When you’re going to run a team workshop, invest in a pregame routine

Get everyone individually aligned and engaged before the kickoff.

This image by Chris Stone is licensed under CC by 4.0

You can easily add this to your workshop prep that boosts effectiveness when workshop day arrives. Below I’ll share the core practice and then provide some steps below as a short guide.

Priming

The approach is simple. Inform colleagues about the goal, the flow, and the purpose of the workshop and solicit their feedback…before the workshop. If you do this you can afford to spend less time on those topics during the workshop itself because everyone will be fairly aligned and will have had a chance to ask questions of you directly.

15 minutes

Schedule 15min sessions with each individual participant outside of your workshop team or those already close to the intent of the workshop. Take the first 5 minutes to run them through the purpose of the workshop, the desired outcome, and show the proposed flow. Then spend 10 min listening to any questions or concerns about what you’ve shared. If you want to hit the ground running with your workshop then you would be wise to invest in everyone feeling prepared to participate.

Not only will these sessions help accelerate the workshop, but they are also a golden opportunity to gather the information that will help you assess if the flow makes sense outside of your head. Think of it as a briefing wrapped around a functional design review. With the foundation in place, you can confidently kick off the workshop knowing that everyone has been briefed and the workshop makes sense. If it didn’t, hopefully, you took the feedback and adjusted the workshop accordingly.

This may also surface a moment where one of the participants realizes that they don’t need to be involved, offer to open up their seat, or suggest another colleague that may be more relevant now that they better understand the context.

The pre-workshop assignment

Lastly, for cross-functional or cross-departmental workshops where colleagues don’t work together regularly, I like to give each participant a small task. In the last few workshops, I’ve constructed a simple “Who? Do?” template for everyone to complete in advance.

For those unfamiliar, the template lays out a framework for capturing Who your participants are and what they Do in their role in a simple grid. Don’t get fancy. You can add relevant facets from there if necessary, like area of influence and department they report to across the org.

I love this because it has them put some skin in the game and it connects them to the workshop. Because I always use collaborative documents, they also get to peek into the details of the rest of the participants and learn about them if they haven’t met before.

Step-by-step

If you want to make the most out of your time with workshop participants, consider these simple steps toward setting the stage for a high-impact session.

Design the workshop (not covered in this article)

1. What is the purpose of the workshop? What friction does it address? What is the desired outcome from the time you are asking people to spend with you and each other?
2. Who needs to be there? What influence do they have on the desired outcome? The friction that you are aiming to resolve?
3. What is the appropriate workshop format, structure, and layout for the desired outcome? How much time do you really need?
4. Is the workshop design in a good place for feedback?

Lay the participant foundation

When the template is ready for final feedback, pregame with each participant to walk them through the flow. There are several key benefits to this:

1. It will help you catch any confusing bits in advance that might impact how effectively you can leverage the time you have together.
2. You orient them to the purpose, intent, and desired outcome(s) for the session, taking those questions off the table for the session itself. Everyone will know what they’re getting into and what’s going to be asked of them.
3. Take the opportunity to give them a small task. I like to have them fill out the Who/Do grid with their info. This also tells them who will be in the session and provide some insight as to why.

Now that you’ve “pre-gamed” and everyone knows the framing of the workshop, the purpose, and the desired outcome you can skip that entire part of the workshop and get right into the flow. It can save you 20–30min of everyone’s time and gives you the opportunity to kick things into gear sooner!

Remember, you’re investing in their ability to feel comfortable bringing their point of view, bias, and experience to the workshop so you can feed the beast of inquiry and have a great workshop that builds momentum into the events and actions that will follow.

Thank you David Sherwin for the feedback on this piece! 🙏