10 Tips on How to Have a Workshop that People Won't Hate

Erik Johnson

Nov 29, 2023

People talk often about the importance of soft skills, and unfortunately, there’s often a belief that you either have these skills or you don’t, and that if you don’t have them, you might be able to “work on them” in some vague way, but that’s about it. However, due to my somewhat eclectic background, I’ve found that all of these skills are learnable and that usually, there’s an entire discipline with a rich history and useful training methods focused specifically on how to improve these skills.

For the skills that let you walk into a roomful of people with differing opinions, goals, and personalities and come out of that room with a shared understanding of what’s been learned and what work is left to be done, that discipline is teaching.

So, from a guy who spent 8 years convincing teenagers that simplifying rational expressions was a worthwhile endeavor, here are some of the things I’ve learned that might make your next meeting/workshop/whatever less painful for all involved:

chalkboard full of difficult math problems — Enthralling, right? Don’t forget the domain restrictions!

Apply basic public speaking skills. You had to take a required course on this at some point — apply it. After you brush your teeth in the morning, talk to yourself in the mirror. Make good eye contact, don’t gesture like a crazy person, and smack yourself in the face every time you say a placeholder non-word like: “uh”, “um”, “like”, or “disruptive innovation”. Everyone will thank you.
Model activities. In general, people are terrible at listening to and following directions. Be explicit about how you want them to participate — verbally, in writing, via interpretive dance. Give an example of a useful response and an example of a less useful response. Then, if you want them to do X, you should do X, in front of them, so they see exactly what you mean.
Build a vocabulary of non-verbal cues. Pick a prominent location. Whenever you need focus from everyone (i.e. when you are giving instructions or summarizing), stand there and ask for their attention. Never stand there otherwise. When you are inviting participation or facilitating a discussion, move off to the side and start taking notes on the whiteboard. When people are supposed to work alone or in small groups, sit down.
Be aware of time. Start on time — 5 minutes past the posted start time, you better be going. 5 minutes before the designated stop time, you better be wrapping up. If you need to extend the session, apologize, ask who is willing to remain, then have a short break so that the people who do need to leave don’t have to get up and walk out in front of everyone else.
Be mindful of status. Status can be official (i.e. the CEO is in your meeting), but doesn’t have to be. If left unchecked, high-status individuals can dominate discussion or push low-status people out of participating, to the detriment of the work product. Ask upfront for permission to facilitate the meeting and state explicitly that you will prompt people to wrap up if they are taking up too much time. Also state that you will solicit opinions from everyone, as it’s critical that all people have in put in the process. Flip side — don’t pretend everyone’s opinion is equally important — if you have one key decision-maker in the room, acknowledge that (i.e. for voting exercises, give them their own special color of dots).
Know when to stop talking. On a radio show, hosts need to always fill “dead air” — don’t do this in a workshop. Make it clear when you’re done talking (see #3) and discipline yourself not to interrupt when people are working or thinking. Ask one question at a time and give people time to think before formulating a response.
Have an opener. People will make snap judgements about whether you are worth listening to or not, about whether this workshop is a good idea or a waste of time. If you start by mumbling something vague about how everyone should introduce themselves, you will lose half your audience. Come prepared.
Keep device use to a minimum. If you want participation, don’t let your participants have their screens open. Do this by explicitly asking for it at the beginning, by using post-its, sharpies, and other hands-on materials, and of course, by…
Make space for breaks. At least every two hours, have an official break so people can stretch legs, check email, hit the bathroom, etc. Also mix up your activities, so people aren’t doing the same thing for an extended period of time. Mental breaks are just as important as physical ones.
Summarize and re-voice responses. Probably the best technique I know. If someone says a long, complicated thing, summarize it quickly to verify you (and the other participants) understood. Post-its, whiteboards, and other character-limiting ways of recording responses help enforce this. If someone says something in an unproductive way, try to focus on the need they are expressing and rephrase it productively. Afterwards, send out (BRIEF) meeting notes that contain the key insights and learnings so that people can correct any misunderstandings (and so you have a document to refer back to).

So there you go, tips on running a workshop that people won’t hate from a guy who has done it for a living (in some form or another) for his entire adult life. The best way to internalize these skills is to practice, practice, practice, ideally in front of a hostile audience, year after year after year.

Next best thing is good preparation and honest self-assessment. The nice thing about running workshops for adults is that they will be polite, will pretend to pay attention, and won’t tell you you suck (even if you do). That’s also a downside, so aside from assessing yourself, it’s also a good idea to solicit feedback via a simple Google form after each workshop. That way, you’ll have some rigorous, carefully quantified data about just how awesome you are.

Let me know if these tips helped, if there’s anything I missed, or how your next workshop went. You can see the type of workshops we run at purposeux.com/process , email me directly at erik@purposeux.com, or reach out via LinkedIn.

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