The Art and Craft of Training Workshop Design

Maxwell Smith shares the Community Organising Fellowship approach to designing training workshops.

Introduction

Training and skill-sharing are two of the best tools we have in building our collective capacity to achieve social change.

Designing and delivering workshops is an important part of the process of training and skill-sharing. It is also an important leadership practice, through which we can empower others to put their leadership into action.

In a classic case of manner over matter, how we design and deliver workshops is one of the main determinants of our learning. So how do we design effective workshops that meet the needs of learners in the social change context?

I often ask myself the train-the-trainer question: “how can we best train and empower others to train and empower others?” At The Community Organising Fellowship (COF), we train people in the art and craft of workshop design and facilitation. Fellows have trained many thousands of people in the skills and practices they learn at COF.

This article is another way I’m sharing my skills in designing and delivering training workshops. This article will explore some of the key questions to ask and steps to take for successful workshop design and delivery, and introduce some tools and frameworks for thinking about workshop design and adult learning.

Six Workshop Design Questions

In his book, “Start With Why”, Simon Sinek explores how leaders can inspire cooperation, trust, and change. Sinek develops a simple model for inspirational leadership called the Golden Circle:

Picture three concentric circles: innermost circle – WHY, middle circle – HOW, outer circle – WHAT

Sinek’s contention is that great leaders organise themselves from the inside out, starting from the innermost circle, going outwards.

Why: Your purpose and motivation

How: The process or approach to achieving your purpose

What: Your results, outcomes, products.

When thinking about training and workshop design, as with most things, it helps to start with the ‘why’, the ‘how’, and the ‘what’. I adapted Sinek’s Golden Circles to add three more ‘W’ questions: WHO, WHERE, and WHEN?

Here are the six key questions we go through when planning and designing a workshop.

1. Why? Purpose

• Why are we training this group? 
• What does the group hope to achieve? 
• What do we hope to achieve through this training?

2. How? Process

• How will we meet the learning objectives?
• How can we build strong relationships and establish a safe group learning environment?
• How will we design for different lived experiences, learning styles, and energy levels?
• How do we support the participants to practice and apply what they learn?

3. What? Content

• What activities will help achieve the objectives? 
  • Select the right learning tools and frameworks

4. Who? Participants and facilitators

• Who is the training for?
• What do they want and need?
• What are they bringing into the workshop? 
  • Diagnose the needs and experiences of both the collective and individuals in it.
  • Consider the participants’ learning priorities and preferences, cultural and accessibility needs.

5. Where? Location, venue, accessibility, suitability

• How will you set up the physical learning environment for/with the group?
• How might the physical environment influence or constrain learning activities?

6. When? Time, length, context, events

• What is happening out in the world and how might this inform the expectations and engagement of participants? 
• What are people’s energy levels likely to be during this time? 
• How much time will each activity or workshop section require, realistically?
  • Consider any time limitations and how you’ll work with them. There is never enough time for training facilitation, so we need to make time our friend.
  • Make sure the time fits the purpose of the training. If there’s not enough time we need to scale back expectations of what can be achieved.

Using Learning Frameworks in Workshop Design 

Whatever kind of training you’re designing and facilitating, it’s important to be mindful of how people learn, and the role of a facilitator in designing and guiding the learning process. Here are three key principles of adult learning, and frameworks for implementing them into your workshop design.

Psychological Safety

Participants must feel safe and motivated to learn and engage fully in a workshop. We call the process of creating psychological safety in groups “building the learning container”. The learning container is the environment and workshop infrastructure that holds the feelings, emotions, and behaviour of the group. See my article on the SCARF Model for Psychological Safety in Groups, which outlines a framework for diagnosing and ensuring psychological safety in workshop groups. Some of the ways to ensure psychological safety include:

• building relationships
• setting clear norms and expectations
• and the use of icebreakers and energiser activities.
  

Zones of Learning

The Zones of Learning framework suggests that in order for participants to learn successfully, they must be challenged and stretched to step outside of their comfort zone. If we push too far, however, participants can end up in the Alarm Zone, feeling overwhelmed or stressed. If this happens, learning will likely fail. As such, we need to aim for the workshop “sweet spot” that is the Learning Zone.

In the Learning Zone, participants’ existing skills and abilities are stretched and tested, allowing them to learn and develop new ones. The Learning Zone will feel uncomfortable at first, but it is an opportunity for growth.

The more time participants spend in the Learning Zone, the more they develop and practice new skills which eventually become part of their Comfort Zone. We open the Learning Zone and prevent participants moving into the Alarm Zone by forming a strong container for psychological safety; connecting new learning with existing and familiar knowledge, experience, and skills; and encouraging regular reflection, questions, and feedback.

Learning from Experience

Participants will come with a range of experiences and knowledge they have developed through their own learning journey. Since workshops don’t happen in a vacuum and should always be connected to the world outside the training room, learning must be connected to participants’ existing knowledge and experience so that it lands and builds upon what is already known.

The Spiral Model is a framework for workshop design that builds the scaffolding for participants to ground learning in their existing knowledge and experience, progressively experiment, stretch their abilities, and develop new skills. The Spiral Model helps us create a safe container and learning zone by building anchors to the comfort zone, and guiding participants through a shared experience together. The Spiral Model is underpinned by regular and ongoing reflection. As we reflect and receive feedback in our training and events, our thinking about the spiral, and our practice of it, continues to evolve.

Conclusion

Training and skill-sharing are two of the best tools we have in building our collective capacity to achieve social change.

This article outlines some frameworks and key considerations for designing successful workshops. At the end of the day, the best way to develop the art and craft or workshop design is to start doing it, experiment and try different approaches, and learn from reflection and evaluation. Now you’ve got some approaches that you can use to support your practice. And if you want to learn more about facilitation and training, consider applying for the Community Organising Fellowship.

Acknowledgement

Thanks to Holly Hammond of The Commons Library for her input into this resource and for training me as a trainer through Plan to Win.

The photos in this article were taken at past COF retreats.

Explore Further

• Read more about workshop design and building a learning container: Facilitating Group Learning by George Lakey
• Learn more about the Spiral Model and access a range of workshop activities: Education for Changing Unions
• Watch Simon Sinek’s TEDTalk: Start With Why