Running Great Meetings and Workshops For Dummies

Chapter 3

Planning Your Workshop

In This Chapter

Understanding more about workshops

Identifying your stakeholders

Planning and managing your design

So you decided you’re going to run a workshop because you want to bring everyone’s brains together to investigate an issue, solve a problem or learn something. And here’s what you’re on a mission to avoid: a super-dull day that, although it’s been labeled a workshop, is really a reading lesson of endless slides covered in hundreds of words written in font size 4. (Remember that power corrupts. But PowerPoint corrupts absolutely – everyone’s brain and their will to live.)

You want to design a day that feels loaded with zing and zap, that gets results and that has people saying that they can’t wait to attend your next session because they were so energised and engaged throughout the whole process. What does that take? Yup, a lot of planning and preparation.

This chapter helps you think through everything you need to plan and prepare to deliver a great day. If the whole thing works smoothly, that’s because there’s a huge amount of work you’ve put into it. Just remember that if you’re running a workshop you’ve got a lot at stake – including ...