Instead of doing one long Q&A at the end of your workshop, do a shorter Q&A after each Learning Outcome Instead of vaguely asking if anyone has “any questions?”, be more specific and encourage them to ask questions which are relevant to exactly what you just talked about (and include a helpful reminder about what those things are)

Your facilitation needs to be right-sized. If you’re running a session for 10 people seated around a single table, you might want to take a seat yourself and to use a more conversational tone than you would when standing on stage with a microphone. On the other hand, if you have 1,000 attendees in a large event, it would be a fool’s errand to tell

“Attention is the first step in the learning process. We cannot understand, learn or remember that which we do not first attend to.” —CDL, Center for Development & Learning[3]

My preferred solution is to begin by creating only the absolute minimum number of essential (or at least very high value) slides, and then cautiously expanding from there. These essential slides include: Summaries of your Learning Outcomes and supporting arguments Exercise prompts (instructions, rules, discussion topics, etc.) Resource lists

Here’s a Scenario Challenge I used in a session with a group of entrepreneurial scientists to help them start thinking about business strategy and product roadmaps based on their research and inventions:

Now, although the discussion’s question should be clear and specific, its answer should be ambiguous and/or personal.

impacting behaviors. To borrow the framework and language of Olivia Fox, author of The Charisma Myth,[17] coming across as “charismatic” is the result of projecting three qualities: Power (authority, credibility) Warmth (friendliness, openness) Presence (the audience feels like you are undistracted and paying full attention to them)

Another big improvement is to stop using your phone as a clock and timer. We’ve already covered this in the previous section.

Lab Time allows folks to apply what you’ve taught to their own projects, and is a great fit for long-form, skills-heavy topics If lab time is a core part of your event, you may need to bring extra facilitators to properly help everyone through their individual problems If the lab time is less crucial, consider making it optional by attaching it to