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- Herausgeber: via tolino media
- Kategorie: Bildung
- Sprache: Englisch
Workshop Mechanics provides guidance for any type of workshop. Youwill learn about the four steps of workshop work and what is important in the preliminary discussion, design, facilitation, and evaluation of workshops. The book helps you design all phases of a workshop and combine them with motivational elements from play, storytelling, and the flow concept to create a positive workshop experience for participants. Enriched with anecdotes, examples, templates, and checklists, you'll have everything you need to plan and facilitate workshops with confidence and ease.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
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"Workshop Mechanics - Facilitate workshops with confidence and ease"
Author: Marc Riedinger Design: Nina Erschfeld
© Accso - Accelerated Solutions GmbH 2023 1st edition All rights reserved.
This work, including its parts, is protected by copyright. Any use outside the narrow limits of copyright law without the consent of the author is prohibited. This applies in particular to electronic or other reproduction, translation, distribution and making available to the public.
Contact: Accso - Accelerated Solutions GmbH, Hilpertstraße 12, 64295 Darmstadt, Germany www.accso.de
Disclaimer
The content of this book has been checked and prepared with great care. However, no guarantee or warranty can be given for the completeness, correctness and up-to-dateness of the contents. The content of this book represents the personal experience and opinion of the author. No guarantee for success is given. Therefore, the author assumes no responsibility for failure to achieve the goals described in the book.
Contact and more information about the author:
LinkedIn: Marc Riedinger
About this book
"If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else."
Booker T. Washington
It's enormously satisfying to empower people to solve a stubborn problem and enable them to see familiar things in new ways so they can gain valuable insights. And it's not only fulfilling, it can be learned. That's what this book is for. Over the past ten years, I have been intensively studying the frameworks needed to create those methodological structures that empower and motivate people to find solutions. And to accompany them in doing so. I have developed and facilitated hundreds of workshops for a wide variety of companies, associations, government agencies and broadcasting corporations. As a trainer, I pass on my knowledge of methodology and facilitation.
I am convinced that sustainable solutions are best developed jointly by the people who suffer together from a problem. Professional support helps them to overcome the often existing operational blindness, to bundle the different perspectives, interests and competencies of the people involved and to consistently align them towards the defining goal: problem solving.
Workshops play a central role in this process. They bring together different people who have one thing in common: They are all connected in some way, often in different ways, to a problem that needs to be solved together. With proper guidance, they pool their knowledge and accomplish something they most likely would not have done on their own. When they succeed, participants are often downright euphoric, because they have not only created solutions to their problem, but they have proven to themselves that they are the ones who can solve the problem. This powerful feeling of self-efficacy has an impact that extends far beyond the workshop itself.
However, it is not easy to acquire the necessary knowledge to design and facilitate workshops in a way that empowers participants to create real solutions and real value. Much of the literature available on workshops focuses on single aspects, some of which are very specialized, such as team building methods or creativity techniques. Often this information is also tied to a theme or an overarching approach. For example, you may find "The one hundred best methods for design thinking," "How to run a successful retrospective," or "Efficient structures for designing meetings". Such books and websites usually list their techniques like a cookbook lists its recipes. However, such a cookbook does not answer questions such as which dish is best suited for which occasion and for which guests, how to react to intolerances at short notice, or in which order and with which drinks a menu is successful. And like recipes, many workshop methods are simple variations on a few basic techniques. So there are not only many incomplete reads, but a lot of multiple reads as well.
Therefore, this book is not a collection of methods or a cookbook. Rather, it covers all four steps of the workshop process: from preliminary discussion to methodology and agenda to facilitation and documentation. As with a successful dinner, it is not just the food that counts, but much more: the ambience, the guests, the conversations, or the length of the meeting. Everything is interrelated, and not everything can be planned in advance. The whole is something else than the sum of its parts. In this sense, this book treats the workshop format as a whole and will help you to plan and facilitate your workshops with confidence in all aspects.
This book will provide you with
A comprehensive guide to all phases of a workshop. This guide works for any type of workshop, in any context, and is therefore not limited to topics or specific approaches. A deep understanding of how these phases interrelate and how this can help you, for example, to eliminate difficult situations in facilitation in advance. A whole new approach to methods. Using the mechanics approach developed specifically for this book, you will learn to understand methods at a functional level, making it much easier to sort, adapt, and even redevelop them. Templates and checklists that you can refer to again and again for support.The book itself is organized according to the four steps described above, with separate chapters on preliminary discussion, preparation, facilitation, and documentation. The most important information is color-coded. This allows you to find it quickly or read the book again in quick succession.
So much in advance. Before we get into the design and facilitation of workshops, let's first define what a workshop is and what it's for.
Marc Riedinger
BS (Hons) Design & Innovation Cert. Innovation Manager Cert. Team Facilitator Cert. Agile Coach
What is a workshop?
The word "workshop" originally referred to a workroom, a place equipped with tools and materials for making or repairing a specific product. This space is really only useful for that purpose. It is not suitable for meetings, presentations or lectures. I personally find this meaning of the term very helpful and use it as an analogy to distinguish workshops from other forms of temporary collaboration between people.
A workshop is therefore a format in which a group of people work together on something. This goal distinguishes it from discussions, presentations, lectures, or training sessions. Although a workshop may include discussions, they should only be used as a means to an end, to produce a concrete result. This also means that they usually take up very little space.
As you have probably experienced, discussions do not necessarily lead to concrete results. Rather, they serve to exchange and compare different points of view. Presentations or lectures, on the other hand, focus on work already done, usually by a single person, and thus differ from the workshop format, which is geared toward collaborative work.
The workshop analogy also helps to determine whether a workshop is really appropriate for the task at hand, or whether another format might be better suited to achieve the desired result. Such a determination is part of the first phase of workshop work: the preliminary discussion with clients.
Step one: Preliminary discussion
Every workshop has a purpose. In preliminary discussions with the client, we try to understand this purpose, i.e. what exactly is to be achieved with the workshop. We discuss the parameters of the workshop, such as the date and duration, the number of participants, and the location of the workshop if it is not to be held remotely. As important as these parameters are, they are not enough to prepare a workshop well. Reality can be far more complicated. For example:
It's just before eight o'clock and I enter the room our client has booked for today's workshop. Any sense of weariness I might have felt before is gone in one fell swoop: The room meets just about every conceivable no-go for facilitated collaboration. There's hardly any free space on the walls to work with sticky notes. There's a terrible echo. The room is cold, joyless, and set up like a school class from the last century. The air is bad, the noisy construction site outside the windows will probably only allow us to ventilate during breaks. Another hour, then we're on our way.
Attendees come from all over the state, including the board of directors. The workshop is important to the client, and therefore to us. Instead of calmly reviewing the day ahead, my co-facilitator and I quickly rearrange the room and consider methodological alternatives for the planned work with sticky notes. By the time the participants arrive, we are actually stressed out.
I think to myself that this workshop has gone wrong. Two days before, we were informed that some participants would only be able to participate remotely. Up to that point, we were not prepared for a hybrid workshop, either methodically or in terms of technical equipment. Since the other participants' travel had already been scheduled, we could not switch to a purely virtual event. Disinviting those who could not attend was also out of the question. Here, too, last-minute, makeshift solutions were needed to allow the event to take place at all.
The workshop begins. Only one of the remote participants has logged on. There is no feedback from the others. After a short welcome, I introduce the objective of the workshop. It is to develop strategies for the customer's change management in connection with the digitalization of the company. The meeting was preceded by months of joint work. One of the participants asks why we should be doing this here. There have already been strategy workshops and results on this topic. Other participants confirm the statement, others know nothing about it. I am perplexed. It is not enough that I did not know about the parallel efforts in this area. The whole goal, the purpose of the workshop, is now fundamentally in question. We have to find a new meaning for the event, and quickly, otherwise we've all come for nothing. The participants look at us full of expectation.
"Transparency, knowledge sharing, and effective communication are essential components of change management," I hear myself saying. "Why is it that only some people here know about the previous efforts and what can we learn from this for future communication?". I divide the participants into groups and assign them the task of working on this question for the next 45 minutes - primarily to buy us some time. My colleague and I use the time to completely redesign the workshop. In the end, the meeting is successful and the participants are very pleased with the results. So are we, but we wonder how this exhausting series of last-minute rescheduling and band-aid solutions could have happened.
All the irritations occurred in the workshop and had to be addressed and resolved on the spot by us facilitators. However, and without exception, they could have been avoided in advance. The answer to our question is simple: We did not clarify all the relevant issues in the preliminary discussions. Because we had been working with the client for so long, we relied too much on the fact that the most important things were clear anyway, and we didn't need to discuss them. This applies not only to the goal of the workshop, but also, for example, to the requirement that the room must have space for sticky notes on the walls. All this seemed obvious to us.
I think the anecdote makes it clear: What topics are discussed with the client beforehand, and how extensively, has a direct and multiple impact on the course of the workshop. Any ambiguities that are cleared up in the preliminary discussion will not bother the facilitator during the meeting itself. All the more reason, then, to take the time to discuss these issues with the client.
Expectation and objectives of the client
The primary topic of a preliminary discussion is to understand what the client wants to achieve with the workshop and what expectations they have for the outcome. This objective influences all further steps, so it should be clarified and formulated as precisely as possible.
An effective way to do this is to formulate the goal as a question together with the client. The task of the workshop then is to answer this question. For example, instead of commissioning a workshop to develop a vision for the digitalization of one's own organization, the workshop could develop answers to the following questions: How will digitalization have moved us forward in five years? What will have changed for us by then?
Formulating the goal in the form of a question helps to make it precise. In the example above, a time period - five years - and a focus - that digitalization has advanced the organization - were added. Accordingly, the focus would be more on positive changes and less on risks. At the same time, the question serves as a practical task in the workshop. A question almost reflexively provokes an answer. Starting the workshop with a question to be answered together during the course of the workshop therefore activates the participants much more than a simple agenda heading such as "Vision workshop".
It also makes it easier to evaluate the results as the workshop progresses: Does this result help us answer the question posed? Such a question serves to keep all participants focused on the goal, the purpose of the meeting. If possible, you can post the question in the room for all to see, for example, on a poster or as a slide projected on the wall. This further supports the focusing effect.
Meeting type
The client's objective and expectations help us to find the right format for the task. If concrete results are to be developed in collaboration, a workshop is the appropriate format. Depending on the complexity of the topic or the number and composition of participants, a series of workshops may be necessary to achieve a good result.
However, if the task requires, for example, knowledge building or open-ended discussion, the workshop is not an appropriate format.
History and culture
The more we know about the client's and participants' starting point, the better we can prepare for the workshop and tailor it to their needs. When it comes to history, we focus on questions such as:
What is the history of the issue to be addressed in the workshop? Is it new or has it been addressed in the past? If so, how often and with what results? Have the participants in the workshop been involved?The point here is the history of the issue in the organization, not the history of the organization itself. It provides clues as to what motivation we can expect from workshop participants and what mistakes from the past we can avoid.
It is not uncommon in organizations for issues to be discussed over and over again without results. This can wear down the motivation of participants until some become convinced that the problem cannot be solved and that there is no point in trying again. Such an initial situation requires a completely different approach to a workshop than a topic that is new to all participants and therefore still potentially exciting. In the example of the anecdote described earlier, questions about the history would most likely have provided information about the workshops that had already taken place, as well as about the uneven distribution of knowledge within the client's organization. With this knowledge, we could have reacted early and saved ourselves a lot of trouble.
When it comes to culture, the primary concern is how easily and openly participants will be able to work together in the workshop, even when different departments, disciplines, and hierarchical levels come together.
Are participants accustomed to working across departments and hierarchies? How openly is knowledge shared within the organization? Is the understanding of leadership more top-down or supportive and at eye level? What is the culture of innovation and failure in the organization? In simple terms, are mistakes understood as failures or as part of a learning process? Is trial and error encouraged or discouraged?The answers to these questions will indicate whether a basic openness on the part of workshop participants can be assumed or whether it needs to be actively encouraged. In many organizations, departments tend to work in silos and share knowledge only to a limited extent. In such cases, it may make sense to plan several small, intra-departmental workshops so as not to waste time trying to reduce friction between departments in one workshop. Once sufficient trust and openness has been established, a final joint session can summarize and complement the results and views of the previous workshops.
Openness in collaboration is essential in the workshop, across disciplines, hierarchies, and departments. The work in such a meeting is highly condensed: Participants have a limited amount of time to come together as a group and pool their knowledge and expertise to answer the question at hand. The strength of the format lies in this concentration. For this reason, all persons designing and facilitating a workshop should get a sense of the openness they can expect in the workshop during the pre-workshop discussion.
Participants
This is about the composition of the people who will participate in the workshop. The key question here is: Are all of the relevant disciplines and perspectives represented in order to be able to answer the question posed by the workshop?
Ask also questions such as:
Are there hierarchical relationships among the participants? What are the relationships among the departments represented? Are there any corporate or departmental politics involved? Are there significant differences in seniority that might be relevant to the workshop? Are there relevant differences in knowledge about the topic of the workshop? Are there particularly positive or critical voices among the participants?The goal is to get as clear a picture as possible of the composition of the participants so that you can best respond to the group in preparation and later in facilitation.
Hierarchical relationships play a special role here. In a workshop, all participants work virtually in front of an audience, often under time pressure. For many people, this is unusual and sometimes uncomfortable. When managers work together with their employees in a workshop, various irritations can arise. Managers may be concerned that they will not perform well in front of their own employees and that they will be embarrassed. Employees may secretly fear that their appearance or performance will affect their relationship with the manager outside of the workshop. These and similar fears inhibit participants and make them appear either particularly reserved or particularly dominant, which can have an immediate negative impact on cooperation and the quality of the workshop results.
As workshop facilitators, we should be aware of such relationships in order to counteract irritation through appropriate group divisions and confidence-building measures.
General conditions
The focus here is on organizational questions about the workshop itself:
Who will take care of finding a date? How long should the workshop be? How many people will attend? Will the workshop take place on-site or remotely? Who will arrange the room and catering? Does the room meet all requirements? Will materials be provided or will they need to be brought in? What information do participants need in advance, and who will provide it?In the example described at the beginning, the client booked a room that neither we nor the client knew about. If we had discussed all of the room requirements that were important to us in the preliminary meeting, we might have been able to find a room with better acoustics and space to work with sticky notes.
One last note about hybrid workshops, where some people are on-site and others are remote. In my experience, even with very good technical equipment, they are neither effective nor efficient. Most of the time, remote participants miss out, for example, because they are less directly involved and less able to follow acoustically than people on site. If the workshop cannot be held entirely in person, it is worth splitting it into one on-site and one remote session, or holding the workshop entirely remotely. However, hybrid meetings work well for lectures, presentations, or training sessions where participant interaction is limited to simple question and answer sessions.
Delivery item
The last point clarifies the deliverable, i.e. the practical form of the workshop result for the client. In many cases, this will be a report or a presentation.
Checklist for the preliminary discussion
There is a clear and shared understanding of the goal of the workshop and what is expected of the results. The goal is formulated as a question. There is at least a rough understanding of the backgrounds and hierarchical relationships of the participants. The history of the workshop topic is known. The duration of the workshop and the number of participants have been determined. Location, equipment, and catering have been determined. The expected deliverable is defined.Step two: Concept and methodology
Once the topics discussed in the first step have been clarified, you can prepare the workshop in terms of content and methodology. When you design a workshop, you create a kind of playing field, a process, and rules that allow participants to work on the workshop question in the best possible way. And while workshops may differ in many ways, such as duration, number of participants, or objectives, they can all be structured in the same way. This structure consists of four consecutive phases:
The warm-up to welcome the participants and communicate the goal of the workshop. The work phases, in which the participants work on possible answers to the question. Evaluation, in which the results are checked to see to what extent they can answer the initial question. Feedback, in which the participants are able to comment on the workshop and an outlook on the next steps will be given.The following chapters provide guidance for designing each of these phases. The goal is to develop a customized framework for each workshop that best supports participants in answering the workshop question together.
Phase 1: Warm-up
Each workshop begins with a welcoming phase that sets the mood for the topic and the purpose of the event. It usually consists of four elements:
The introduction of the purpose, the workshop question, and schedule. A round of introductions. A survey of participants' expectations and a comparison with the goal of the workshop. A briefing (often provided by the client) to provide participants with context, including a short round of questions.The warm-up serves two purposes: To communicate and agree on the goal, and to establish a common knowledge base.
Communicating and agreeing on the goal.
The pre-arranged question to be answered in the workshop is presented to the participants as the objective of the event. Always give participants the opportunity to express their own expectations regarding this goal. You will then quickly see whether the entire group can commit to the goal and thus to working together in the workshop, or where there may be a need to reach agreement. The question itself needs to remain the same. It represents your assignment that you have agreed upon with your client.
A very simple way to find out the expectations of the participants is to write them down on sticky notes. I like to provide a sentence starter for participants to complete on a sticky note.
The participants are given the beginning of a sentence, such as: "From the answer to the workshop question I expect...". All participants silently write their additions on a sticky note.
