Conducting Effective Workshops

Overview

Having led and participated in many workshops and facilitated sessions over time, I wanted to share some thoughts on what tends to make them effective. 

Unfortunately, there can be a perception that assembling a group of people in a room with a given topic (for any length of time) can automatically produce collaboration and meaningful outcomes.  This is definitely not the case.

Before getting into the key dimensions, I suppose a definition of a “workshop” is worthwhile, given there can be many manifestations of what that means in practice.  From my perspective, a workshop is a set of one or more facilitated sessions of any duration with a group of participants that is intended to foster collaboration and produce a specified set of outcomes.  By this definition, a workshop could be as short as a one-hour meeting and also span many days.  The point is that it is facilitated, collaborative, and produces results.

By this definition, a meeting used to disseminate information is not a workshop.  A “training session” could contain a workshop component, to the degree there are exercises that involve collaboration and solutioning, but in general, they would not be considered workshops because they are primarily focused on disseminating information.

Given the above definition, there are five factors that are necessary for successful workshop:

• Demonstrating Agility and Flexibility
• Having the Appropriate Focus
• Ensuring the Right Participation
• Driving Engagement
• Creating Actionable Outcomes

Demonstrating Agility and Flexibility

Workshops are fluid, evolving things, where there is an ebb and flow to the discussion and to the energy of the participants.  As such, beyond any procedural or technical aspect of running a workshop, it’s critically important to think about and to be aware of the group dynamics and to adjust the approach as needed.

What works:

• Soliciting feedback on the agenda, objectives, and participants in advance, both to make adjustments as needed, but also to identify potential issues that could arise in the session itself
• Doing pulse checks on progress and sentiment throughout to identify adjustments that may be appropriate
• Asking for feedback after a session to identify opportunities for improvement in the future

What to watch out for:

• The tone of discussion from participants, level of engagement, and other intangibles can tend to signal that something is off in a session
  • Tactics to address: Call a break, pulse check the group for feedback
• Topics or issues not on the agenda that arise multiple times and have a relationship to the overall objectives or desired outcomes of the session itself
  • Tactics to address: Adjusting the agenda to include a discussion on the relevant topic or issue. Surface the issue, put in a parking lot to be addressed either during or post-session
• Priorities or precedence order of topics not aligning in practice to how they are organized in the session agenda
  • Tactics to address: Reorder the agenda to align the flow of discussion to the natural order of the solutioning. Insert a segment to provide a high-level end-to-end structure, then resume discussing individual topics.  Even if out of sequence, that could help contextualize the conversations more effectively

Having the Appropriate Focus

Workshops are not suitable for every situation.  Topics that involve significant amounts of research, rigor, investigation, cross-organizational input, or don’t require a level of collaboration, such as detailed planning, are better handled through offline mechanisms, where workshops can be used to review, solicit input, and align outcomes from a distributed process.

What works:

• Scope that is relatively well-defined, minimally at a directional level, to enable brainstorming and effective solutioning
• Conduct a kick off and/or provide the participants with any pre-read material required for the session up front, along with any expectations for “what to prepare” so they can contribute effectively
• Choosing topics where the necessary expertise is available and can participate in the workshop

What to watch out for:

• Unclear session objectives or desired outcomes
  • Tactics to address: Have a discussion with the session sponsor and/or participants to obtain the necessary clarity and send out a revised agenda/objectives as needed
• Topics that are too broad or too vague to be shaped or scoped by the workshop participants
  • Tactics to address: Same as previous issue
• An agenda that doesn’t provide a clear line of sight between the scope of the session or individual agenda items and desired outcomes
  • Tactics to address: Map the agenda topics to specific outcomes or deliverables and ensure they are connected in a tangible way. Adjust as needed

Ensuring the Right Participation

Workshops aren’t solely about producing content, they are about establishing a shared understanding and ownership.  To that end, having the right people in the room to both inform the discussion and own the outcomes is critical to establishing momentum post-session

What works:

• Ensuring the right level of subject matter expertise to address the workshop scope and objectives
• Having cross-functional representation to identify implications, offer alternate points of view, challenge ideas, and suggest other paradigms and mental models that could foster innovation
• Bringing in “outside” expertise to the degree that what is being discussed is new or there is limited organizational knowledge of the subject area where external input can enhance the discussion

What to watch out for:

• People jumping in and out of sessions to the point that it either becomes a distraction to other participants or there is a loss of continuity and effectiveness in the session as a whole
  • Tactics to address: Manage the part-time participants deliberately to minimize disruptions. Realign sessions to try and organize their participation into consecutive blocks of time with continuous input rather than sporadic engagement or see what can be done to either solicit full participation or identify alternate contributors who can participate in a dedicated capacity.
• There is a knowledge gap that makes effective discussion difficult to impossible. The lack of the right people in the discussion will tend to draw momentum out of a session
  • Tactics to address: Document and validate assumptions made in the absence of the right experts being present. Investigate participation of necessary subject matter experts in key sessions focused on their areas of contribution
• Limiting participants to those who are “like minded”, which may constrain the outcomes
  • Tactics to address: Explore involving a more diverse group of participants to provide a means for more potential approaches and solutions

Driving Engagement

Having the right people in the room and the right focus is critical to putting the right foundation in place, but making the most of the time you have is where the value is created, and that’s all about energy and engagement.

What works:

• Leveraging an experienced facilitator, who is both engaging and engaged. The person leading the workshop needs to have a contagious enthusiasm that translates to the participants
• Ensuring an inclusive discussion where all members of the session have a chance to contribute and have their ideas heard and considered, even if they aren’t ultimately utilized
• Managing the agenda deliberately so that the energy and focus in the discussion is what it needs to be to produce the desired outcomes

What to watch out for:

• A lack of energy or lack of the right pace from the facilitator will likely reduce the effectiveness of the session
  • Tactics to address: Switch up facilitators as needed to keep the energy high, pulse check the group on how they feel the workshop is going and make adjustments as needed
• A lack of collaboration or participation from all attendees
  • Tactics to address: Active facilitation to engage quieter voices in the room and to manage anyone who is outspoken or dominating discussion
• A lack of energy “in the room” that is drawing down the pace or productivity of the session
  • Tactics to address: Calling breaks as needed to give the participants a disruption, balancing the amount of active engagement of the participants in the event there is too much “presentation” going on where information is being shared and not enough discussion occurring

Creating Actionable Outcomes

One of the worst experiences you can have is a highly energized session that builds excitement, but then leads to no follow up action.  Unfortunately, I’ve seen and experienced this many times over the course of my career, and it’s very frustrating, both when you lead workshops and as a participant, when you spend your time and provide insights that ultimately go to waste.  Workshops are generally meant to help launch, accelerate, and build momentum through collaboration.  To the extent that a team comes together and uses a session to establish direction, it is critical that the work not go to waste, not only to make the most of that effort, but also to provide reassurance that future sessions will be productive as well. If workshops become about process without outcome, they will lose efficacy very quickly and people will stop taking them seriously as a mechanism to facilitate and accelerate change.

What works:

• Tracking the completion of workshop objectives throughout the process itself and making adjustments to the outcomes as required
• Leaving the session with clear owners of any next steps
• Establishing a checkpoint post-session to take a pulse on where things stand on the outcomes, next steps, and recommended actions

What to watch out for:

• Getting to the end of a workshop and having any uncertainty in terms of whether the session objectives were met
  • Tactics to address: Objectives should be reviewed throughout the workshop to ensure alignment of the participants and commitment to the desired outcomes. There shouldn’t be any surprises waiting by the end
• Leaving a session not having identified owners of the next steps
  • Tactics to address: In the event that no one “signs up” to own next steps or the means to perform the assignment is unclear for some reason, the facilitator can offer to review the next steps with the workshop sponsor and get back to the group with how the next steps will be taken forward
• Assigning ownership of next steps without any general timeframe in which those actions were intended to be taken
  • Tactics to address: Setting a checkpoint at a specified point post-session to understand progress, review conflicting priorities, clear barriers, etc.

Wrapping Up

Going back to the original reason for writing this article, I believe workshops are an invaluable tool for defining vision, designing solutions, and facilitating change.  Taking steps to ensure they are effective, engaging, and create impact is what ultimately drives their value.

I hope the ideas were worth considering.  Thanks for spending the time to read them.  Feedback is welcome as always.

-CJG 05/09/2025