Mastering the skill of workshop facilitation ✏️
- Anna Trulsson
- Sep 12, 2023
- 5 min read
Let's go beyond the surface of fun and flair to explore why workshops are such a powerful tool. And while we're at it, why not reveal some secrets to mastering the skill too? 🦄 ✨ 🍰
I've been living in the world of UX design for quite a few years now, working in different roles and with various teams. Each place and group of people has taught me great things. But before I joined Avanza, I had limited experience with workshop facilitation. In my previous UX positions, workshops were sporadic occurrences, usually held together with fellow designers rather than in cross-functional constellations.
Surprisingly often, these sessions would be like a three-hour visionary escape from reality, where we'd dream about a future that would never happen. Six months later, we'd repeat the cycle, scribbling the same grand visions and ideas on sticky notes before returning to business as usual. The ideas where left in the drawer until next time. Clearly, this approach to workshops is not very helpful. But once you master the skill of facilitation and weave workshops into your regular routine, magic can, and will, happen.
The many layers of workshop facilitation
In the corporate world, workshops are often misunderstood as mere team-building exercises - opportunities to bond with colleagues over snacks and fun but semi-silly activities. And yes, workshops can be fun. And yes, they can help us get to know each other beyond our professional personas.
But that’s just the icing on the cake. Workshop facilitation has so many more layers to it. When done well, workshop facilitation becomes like super glue, bonding your team together. It sparks enthusiasm, motivating team members to give their best. It can also be a tool for gaining clarity on your vision and the best way forward. Plus, it's a brilliant way to tap into your team's collective knowledge and intelligence efficiently. In addition, it builds trust, understanding, and engagement.
In our complex world, many challenges are too hard for one single person to tackle alone. Normally, a whole bunch of people play crucial parts; developers, designers, product specialists, product owners, customer-facing staff, organisational leaders etc.
This is where effective, structured and well-facilitated cooperation methods come into play. Only then can the whole become greater than the sum of its parts.
If you're a UX designer, workshops can also take a big load off your shoulders. Collaboratively tackling problems as a group shifts the perception that you, as a designer, hold all the answers to design dilemmas. The entire team benefits from early input from technology, business and customer perspectives. It will save you a lot of time too.
So, how can you become an effective workshop facilitator?
1. Know your why
Start by defining your purpose. In some strange way, this step is often overlooked or lacks clarity. But defining why you're holding a workshop makes everything else fall into place. Be clear with both yourself and the participants about your goals. What do you hope to achieve that you didn't have before the workshop? Once you have the answer, you can wisely choose exercises, invite the right group of people, decide whether to meet onsite or online etc.
2. Know your participants (and yourself)
Once you've sorted out the practical details, it's reflection time! What do you know about the participants? Can you foresee any challenges and prepare for them? Are there parts of the workshop you can skip if time runs short? Do you expect to encounter challenging behaviours? What do you need to create psychological safety within this specific group?
Psychological safety is essential for unlocking the group's potential. Engagement, creativity and innovation deeply depend on the level of trust within the group. Participants must feel safe to voice concerns, share unconventional ideas, or ask "stupid" questions. As a facilitator, you play an important role in creating an environment where everyone can be their best selves.
You want to help the group to be switched on and access the precious state of Flow. I often rely on the SCARF model to understand human behaviour and triggers, as it sheds light on why people behave in certain ways and what influences their engagement.
When someone is "off," they experience resistance, a lack of motivation, and negative emotions. With a participant or group in this state you will have a hard time to lead a successful workshop.
On the flip side, when someone is "on," they can focus on their contribution without worrying about judgment, the quality of their ideas, or the worthiness of their input. In this state, participants dare to speak up, all ideas are treated with respect, and all input is valued equally. As a facilitator, you can contribute significantly to creating this environment by being inclusive, open, and personal.
This of course also means that you need to know yourself quite well. What do you need to access your flow state? What do you need to support and guide others effectively? Again, a pro tip is to dedicate time and space for self-reflection.
3. Know you tools
Facilitation is not a skill that can be taken for granted. It's not about simply googling a set of exercises and go for it. I once attended a workshop where the facilitator actually googled the instructions and purpose of his chosen exercise halfway through the session. It was painfully clear that he didn't understand the importance of defining a purpose and choosing exercises aligned with the workshop goal. No one understood why we were there or what we were supposed to achieve.
Negative experiences like this easily snowballs into an unhealthy workshop culture, unfortunately causing organisations to miss out on the great benefits of a well oiled and nourishing collaboration culture. I would probably hesitate to attend another workshop with that facilitator unless we could talk about the issue and try another, more professional approach.
So, to be a great facilitator you need to understand human behaviour, group psychology and empathic communication. You need to lead the group steadily towards their goal and challenge the participants when needed - without any personal preference on the result or decisions made. You need to be humble enough to let all ideas through, and brave enough to address uncomfortable situations that may arise. In all of this you also need to cater for the groups energy levels and emotions through the journey of a complex world.
Seemingly, facilitation is a multifaceted skill with many layers, that’s what makes it so interesting 🙌 So don’t let the complexity put you off, just keep practising, reflecting and learning!
In Conclusion
For me, using workshops as a regular tool in my work (and life in general) has been super useful. Now, I can't imagine working without them. Why? The list is long… Because they bring people together, offer clarity and progress, efficiently solve problems, tap into the collective intelligence of a group, etc, etc. And, let's not forget, they're fun!
If you want to explore the art of facilitation further, join me and my incredible colleague, Angelica, for a two-day course at Crisp in November. It's an opportunity to learn a lot about yourself and others while delving deep into the world of facilitation. Hope to see you there!
Comments