me to rejoin, which was nice. The video sound didn’t function and I had no idea how to use the whiteboard. I made all the mistakes in those rehearsals. As a result the final event went smoothly and participants gave lovely feedback.

I thought Zooming would be a crapulous degraded version of real life workshopping, drained of humanity, connection and spontaneity. I was wrong.

I really love this space now. 

The trick was to do a LOT of experimenting and just remember we are all human beings here. I put myself in the shoes of the participants and tried a pile of ideas to make it a relaxing, enjoyable experience for all (see tips below).

Now I run a Zoom workshop practically every day. I have a cup of coffee, a walk, and wander upstairs to my “video lab”. I’m not getting tired of it. I miss the extra fun and ‘presence’ of face-to-face workshops, but I feel I could do this forever.

I really got the power of this medium in a workshop with change leaders from Samoa, Fiji, Tonga, Dunedin, Auckland, Sydney, Melbourne, and a tiny spot in the middle of Queensland. There we were, all together on one little screen, chatting happily like we were sitting right next to each other. The tyranny of distance was vanquished. One guy in Samoa, literally sitting under a palm tree, said he couldn’t believe that his Pacific Islands team hadn’t been doing this the whole time, instead of flying from island to island to go to meetings. 

The real glory of Zoom is its breakout rooms. It’s always in small breakouts of 4-5 people that the real participation happens. Zoom’s breakout rooms work exactly like real life table groups. People always come back from the breakout rooms looking happier and lighter. Technically, Zoom does breakout rooms beautifully, with a simple interface that lets me rapidly throw people in and out of breakouts, in any combination, random or assigned. By comparison, Microsoft Team’s breakout rooms feature (called ‘channels’) is hopelessly clunky. Webex also does breakout rooms, but there’s no video there (go figure!).

The two main interactive tools are Chat and Whiteboard. They both work sweetly and are fun for novices to use. Special note: I always give people 5 minutes of whiteboard play time before doing serious stuff – it’s how they learn to use it. And Chat’s a better-than-real-life tool because it’s legible and instantly readable by all. Silent Chat-time is a very effective interactive method all by itself. I also try to convince people to use Chat whenever they feel a need to express themselves during the workshop – it’s great for shy participants, and it’s fun having a second stream of random ideas just happening all day…kind of like a teacher-approved version of passing notes in the classroom.

Anyway, I’ve gotten distracted by the technology. I really want to share some important tips to make Zooming work.

TIPS to make ZOOMING work

1) The first is a “chilled-out online orientation”. This sets out the ground rules for participation. The first time I was ever in someone else’s Zoom workshop it was a horrible experience because I didn’t know the social rules. Could I talk? Could I chat? Could I step away for a moment? Could I ask a question? I didn’t know what I was allowed to do and I got stuck in front of a screen I couldn’t escape from. In 15 minutes I was having a rotten time and didn’t want to be there any more. The solution is to give people specific permissions to be human, demonstrate them, AND ask them to practice them right at the start of the workshop.

Here is my “chilled-out online orientation” checklist. 

2) Get a TV (at least 32 inch), connected to your laptop with an ordinary HDMI cable. That way you can STAND UP and MOVE AROUND. This is infinitely more pleasant and comfortable that sitting down for hours. The same goes for the participants.

3) Invite participants to arrive 20 minutes before start time so they chat, get to know each other, do sound checks, and iron out any tech problems. This breaks the ice.

4) Never Zoom in the afternoon. It never works – people always get sleepy. Instead break a whole day workshop into two mornings so they’re always fresh.

5) Do lots of “check-offs” and quick interactive requests during the day, getting people to respond with a big physical “Y” (yes) or “X” (no).

6) Have lots of breaks, at least 10 minutes per hour.

7) The first time you do it, do TWO dress rehearsals.

In conclusion, I want to say: don’t be afraid. This new space is cool. If we’re adventurous, give our participants permission to be human, and use lots of tricks to maintain energy, it really works. It can be a pleasure. Its astonishing power to vanquish distance means people from the most dispersed locations, virtually anywhere on earth, can happily congregate and work together. That’s an extremely good thing.

Here’s what I learnt from a baptism of fire facilitating an online interactive workshop for 32 professionals last week.

(The platform was Zoom. Similar rules would apply to all platforms.)

The big lessons were:

1) Do two (2) full dress rehearsals.

2) Have a co-host;

3) Start slow, do energy checks and have lots of breaks.

4) Use the breakout room feature;

5) Get a bluetooth headset;

6) Have a big screen (a TV is perfect)

7) Make a nice background and adjust the lighting.

1) Do two (2) full dress rehearsals before your first workshop

Really, an amazing amount of stuff can go wrong when you’re a novice! I did two one-hour dress rehearsals with 18 and 8 participants. I’m so thankful for this! They appreciated the practice too.

I stuffed up so many things: I accidentally closed the meeting once, and abandoned it twice. I didn’t know how to turn on video sound. I found out how to fix these things, and got familiar with the buttons and features.

2) Have a co-host

Appoint a co-host (thanks Gayle!). They have important roles:

• If your connection fails, the ‘host’ role defaults to them and the meeting can continue.
• They can be in charge of recording the session (you’ll be too distracted to remember).
• They can troubleshoot participants with video / audio problems.
• They can be in charge of assigning people to manual breakout rooms (this can take several minutes). Just make them ‘host’ temporarily so they can do this.
• They can just jog your memory for stuff you forget.

(If you’re doing this ‘in-house’ then note that you can create a number of “Alternative Hosts” prior to the meeting, for example your IT-person, your assistants, your registration desk person. This only works when you’re all using the same Zoom account.)

3) Start slow, do energy checks and have lots of breaks

I spent lots of time (30 minutes!) on the preliminaries and ground rules, getting everyone active, practicing extravagant gestures to communicate (‘yes’, ‘no’, ‘not sure’). The participants responded well…they really needed to know the rules in this new space!

Doing a round of spoken intros was important because the online environment tends to inhibit talk, and I wanted everyone to break their ice. In the big group I used 3 breakout rooms for this. It worked well.

To maintain the energy, I aimed for at least one 10 minute ‘tea break’ per hour. This was perfect. It was a 7 hour workshop! But in future I’ll aim for max 4 hour workshops, 9.00 to 1.00. Mornings are always best for thinking and creativity anyway.

I also did 5-finger energy checks regularly – this gave me feedback on people’s attentiveness, and they enjoyed doing it.

4) Use breakout rooms

The Zoom breakout room feature works very well! I could quickly throw people into smaller groups where they could speak more freely. The online environment inhibits many participants – the breakout rooms overcome this nicely – I could tell from the happy look on people’s faces when they returned to the main session.

Remember to appoint room facilitators and give the participants crystal clear instructions about what to do when you’re not watching. Also, you can pop in and check how they’re going.

(You’ll have to separately turn on the breakout room feature in Zoom.us meeting settings – do it once, it stays on permanently).

5) Sound matters! Get a Bluetooth headset. I got a cheap one from Jaycar and it worked fine. Do sound checks before each workshop.

6) Get a TV. A big screen helped me read people’s body language. This is essential if you’re going to do this often. It’s a good idea for participants to do this as well.

A dragged the TV onto my desk and connected it to my computer using an HDMI cable. (Check whether you need a cable adapter and order it now.)

6) Tweek the lighting, and arrange a nice background

It goes without saying: play around with the lighting until it’s perfect. I carefully masked direct sunlight from the room,and I used a set of cheap worklights from Bunnings to do fine adjustments

People need relaxing things to rest their eyes on during a workshop, so make a fun, easy-on-the-eyes background for yourself – maybe some flowers in a vase, a few artworks.

PRE-FLIGHT CHECKLISTS

I love checklists. Here are the ones I developed after this workshop.

Problem and solution

THE PROBLEM: The online ‘space’ is really just one 2D screen wide! People can feel trapped in these tiny screens. They can be afraid to move around and get stiff and exhausted quickly.

Also, facilitation is always about activating our social humanity. Full-sized 3D people make energise us. Tiny 2D people, less so!

THE SOLUTION: Practice being “more Italian”.
– Be extra-relaxed, loose and easy-going. The more relaxed you are, the more relaxed they’ll be.
– Use ground rules to give people specific permission to be physically free.
– Make them practice that physical freedom, so they “de-ice”.
– Give them frequent reminders and instructions to be physical.
– Remember that most people are shy in large groups…so use the breakout rooms to make smaller groups of 4-5 where people naturally talk more freely (people love the breakout rooms).

Pre-flight instructions for participants

• Please join us for morning coffee at 9.30 for a 9.45 start. This will give us time to get comfortable and fix any audio/video issues.
• Before that can you please do the following to ensure a happy session of Zooming:
• Download the Zoom app on your phone (in case of internet failure).
• Write down the meeting ID number (ditto).
• Set-up up Zoom with your own name so the presenter can easily address you. Go to the green box on the top of the initial Join Meeting page, then go to Settings / Profile (in sidebar) / Edit my profile.
• Feel free to choose a virtual background (or load your own! Hint: Outdoor scenes are restful on the eye for everyone). Use video control menu on bottom left corner of your main Zoom window.
• Open the relevant manual/template on your computer. Be ready to flick back and forth.
• Troubleshooting issues: here’s the co-host’s phone number ………………………..and email ………………………………..
• Have a notebook and pen ready.

Preflight checklist for the presenter

1) Appoint a co-host and get their mobile number (in case your connection fails). Brief them. Do a practice session.

2) Put up any necessary warning signs: “Please be quite – videoconference in progress”; “Please use back door” etc

3) Open Zoom.us on your phone. Write down the meeting ID number.

3) Charge your keyboard, mouse and Bluetooth headset.

4) Send out manuals and templates in advance.

5) Print-out a list of participants.

6) Do a sound check.

Checklist for opening a workshop

At the start of the workshop, spend at least 20-30 minutes doing preliminaries and ground rules.

Preliminaries

• The purpose of this workshops is ………………
• Ground rules (see below).
• Ice-breaker intro: Invite each person to say a few words. For groups of 10 or more, use break-out rooms.
• Agenda for the day. Mention that there’ll be breaks every hour.

Chilled-out ground rules

“Togetherness, kindness, and patience.”

Make this step very theatrical and interactive!

1) Let’s practice ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ and ‘Not sure’ hand signals. (The more theatrical the better!)

2) Let’s practice:

– Toggle Mute / Unmute

– Toggle Gallery view / Presenter view

– Chatting

3) Please don’t sit down for more than 10 mins.

Let’s practice: stand up, walk around, do air guitar and come back. Practice!

You can walk away from the screen anytime you need to. That’s OK!

4) We’ll do 5 finger energy checks at intervals (1-2 fingers = low energy = time for a break!). Practice.

5) You can chat anytime you have a thought or question.

6) Be more Italian. Be super-responsive and theatrical. Let’s practice being more Italian.

7) Speak slowly. If I speed up, then you’re allowed to say/chat “Please slow it down” [Let’s practice telling me to slow down.]

8) Please speak in chunks, then stop.

9) Please turn off your email app and put your phone on silent.

10) If you want to do something offline (like take an important text), then please “mute” and turn sideways, or walk away. (That’s actually good manners – you’re communicating clearly to the facilitator).

11) PRIVACY Will recording occur? Seek permission. Will screen shots be taken? Seek permission.
[CHECK: Does your current set-up allow attendees to record?]

[To enable the “This meeting is being recorded” warning, set it up first in Meeting settings/Recording. More: https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/360026909191-Consent-to-be-Recorded

12) [NOW, to start people participating…]. Now, so we get practice talking: Please introduce yourselves and say a few words about what’s “top of mind” or “Your top tip for being happy during Covid-19.” [For groups of 10-plus, break into breakout rooms.]

Misc. notes for presenters

• Chats are saved in Documents/Zoom folder.
• For videos with sound, click “Share computer sound” before opening the video on the “Share” window.
• Many people don’t have printers at home, so don’t ask them to print stuff.
• Like all meetings – be really clear on the follow-up: what’s next; who does what, when.
• Make jokes about the catering.
• Fun ideas: make an on-screen Conga line. Bring a soft toy as an avatar.
• Privacy and permissions matter. [Note that all Zoom meeting are end-to-end encrypted.]
• If you have concerns over conflict, pre-set “Allow host to out attendee on hold.” in Meeting settings

Checklist: Instructions for breakout groups

1) Appoint a group facilitator. Your job is to keep the group on track.

2) All unmute.

3) Appoint a scribe. They can use chat to record outcomes, or a Word document that’s screen shared (or OneDoc for collaboration if that’s your thing.)

4) For brainstorming: chat works well.

5) Remember to save your chat files (everyone).

Note: When you close breakout rooms, participants have 60 seconds to wind up their discussion.

Happy workshopping folks!

– Les