4

How to Open a Workshop

You never get a second chance to make a first impression.

——Will Rogers

In an ideal world, participants would enter a workshop feeling calm, secure, relaxed, open, and ready to take in new ideas and skills. In the real world, many do. However, it’s wise to assume that a number of participants will feel a bit anxious about attending the course, concerned that they might be called on to speak in front of the class, worried that they may not measure up to others in the class, or apprehensive about meeting new people. Some will inevitably be distracted by the thought of work piling up while they’re away. Others may wonder why they were sent to this particular training. Is it a reward? A punishment? The first step to being shown the door? So, instead of entering the workshop with an open-minded approach to learning, many trainees feel guarded until their experience provides them with positive answers to one or more of three crucial but usually unspoken questions that are frequently on the minds of people entering a training event:

• Will I be safe—not be put on the spot or otherwise made vulnerable?

• Will it be worthwhile—something I can really use?

• Will it be reasonably engaging—or will I be bored stiff?

When learners feel unsure of the answers to these questions, they tend to be closed to learning. Their defensiveness is often expressed by being remote and uninvolved, forming exclusive subgroups, questioning the applicability of what’s being taught, and so forth. When these anxieties are not defused, the resulting defensive behavior can transform what was meant to be a positive learning experience into a trainer’s nightmare.

So without directly addressing the three unspoken questions that are often on participants’ minds as they enter a new learning experience, the trainer’s friendly manner can create a safe, welcoming climate. And her brief, but carefully crafted preview of the course content and its benefits can stimulate the expectation that this might turn out to be a worthwhile use of their time. Then, too, the brisk pace of the opening combined with your somewhat revved-up energy deployed to get the workshop off the ground will undercut the possible expectation that this is likely to be a tedious experience.

The way the opening of a workshop responds to participants’ unexpressed concerns helps set the tone for what follows. So, in this chapter we highlight the critical importance of the opening minutes of a workshop. Then we show how to respond indirectly to the unspoken questions mentioned above while covering the usual introductory workshop topics:

• Who the trainer is

• Who the other participants are

• What material will be covered

• How the training will be managed

Provide Prework

Sending prework gives participants a head start on learning the workshop material. And prework generally helps them get a more specific sense of what the workshop will be about. Prework can include reading materials that explain why this training is needed, what will be covered, and what end results are expected. Prework can also involve a brief quiz on the subject matter to gauge where participants stand prior to the training, or participants can be asked to list questions they would like answered during the training.

Be Aware of the Lasting Effect of First Impressions

When you lead a workshop made up of people whom you’ve never met, be alert to the power of first impressions. If you start off on the wrong foot with a group, it can be difficult to recoup. Researchers at Princeton University found that people make snap judgments about a person’s competence, likability, and trustworthiness in less than a second!¹ Furthermore, these first impressions tend to be long-lasting. News analyst David Brooks’s survey of research on initial impressions of other people found that

these sorts of first glimpses are astonishingly accurate in predicting how people will feel about each other months later. People rarely revise their first impression; they just become more confident that they are right.²

Thus, when you stand in front of a group for the first time, before you ever say a word, participants will have made an initial assessment of how competent, likable, and trustworthy you are. It ain’t fair! But since human nature usually works that way, we do well to take this phenomenon into account when opening a workshop.

Here are ten things you can do to create a positive first impression while getting the workshop off to a good start:

1. Dress Appropriately

We’ll provide more specifics on this in Chapter 10, but it’s appropriate to briefly mention the point here. Make sure your wardrobe fits the occasion. Considerable social psychology research indicates that people are more trusting of people who look like and dress like them. Every organization has its own dress code and it’s a sound practice for trainers to follow it. Kim Campbell, former Prime Minister of Canada, put it this way: “Does fashion MATTER? Only if you’re out of it.”³ And the savvy social activist, Dorothy Day, when preparing her followers for antiwar demonstrations, told the men to wear neckties and jackets. Like all wise change agents, don’t let your garb undermine your message.

2. Begin Your Work Before the Workshop Starts

Arrive at the workshop site at least a half an hour before the starting time so you can be sure the room is set up properly and you are ready to welcome and chat with the first people to arrive. Greet the early arrivals, introduce yourself, and learn something about them. As participants continue to arrive, introduce yourself to as many people as you can. Invite them to have a cup of coffee or tea if that’s available. Introduce a few newcomers to one another and then begin acquainting yourself with some other new arrivals and get them acquainted with one another. These small efforts help set the stage for greater participation during the workshop.

3. Create a Seating Arrangement Conducive to Participation

A dynamic workshop should seldom have more than twenty to at most twenty-five participants. Arrange the chairs in a semicircle with a chair reserved for the trainer at one end of the semicircle and with the door to the rear of the group (preferably) or to the side so anyone who must enter or leave during the session can do so with minimal disruption. Make sure all participants will be able see and hear you and one another. And check charts, audiovisual screens, etc., to be sure that they are visible and readable by everyone.

It’s important to have a flexible seating arrangement for highly participative workshops. We strongly recommend against having people sit behind or around tables unless tables are absolutely necessary. When people are seated at tables, movement is restricted and communication is inhibited. When using a table-less seating arrangement, you may initially get a few complaints about the lack of tables but people tend to adjust quickly. If tables are required for some activities, consider putting them against the wall and arrange the chairs as described in the previous paragraph. If tables are needed at some point in the workshop, the participants can move their chairs to the nearby tables that are positioned near the back wall.

When participants arrive at the workshop, the table-less room arrangement subtly announces that the workshop will be an interactive experience.

4. Provide Healthy Snacks

Many organizations provide coffee, tea, and something sweet when people arrive at the workshop and for the morning break. Increasing numbers of people, however, are health conscious about their food choices. Exercise whatever influence you have to provide some healthy snack and beverage options. One size does not fit all!

5. Display a “Welcome” Flip Chart

Create and display an attractive “Welcome” flip chart with the course title and the word Trainer followed by the name you like to be called and your last name.

6. Give a Two-Minute Warning

As you approach the starting time, give a two–minute warning that the workshop is about to begin. That gives participants time to wrap up their conversations and find their seats.

7. Get Off to a Good Start

Start well and the participants will be revved up for the journey ahead. Start poorly and you’ll find yourself needlessly fighting an uphill battle. So give some thought to how you will transition seamlessly from chatting casually with participants before the workshop to giving the workshop an energetic beginning. Start at the announced starting time as this will signal the norm of punctuality, a norm that can be important to the success of the workshop.

Training veteran Bob Pike says, “Creative trainers recognize that they need to do at least three things with an opening if they are going to raise the BAR in their training:

Break preoccupation through involvement.

Allow networking to reduce tension and to increase retention.

Relate the opening to the content so that participants see the relevance of the opening. It makes a point. It is not a waste of time.”⁴

After a brief welcome which should take no more than a minute or two, a quick ice-breaker helps people relax and feel more at home in the group. Polling, one of the more effective ice-breakers, simply involves asking for a show of hands to provide participants (and the trainer) with information about the other people in the room. This involves the participants from the get-go, provides you with useful information about the group, and fosters networking as participants learn a bit about one another. Here’s one way to go about it:

Before we get started let’s take a minute to learn a bit about each other. Raise your hand if:

• You just got back from a vacation.

• You’re going on a vacation soon.

• You wish you were on vacation right now.

• You’re originally from:

The northeast

The southeast

The northwest

The southwest

The middle of the country

As you speak, demonstrate what you want people to do. Timing is important here. For example, raise your hand as you say,

Raise your hand if: . . .

Perhaps you can use sports questions according to the season you’re in. For example:

• How many of you are Yankees fans?

• How many are Red Sox fans?

• How many think the Giants are going to win the Super Bowl?

Interspersing some banter in reaction to some of the group’s answers gets the class off to a relaxed, light, and humorous start. As described in Chapter 5, it’s often helpful to include a brief get-acquainted activity in the opening minutes of a workshop.

8. Focus on Factors That Contribute to an Effective Beginning

After the polling, people will begin to feel a bit more at ease, so it’s time to cover the factors that contribute to a solid beginning of a workshop:

• The trainer’s self-introduction

• The content overview

• The teaching methods that will be used

• The workshop ground rules

• The participants’ self-introductions

• The announcement of workshop logistics

In a twenty- to twenty-five-person workshop you should be able to complete this type of introduction in twenty-five to twenty-eight minutes.

Trainer Self-Introduction

If the option of having someone introduce you is offered, decline it. An introduction by someone else won’t achieve the connection you want to make with the group. Only you can do that. So make it a rule to introduce yourself.

Your self-introduction should address the two primary questions participants generally have about a workshop leader:

1. Who is the trainer as a professional? Summarize your qualifications for leading this workshop.

2. Who is the trainer as a person? Briefly describe a personal interest of yours or something the participants wouldn’t know about you unless you told them.

An effective self-introduction responds to the qualifications issue and the human issue. Both topics can be covered in less than two minutes. This may sound like a short amount of time to introduce yourself, but it can be done and will enable you to move quickly to the next part of the introduction. It’s important to avoid getting behind schedule in the opening minutes of a workshop.

Customize your self-introduction for each workshop you do. Customization begins with knowledge about the group you’ll be leading. Is it made up of seasoned managers who have been in countless training sessions? Or are they new recruits fresh out of college? Perhaps there’s a mix of age and experience. Specifically, what work do they perform? What company-wide problems are they facing? With this knowledge you can adjust what you say to meet what you think their expectations will be. To a group of old hands you can emphasize your solid professional experience as well as your current work. To a group of newer employees you can place less emphasis on your experience and more on what you are doing now.

For the personal side of your introduction, think about the degree of informality and the depth of self-disclosure that will be appropriate for this group. Being too informal with a group that’s looking for more of a professional self-introduction can be a negative, just as a stiff formality can bring yawns from others. Since considerable self-disclosure can be off putting to some participants, it’s best to err on the side of too little at the opening of a workshop. If you think more self-disclosure is desirable, you can always add some as the training proceeds. Like salt in a recipe—easy to put in, hard to take out.

Although you’ll customize your introduction to each group you work with, the basics will nearly always be the same. So refine the basics of your self-introduction so that it makes a strong contribution to the opening of your workshops.

Keep in mind that participants will soon be introducing themselves to the group. Your self-introduction is, in part, a demonstration of what’s appropriate when participants introduce themselves. The length, the kind, and the depth of self-disclosure, as well as the degree of formality will register on them. And when their turn comes, participants will at least partially take their cue from your self-introduction.

A brief self-introduction might go something like this:

Content Overview

Participants are reassured and they learn better when they’re given a brief, well-thought-out plan of the workshop. For a one day or shorter training, consider using an uncluttered bulleted or numbered outline on one sheet of newsprint. If the training is longer than a day, provide a one-sheet overview of the total workshop and a one-sheet outline of the current day. Post the skeletal outlines of the workshop and of the current day’s agenda side by side for participants to refer to from time to time.

Some trainers like to tell the following fable in their workshop opening.

The trainer then concludes with a statement like, “I think of this workshop as time to sharpen your axe, a place for honing your ____________ skills so when you get back to your workplace you’ll be more effective than ever.”

Teaching Methods

At the beginning of a workshop, participants will want to know what they’ll be doing and how they’ll be involved. As you explain the teaching methods you’ll be using in the workshop, participants will be better able to sense what’s in store for them and they’ll begin to relax a bit more. At the conclusion of your rundown of the workshop teaching methods you may want to invite their comments by saying something like, “Any questions about the workshop methods?”

Workshop Ground Rules

Workshop ground rules (sometimes called workshop norms) are standards of behavior that contribute to a positive learning environment. Most trainers have settled on their own set of norms that help optimize their workshop’s effectiveness. Below are a handful of guidelines that are widely used. The capitalized words in the visual below are posted throughout the workshop; the words in lower case letters approximate what the trainer adds about the ground rule.

Add a norm about electronic communication that’s congruent with that of the organization you are training in.

Keep the number of ground rules to a minimum—if there are too many, some folks will undoubtedly forget some of them. And a number of the participants may consider you a control freak.

Since ground rules describe how group members agree to operate in the workshop, be sure to get the group’s buy-in to the ground rules before moving on to the next topic. You might simply ask, “How does this sound to you?” or “Does this make sense to you?”

When these ground rules are agreed to at the beginning of a workshop, they prevent needless unproductive behavior. Participants begin self-correcting themselves on the basis of norms that they agreed to at the beginning of the workshop.

Refer to the ground-rules visual from time to time. Occasionally, reiterate a particular ground rule when it’s especially applicable. For example, when announcing the first break, remind participants about the “be on time” ground rule.

Participants’ Self-Introductions

At the beginning of a workshop most of the participants want to know, “Who are these other people?” Be sure to take timing into consideration when planning how participants introduce themselves. We’ve seen training manuals that schedule two hours for the opening of a one-day workshop with most of that time spent in participant introductions. That’s more than a quarter of the workshop!

Keeping the self-introductions brief enables the group to move quickly to the substance of the workshop. You can compensate for the brevity of the introductions by fostering an interactive workshop environment that enables participants to learn more about one another at the same time that they are engaged in learning the workshop content. This brief but ultimately thorough approach to getting participants acquainted with one another is a great workshop timesaver.

It’s useful to have a bulleted visual outlining what you’d like participants to include in their self-introductions. Here’s one option:

While this outline provides a mix of professional and personal information, the only point that allows for much self-disclosure is the last one. Participants have the freedom to say things like, “My golf handicap is twenty and I’ve been working hard to lower it.” Or “My interest is in my three boys, ages twelve, fourteen, and seventeen, and their activities. I spend a lot of my free time going to their events.”

Play the Name Game

The Name Game follows the self-introductions. It’s an effective and widely used community building activity for groups of up to 25 people. Here’s how it goes. You ask for a volunteer to begin by saying the name he likes to be called. The participant to that person’s right repeats the first person’s name and adds the name that he or she likes to be called. The next person repeats the names of the first and second person and adds their own. This process continues until the last person repeats everyone’s name in the group and adds his own. This introductory activity can be challenging and fun at the same time. When you use the Name Game you can count on two things—that everyone in the group will be working hard to learn everyone’s name and that they’ll be having a lot of fun trying. You can ease any performance anxiety by interjecting comments like:

You can see that the volunteer who goes first has a much easier job than the person who goes last and has twenty-some names to remember. But you folks who speak early, stay focused on learning names because you’ll want to know the names of the people you’ll be working with in various activities throughout the workshop. Don’t worry if you are at the end, and have to recall twenty names. We’re not going to hang you out to dry. We’ll help you out when you need assistance with a name.

How to Quickly Learn Everyone’s Name

People appreciate it when the trainer learns and uses their name. And it pleases and impresses them when you can repeat everyone’s name at the completion of the Name Game. Even if you are really bad at remembering the names of new acquaintances (like the male coauthor of this book), the following method will help you learn every participants’ name and put their names and faces together by the time the introduction to the workshop is concluded:

• If possible, before the workshop begins read the participants’ list and become somewhat familiar with the names of the folks who will be attending the workshop.

• As people gather for the workshop and during the self-introductions, concentrate very hard and learn as many names as you can.

• Then, during the Name Game, every time a new name is mentioned, mentally repeat each name that’s been mentioned along with the new name.

• Once in a while you might want to ask the whole group to repeat all the names given so far. That will aid recall and reduce the pressure a bit.

This way of opening a workshop builds community fairly rapidly so you can quickly move to the substance of the workshop. As mentioned earlier, additional community building experiences can be distributed throughout the workshop.

The Announcement of Workshop Logistics

The introduction to the workshop generally concludes with a brief summary of workshop logistics. Here’s where you succinctly announce nitty-gritty details like starting time, closing time, when and how long the breaks will be, the location of beverages and snacks (when available), the time and length of the lunch break, the location of rest rooms, and any safety information. Keep the announcements brief and brisk.

This is often a good time for a ten-minute break. People are ready to stretch their legs. They’re now able to put a few names and faces together, so they’ll be a bit more comfortable getting acquainted with others during the break. If you have a standardized way of letting folks know when breaks end, describe it to the group now. Then, when the break is over, use that method to call participants back into session.

9. Be Yourself Plus

Without trying to become someone you’re not, it’s wise to embody the following characteristics throughout your leadership of a workshop and especially when you are getting a workshop off the ground:

At this point you begin transforming a gathering of individuals who may not know one another into a purposeful learning community. Embodying the above characteristics will help you transform a group of strangers into a fellowship of learners.

10. Begin Again and Again

Community needs to be reestablished each day of the workshop. A group that was cohesive in the late afternoon or in the evening generally needs some time to regain a sense of community the following morning.

Informal comments by the trainer at the opening of the second day (and subsequent days) can start to rebuild the climate that was created earlier. Asking if anyone can recall the names of all of the participants—or the names of half of the participants—or the names of any participants can add a light note while helping people get reacquainted. Some trainers like to suggest that participants take a different seat on each of the remaining days of the course so everyone will build stronger relationships with a larger number of group members.

Asking if anyone used something they learned yesterday will begin leading the group back to the substance of the workshop. Additionally, the following items need to be addressed:

• A summary of participant evaluations that were completed at the end of the previous day

• A brief review of yesterday’s content and a preview of today’s material

• Participant’s questions, issues, and comments on previously taught material

• An invitation for comments on the “overnight effect” (which was discussed in the previous chapter)

• A transition into what comes next.

A Summary of Participant Evaluations

Post the numerical feedback from yesterday and, if your day-end evaluation form asks for this information, read a few characteristic comments regarding what was most valuable and what was least valuable. When you read this to the group, keep an objective tone of voice and don’t editorialize. This is a moment for the participants to step out of their own experience and see how things are going for others. If the feedback leans heavily toward the negative, you can ask for any ideas for making today more effective than yesterday. If the feedback is largely positive, you can ask if there are any comments or questions that anyone would like to add. If an assignment was given, ask how that went.

Review and Preview

This is the time to recap where we’ve been and summarize where we’re going. Yesterday’s schedule can be posted and briefly reviewed. Then give the schedule for today and show as many links to yesterday’s content as you can to demonstrate how the course hangs together.

Debrief the “Overnight Effect”

In multiday workshops it is not unusual for a participant who had a hard time accepting yesterday’s material to show up the next morning with a more receptive mindset. And participants who were having difficulty learning the skill being taught often do much better in a practice on the following day. Sometimes the conversation a participant has with his spouse leads him to see things differently. Many times, however, assimilation takes place overnight as the information one struggled with during the workshop session begins to sink in.

In conclusion, covering all the bases for opening a workshop sets the stage for a smooth transition into the real meat of the course.