
10 Ways to make your workshop a huge success
- Invite different people. Collective intelligence research has proven that diverse teams create more successful ideas.
- Prepare Inspiration. We need the inspiration to be creative! People won’t think any differently if they walk into the...
- Curate an experience. Workshops create an emotional impact to provoke belief and...
How to run a successful workshop?
If you advertise your workshop as a method of acquiring skills in a field, imparted from an experienced mentor, you can increase your profile and make a nice amount of money. However, for the workshop to be a hit, it has to be good. Here are five tips on how to run a successful workshop. 1. Don’t Lecture.
Do workshops make you money?
One thing is for certain, though: if you want to be successful in your field, you’re going to need to plan a good workshop. Workshops help you impart your knowledge, increase your profile- and they make you money. Why Run a Workshop?
What are the benefits of a workshop for businesses?
If you run a business and have taken on new staff, a workshop can help them get up to speed on everything they need to function well in your working environment. Furthermore, it will help the new team members feel immediately engaged and welcomed. It shows you that you care about their development.
What happens at the end of a workshop?
When the workshop is nearing its end, it’s time for the participants to check out. Once again, go around the room and have everyone share what they’re taking with them, what they’ve learned, or what they’re going to do next. 15. Communicate the next steps

What are the elements of a successful workshop?
11 Elements of a Successful Online WorkshopHave a very clear goal. Why a workshop? ... Know your audience. Who is this for? ... Determine the learning objectives. ... Create a learning experience (LX) map. ... Select the platform. ... Develop an outline. ... Create great multi-modal content. ... Develop a leader guide.More items...•
How do you make an effective workshop?
Here are ten tips for more effective facilitation:Start with the end in mind. ... Create a warm, inviting environment. ... Engage all participants. ... Keep the group focused. ... Give time limits. ... Divide and conquer. ... Affinity map. ... Prioritize ideas.More items...•
How do you know if a workshop is successful?
Individual goal setting metrics Another way to measure the success of your workshops is by inviting each participant to set goals of what they would like to achieve, personally / individually, by being part of the workshop, and seeing if they achieved these by the end of your delivery.
What are the principles of workshop?
Six Principles for Planning and Facilitating a WorkshopDetermine the Goal of Bringing Everyone Together. ... Invite People Who Are Essential to Achieve the Purpose. ... Hack the Methods or Design Your Own. ... Scrutinize the Order of Activities. ... Provide Thorough Context for Each Activity. ... Synthesize Workshop Outcomes.
What is the aim of workshop?
A workshop may introduce a new idea, inspire participants to further explore it on their own, or may illustrate and promote actual process practice. It is a great way to teach hands-on skills as it gives learners an opportunity to try out new methods and fail in a safe environment.
How do you measure the impact of a workshop?
One way of effectively measuring impact is to include those who will attend the workshop when creating the ultimate goals. By using the answers from a preworkshop questionnaire, the attendees can influence the creation of the goals.
How do you plan a training workshop?
PlanningConsider your topic. The first element of planning a workshop is to know what you're talking about. ... Consider your audience. ... Consider the workshop size. ... Consider the time available. ... Vary activities. ... Vary the seriousness of the material. ... Plan a break. ... Participants need time to talk and connect with one another.More items...
What should participants understand after a workshop?
As a facilitator, you can reach out to the participants and try to gauge whether or not they know what they’re doing next and why they’re doing it . By making sure that every single one of the participants has anchored some personal meaning to the process, you’re likely to see much better results.
How to facilitate a workshop?
That’s why careful preparation is the first step towards facilitating a successful workshop. 1. Get to know the participants. Whether you’re acting as an external consultant or organizing an in-house workshop, the very first thing you should do is to focus on the people.
What is workshop facilitation?
Workshop facilitation is the act of facilitating or guiding participants through a process of co-creation and active dialogue to help them reach a particular goal together. It requires that workshop facilitators use the right skills and methods for different situations to ensure individuals are guided rather than managed or controlled throughout a workshop.
What to do after everyone is settled in?
Once everybody is settled in, it’s time to go around the room and complete a check-in. This is a chance for the participants to share what they’re bringing to the table today, what they’re feeling right now, and what kind of mood they’re in. Are they excited about the workshop or did they have a terrible time dropping off their kids in the morning? You’ll never know unless you ask.
How long is a workshop?
In the beginning of this article, I advised you to think of the workshop as a three-week process. And now that the intensive, social phase of the process is over, you’ll want to follow up with your original plan and to keep people engaged by sending them reminders and mini-activations that help them stay focused. And remember: this part is crucial because it’s where most of the actual work happens.
What are the steps of a workshop?
The steps are also grouped into the three essential stages of a workshop: before, during, and after. Ultimately, you’ll learn how to create and structure a successful workshop at each stage of its development and beyond. You can apply these steps whether your workshop is in-person, virtual, or hybrid (a mix of both).
Why do you need to sleep before a workshop?
Now that the preparations are over, it’s time to have some fun. Remember to get a good night’s sleep the night before the workshop because as a facilitator, you’re going to need all the energy and focus you can get.
Why Run a Workshop?
To help people learn and advance in their field, nothing compares to a workshop. They’re way more engaging than a lecture, and have more diverse functions.
What does it mean when a workshop is done?
By the time your workshop is done, the room should look like there’s been a workshop in it. This means lots of different resources need to be employed throughout your workshop.
How big should a workshop be?
A workshop shouldn’t really be much bigger than twenty.
What should every activity or plan have?
Every activity or plan should have some sort of goal; either participants will have acquired new skills by the end of the workshop, laid the groundwork to developing new skills, or they’ll walk away without a lot of new ideas.
Why are smaller groups better than larger groups?
Smaller groups facilitate better networking between participants. It helps them make connections, and it allows you to devote enough time to each individual.
What is a workshop?
A workshop is for when you need to discover solutions and explore ideas with other people. You really want to hear what they have to say. Workshops are more dynamic, and they’re messy.
Why is it important to run workshops?
The ability to run great workshops is becoming an essential skill for anyone that works in creativity and innovation. The difference between an effective workshop and an unsuccessful one has a major impact on the success of an overall project — the quality of ideas generated, an engaged team, and even whether participants felt they had the opportunity to contribute.
Why is a workshop messy?
This is meant to happen! Workshops are meant to be messy. It’s the result of asking good questions and encouraging lots of ideas from diverse personalities.
What does it mean to start a workshop with a collaborative activity?
Starting your workshop with a collaborative activity signals to your participants that the session will be interactive. It’s a great warm-up and way of introducing them to the interactive format.
What is workshop preparation?
The workshop preparation stage is a real design process. You’re thinking about the function, the form, and designing the experience for your participants.
What is follow up in a workshop?
Follow-up: incorporating the content from the workshop into your project and ensuring there’s momentum and progress.
How many stages are there in a workshop?
The key is to think of workshops as a three-stage process, each with equal importance. It’s easy to place emphasis on the actual event, but that’s only the middle piece. The day of the workshop should be seen as a means to an end, not the end itself.
How to find out if a workshop was successful?
The only way to find out if your workshop was a success is to have an effective follow-up plan. Create a questionnaire to give to all participants at the end of the event, and give them plenty of opportunities to share their opinions on how well it went. Although this can be a bit scary, it's the only way to learn – and improve – for the next time.
Why is it important to have a plan for a workshop?
It's also important to have a plan to communicate the decisions that were reached during the workshop. Will you send out a mass email to everyone with the details? Will you put it on your company's intranet? People need to know that their hard work actually resulted in a decision or action, so keep them informed about what's happening after the workshop has ended.
How to create an agenda for a meeting?
4. Create an Agenda 1 Main points – Create a list of main points to discuss, and then break down each larger point into details that you want to communicate to your audience. 2 Visual aids – List the visual aids, if any, you'll use for each point. If you need technical support, this helps the people providing it to determine where they need to focus their efforts. 3 Discussions and activities – Take time to list exactly which group discussions and activities you'll have at which point in the workshop. How much time will you allow for each exercise? Make sure your activities are appropriate for the size of the group, and ensure that your venue has the resources (for example, seminar rooms) needed to run sessions.
How to keep everyone interested in a group exercise?
Remember, spend as much time as you can creating fun and interesting group exercises. These will likely keep everyone interested and participating.
What to think about when planning a workshop?
Think about the logistics and practical details of your workshop when you choose the location. Will everyone be able to see your visual aids? If you need a certain technology, like teleconferencing, will the location support it? Are there appropriate facilities for breakout sessions? Will everyone be able to reach the venue? Will you need to organize accommodation for people who are coming from a long way away? And what catering facilities does the venue provide?
Why is advance planning important?
However, if they're planned well, they can be incredibly valuable for everyone involved. Workshops are great for brainstorming, interactive learning, building relationships, and problem-solving. This is why advance planning is critical.
How to address a difficult topic in a workshop?
One way is to tell a story that's loosely related to the topic before you begin discussing the difficult issue.
Why is it important to run a workshop?
Running a workshop is an effective way to train a group or get them to do collaborative work. But there’s still lots of misunderstanding around how to do this. As part of running innovation projects at ?What If!, we use workshops as a tool to harvest and leverage the creativity of our project teams.
How to plan a workshop?
Planning is about creating the structure of the workshop. Start planning a workshop with the end in mind. Visualise the outcome and outputs you want. Then, work backwards so your plan really gets you there. It’s better if you can create a detailed day plan for your workshop.
What does "workshop" mean in cooking?
Scott Berkun explains this well: “A cooking workshop means [participants] cook things. A writing workshop means [participants] write things. If most of your “workshop” is people not actually making anything, you should perhaps call it a class, a lecture, or a mistake.”. I see workshops as a way to get a group to collaborate efficiently ...
What does it mean to have many participants in a workshop?
Having many participants means that there are lots of different opinions in the room. As a workshop aims to be collaborative, it’s important that the team stays open-minded.
What to do before a workshop?
1. Analysing. Before preparing and running a workshop, you must be confident it’s the best way to get the outcome you need. When it’s not the case, a workshop becomes an entertainment or a time waster, i.e. a mistake. You must be clear on the context of the workshop.
How to run a great session?
The best way to run a great session is to make it as nice as possible. If you enjoy running it, the participants will feel that and it’ll motivate them too.
How to show progress in a workshop?
Remind the participants of your goal at the beginning of the workshop. Then, talk them through the headlines of the journey to show how much progressed you’ve made.
What Is a Workshop?
A workshop is a presentation training where people learn a specific topic or complete a specific task. Also, a workshop involves hands-on learning, which means that participants are actively involved in the learning process.
What Are the Challenges Affecting Workshops?
They can also be more expensive to run. But the biggest challenge of all is getting students engaged in the learning process.
