Tips For Designing Workshops

By Sharon Tappenden

Job Vacancy Indonesia, Employee, Vacancy    

Being flexible is a great place to start when designing a training workshop for your business. Here are some tips to help get you started.

It is easy to create an effective format on which to base your workshop that will deliver maximum learning, development, team building and problem solving. Firstly think about your team and your aim for the workshop.

What are the outcomes you want to achieve? Why not consider making your workshop a true team effort and encourage those who will be participating to contribute ideas and suggestions beforehand. By doing this you will:

• create interest
• encourage commitment
• cultivate curiosity

You may wish to promote productivity when running the workshop by splitting the team up into pairs or small groups of 3. You will achieve a much better opportunity for interaction and ideas by doing this.

However, if you do choose to work with groups of 4 or more, you must appoint a leader to the team to avoid the possibility of discussions collapsing into chaos. Group leaders will guide the group and facilitate an even balance of participation, ideas, debate and results.

Dynamic interaction is the key to a great workshop and you will always achieve this by way of a paper flip chart and colored marker pens for each group. Individuals will easily be able to communicate effectively and efficiently with each other via the use of diagrams, charts, bullet point lists and descriptions of their ideas using the flip chart.

Try to avoid the use of laptops and projectors as they are notoriously impersonal and in many instances have been known to cause 'day dreaming'.

Flip chart paper and marker pens on the other hand are definitely a dynamic way of expressing individual and group ideas. Each piece can be torn off and hung up strategically in the room for other groups to identify with, review and remark on.

It is worth taking into consideration that some people will prefer to communicate in different ways such as role-playing, discussions/debates, or via computer programs. So it will be helpful for you to assess your participants prior to conducting the workshop, so as to get the best participation level from each attendee. This way you will be maximizing your potential results and outcomes for your business or franchise.