3.2 Preparing the workshop
Who needs to be involved? Ideally you will have a diverse team of representatives, who may be internal or external to your organisation – this could be staff, suppliers and students if you are in higher education?
Who will facilitate the workshop? It’s helpful if this is someone who is the problem owner to provide context and guidance. The facilitator manages the workshop and keeps participants focused and on track. According to Sinek, the ‘ideal person for this role is someone trusted by the organisation who has a desire to serve, a strong natural curiosity and an ability to ask probing questions.’(Sinek et al., 2017, p.165)
Depending on your participants, decide the most appropriate environment for your workshop – remote, hybrid or face-to-face. What tools will you need and will they be physical or online, or a mix, e.g.
- whiteboards
- sticky notes
- breakout rooms
- polls
- drawing ‘rich pictures’ (if you are unfamiliar with rich pictures and would like a brief overview, you can access video tutorials from the OpenLearn Rich Pictures [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] resource).
Depending on the size of your group you may wish to put participants into sub-groups for certain activities at each stage and allow time to come back as a group to discuss the outcomes. When forming sub-groups, consider the diversity of the groups to ensure a range of voices are in the room.
- the purpose and focus of the workshop
- the Golden Circle, and explain this is to think about their ‘Why’, ‘How’ and ‘What’
- questions you may wish them to think about.
This can be done as an email with the agenda, some slides, a video explaining what they can expect, or another method of your choice. Below is a suggested template you can draw upon.
