Episode 64: How to Run a Workshop (That Actually Changes People)

Most executives get handed a workshop at some point — and run it exactly like a keynote. The result is a room full of people quietly checking out. In this episode, Sam pulls back the curtain on how he built his own signature workshop and shares the three reframes that make a workshop transform people instead of just filling time: facilitate, don't educate; run exercises, don't deliver exposition; aim for emotional change over information transfer.

You'll learn the "talking trap" and the 20–30% rule, the real difference between an exercise and an icebreaker, how to use time-boxing and Parkinson's Law to keep your room moving, and why the energy in the room matters more than your resume.

Take the free Competence-Communication Audit at samuellinton.com.

Transcript

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There's a through line to just about every type of workshop I've ever done, and that is if I am yapping, they are napping. I know it's catchy. I know, does it mean anything? I know what the heck am I talking about? Well, today I am going to show you how to run a workshop. I've never done this on any of the podcasts, but this is probably up there with one of the most valuable things I could show you, because if you're an executive leader, there's a high likelihood that you're going to find yourself in the place of having to have your people be a part of a workshop. Whether it be a creative brainstorming, let's figure out how to get this SOP, whether it be your um, oh, let me think of it, your sharing of your year-end results and everybody takes a part in that, whether it be you just getting people together for team building, all of it involves a workshop. And the problem with most leaders is that they view a workshop in the same way that they would view a keynote. And those things are extremely different, almost completely different. One is short bursts, short energy with big emotional impact, and it's usually spoken to a lot of people. The other one is something where lives can be changed and you have a little bit longer of a runway. One, you can't get terribly specific with a group of people that you're speaking to. So generalities are your friend. With a workshop, you have the opportunity to get very granular about what is uniquely impacting the people that are in that workshop in a very, very different way. So we have to look at this. Now, if you are sitting here and you're saying I don't ever have occasion to run a workshop, well, maybe this will be a catalyst to give you the license to run one, because if I were an executive in a corporate environment, I would take advantage of this. It's a great way to become more adept at leading your people. So let's get into some reframing. This might be on the shorter side, but I think it's gonna pack a punch for you. So, and why did I, what's prompting me to do this? Because I just ran four workshops. And I talked about it last week when I talked about what I learned from running four workshops of high-profile executives. Well, I'm gonna share with you what I did to build my own workshop. And I'm gonna start with the core reframe. There are three focus on and not pairs that we are going to look at in short order so that you get the reframe down. The first is we are gonna focus on facilitation, not education. The second is we're gonna focus on exercises, not exposition. And finally, and this is gonna be the one that you're challenged by, but I promise you, if you understand this, you'll understand why the workshop is so valuable. You're going to focus on emotional change over information transfer. If you're just trying to get information to people, I would dare say that a workshop is probably not going to be your best bet. Because a workshop is going to involve more from the front end in terms of your preparation. But if you're trying to transform someone or get them to think differently or get them to do something different, the workshop is your jam, as the kids are saying. So we're going to go through some of the uh, I would say some of the things to consider. So the first one is you have to avoid what I call the talking trap. If you're talking, the value of the workshop is dropping. Now you might not think that, but I promise you, I have coached hundreds, if not thousands, of people over the years through Dale Carnegie programs, my programs, and Dale Carnegie is facilitation driven. It is not keynote driven. You can learn how to do keynotes at Dale Carnegie. And most Dale Carnegie trainers, if they're worth their salt, they can tell you how to do a keynote, but keynotes aren't what make up the Dale Carnegie programs, and keynotes aren't what make up my programs, even though I've delivered keynotes. The key is not to get yourself to have more words. The key is to bring value by them doing the work. One of the people that trained me in facilitation years ago would stop when I would be practicing facilitation. And he would say, Is this having, are you having trouble with this? I said, Yeah. I said, I'm really struggling to find the right words. He said, That's because you're doing way too much work. And when I'm doing work, what that means is I'm usually talking too much. And you might say, if you're a leader, oh, well, what? Am I not supposed to talk? What am I just gonna be lazy and let them come up with the agenda? No, you're not letting them come up with the agenda. And I would dare say that in terms of prep, a workshop has a little bit more that goes into it than a keynote or running a meeting, but you don't want to be the one that's always talking because you're gonna get worn out and also it's not really bringing the value. So think about this. And this is a good buffer if you're looking at some sort of, and I don't like statistics and I don't like putting math to this, but I would say 20%. 20% would be you speaking, and the rest should be about them speaking or doing something. So 20 to 30 percent. So a three-hour workshop, you're talking for an hour. I just ran a three-hour workshop. I probably talked for an hour. The participants, they talked for at least two. Doesn't mean that they are talking and getting up and speaking. It means that there's exercises, which we'll get to those in a moment, that are facilitating what's happening inside that room. So you don't want to be a person who is just yapping. Because if I'm yapping, they're napping. Most trainers, most educators, and for heaven's sake, most executives are over talkers. So for the first time, I'm gonna give you permission. Here's your permission to shut your face. Just shut up. Just think about ways that you can say less and do more. So don't fall into the top talking trap. Next exercises. Exercises are the fuel and the spine and the structure. Use any type of physical analogy that you want. They are the driving force inside of a workshop. When you hear exercises, you might be thinking something physical. And maybe if you're Tony Robbins or you are Brene Brown and you're teaching cognitive behavioral stuff, where we have to think differently on the fly and be present and breathe differently, maybe. But exercises are a loose term that I would use to describe when the participants are doing something. Now, the difference between an exercise and an icebreaker is an exercise goes somewhere. So this is where I'll get some, and I'm already anticipating some of your feedback. You might think that an exercise was like, oh, yeah, I know what an exercise is an icebreaker. If I, you know, it's like a buzzfeed quiz. If I was a type of yogurt, what would I be? Or if I, you know, have to work on a skit and develop an acronym for a new body soap company that I'm building, right? Like stuff that has nothing to do with anything. Those are icebreakers. And icebreakers are there specifically to get people talking, but they don't necessarily connect to the point. And so, what an exercise does is an exercise is trying to strengthen or challenge your folks to get them to the point of why they're at this workshop to begin with. Why are they not working? So here is the way I would design an exercise. Instead of saying, what do I want to cover? I am going to ask, what am I wanting them to change or do after? So I will give you an example. In one of my workshops, in my signature workshop that I just used, when I'm coaching people, I get them to select someone that they admire as a communicator. And then I ask them to describe what it was like when they first heard that person, who did they, what were they thinking when they heard that person? And usually they say, Oh, I could, I can never speak like that person. And I say, why? Why? Why couldn't you speak? You admire something about that, so you know what's good about that person's communication. And so what is it about them that you like? Now, I don't do this in by way of having them just figure this out while they're sitting at their seats. I make them in a group talk about the communicators they like and they share it with each other. That's an exercise. What am I trying to do? I'm trying to get them to understand that they have already admired certain communicators. And I'm trying to get them to see what it would look like if they could communicate like them. So this is an exercise, an exercise. So it's not me listing every famous communicator, Abraham Lincoln, you know, the weatherman on channel 11, uh, the President Obama, President Trump, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I don't go through, I'll list one example, but then I give them the opportunity to list it. And then in the exercise, they talk about why they like that person with the person next to them. What's this doing? Two things. Number one, I'm not doing the talking. Number two, it's getting them to work out with another person why they like that person, why they like them as a communicator. And number three, and this is sometimes even more important, if they don't have a strong example, this gives them the opportunity to borrow that other person's example. Oh, we can name our high school teachers. I thought we just had to name famous people. And in that exercise, they are now coming to a place of understanding who their most admired communicator is. So you might ask now, how did I build this? How did I build it? Why did I pick that? Because as a part of my coaching, I'm going to ask them to imitate that person if I were coaching them. So I'm going to try to get them to imitate that person. So what I could have done is just lecture it about, oh, this is what we admire in communicators. And I could spend 30 minutes describing all that. And then I'd say, okay, now everyone's going to have a chance to get up and imitate their favorite communicator and go. And that would take probably 40 minutes to explain, and it would have a fraction of the efficacy. But because I turned it into an exercise, I got them doing the thinking, I got them doing the talking, I got them doing the heavy lifting. When they come up to get coaching from me, I'll ask them: do you want to communicate like Tony Robbins? Do you want to communicate like Stephen Bartled? Do you want to communicate like Joe Rogan, whoever your favor, uh Mel Robbins, whoever it is, Mel and Tony are not related, by the way. Do you want to communicate like these people? What do you like about them? And it gives me the opportunity to coach them through the exercise they already did. So the end result is I want them to communicate differently based on who they like as a communicator. And how did I get to that result? I built an exercise that got us there. So when you are examining what might be a good exercise to do in your group, think through, don't think through of all the different things. There's a million different exercises, table exercise, writing, skits, acronyms, drawings, any of it is on the table. But if it's not connected to your objective, it's an icebreaker. Not invaluable, not useless, but it's an icebreaker. And this gives you the opportunity to get results. Another beautiful thing about this, is it gives you time boxes. You can give them, hey, you have six minutes to do this, you have five minutes to do this, you have 10 minutes to do this. If it's a really long, elaborate work on something that you build piece by piece, 15 minutes, you are giving them time boxes. And this is helping you to regulate your own time because you know what uh Parkinson's law is the task that you, the time that you assign a task, the task will expand to the time you allow it. So if you give them two minutes, guess what they're gonna use? All the two minutes. If you give them 10, they're gonna use all 10. If you give them 20, they're gonna use 20. And so this gives you an opportunity to really keep your hand on the lever of the time switch. Got it? All right, so I I really, really have gone ham on a lot of these things. And I want to give you more value, so we're gonna move on and move a little quicker with these other ones. Because I said this was gonna be kind of a quick one. All right, next. Um, it's not about your resume, it's about the room. So what I mean by that is it's not about how much you know, especially as an executive leader, it's about how much you are getting them to discover what it is that it is you're attempting to get them to do. The room and the team is more valuable than your presence and your presentation. Therefore, your goal is not how good can I sound, your goal is how energetic can I be, and more importantly, how much energy can I give them to focus on whatever it is. I coached someone a while ago and they were, they had a week-long workshop they had to prepare, and it was for a group of software engineers, and it was extremely technical. I don't know if you can tell by talking to me, I'm not particularly technical. I'm not afraid of technology, but I don't know exactly how everything works. So I do know how to get people to interact. And I asked him point blank, what would move this group of people that are all like-minded, they're all in the same type of field, what would move them to feel like they were excited? And he said they would to get together and solve a complex problem. Now, I would have never thought of that as an exercise, but he recognized really quickly and he ran with that. Some people, if I if I put you in a room with people that are maybe artists and they're trying to maybe write, if I say I'm gonna sit you down and I'm gonna give you a really complex problem, they're gonna throw up in their mouth. You have to know your audience. It's more about the team. So you have to know your team enough to know what moves them. Your accounting team is gonna like data-driven exercises. Your leadership team is gonna like vision, they're going to like bottom line, they're going to want change, immediate change, they're gonna want activation. And so it's your job to focus on the team connecting and not just you coming to the place of being the center of getting that information transfer. So you want to make sure that the room is energized. And this is where you want to provide, in addition to exercises, a safe space in that room for struggle or discovery. A workshop is a phenomenal space for struggle and discovery. And in struggle, they can struggle safely because we're all struggling together because that you made that room possible. But it has to be a safe room. So your goal is to set the tone of energy and your goal is to keep the room safe. And in my workshops, I immediately try to give a sense of psychological safety because I speak in terms of my own mistakes a lot. I talk a lot about funny stories. I try to show them that I'm not going to hurt them and that I'm there to help them. And then I get them to struggle a little bit themselves. Then, last but not least, the reps that they do is what makes whatever it is stick. So reps are better than concepts. What you get them to do or what you challenge them to take away is going to be more valuable than what you have prepared. So, for instance, you want to make sure that they're tangibly leaving with what is the greatest thing you could take away from this? That's a dumb summary question, but it works. Was what made this worth your time? What are you going to do differently as a result of this X amount of time? Who are you going to reach out to to mentor? Who are you going to ask to hold you accountable for your speaking? What are you going to do in order to figure, fill in the blank? You want them to put flesh on the concepts that they learned there. So this is similar to exercise. Ask them what exercise they're going to do to solidify what it is that they wanted to keep going in the room, right? So this is a huge part of a workshop because you're giving them, I don't like calling it homework because everybody hates homework, but you want to call it an opportunity to go beyond those three hours, because there's times when you're not in the room with your team. And how you shape that is transformational. So remember, facilitation, not education, exercises, not exposition, emotional change over information transfer. I'd love to help you build your workshop. So if you want to build a workshop for your team, or if you want to have somebody like me come in and do a workshop for your team, it would be life-changing, not just for your team, but I also change every time I get to get in a room and see other people that are trying to do their best. So let's work together. So, with that said, we will see you next time and thank you for tuning in to the Sam Linton Show.