How Voltage Control designs and facilitates impactful workshops with SessionLab
Voltage Control is a top facilitation academy that focuses on improving how teams gather and move towards desired outcomes. They offer public facilitation certifications designed to support leaders’ growth in facilitation skills, as well as corporate programs that bring facilitation training in-house.
Since the beginning, SessionLab has been a key part of Voltage Control’s process. As Erik Skogsberg describes, it’s an essential tool that allows the team to design adaptable agendas and effectively navigate complex discussions across teams and locations. By integrating SessionLab into their approach, Voltage Control helps organizations achieve impactful results and move the needle in meaningful ways
How Voltage Control use SessionLab to design workshops and deliver outcomes
At Voltage Control, designing impactful workshops begins with their Workshop Design Canvas. This serves as a high-level framework to outline session goals based on desired outcomes and participants’ needs.
Once Erik has established these foundations, he seamlessly transitions into SessionLab to refine the details. The drag-and-drop functionality allows him to easily rearrange blocks and groups, adjusting timing and flow to fit the session.
The automatic timing calculation helps Voltage Control work efficiently within time constraints. As Erik describes it,“the timing feature in SessionLab are especially helpful because it ensures we keep things within their bounds.”
By visually organising activities through colour-coding and groups, Erik and his team make sure everything is in place for a well-designed workshop.
“it really comes down to Session Lab’s ability to quickly get activities and blocks into place, move them around dynamically, and visually represent the flow through colour coding”
SessionLab also cuts down on design time and streamlines the process. “SessionLab does the workshop math for us and we don’t need to reinvent the wheel each time. Our templates in SessionLab are ready to go whenever we facilitate our sessions.”
How Voltage Control students use SessionLab in their facilitation certification.
Voltage Control are committed to delivering high-quality training programs that improve how teams and leaders design and run their own experiences. A core component of this approach is their facilitation foundations curriculum, where they use SessionLab to create engaging agendas for both certification programs and smaller boot-camp workshops.
SessionLab is introduced to students as a key tool for agenda design, guiding them through the process of designing their own sessions.
“They’re just so glad this tool exists. Many have worked with systems that felt clunky and less dynamic, where tallying up the workshop math was a tedious task. As soon as they see SessionLab, it’s a whole new world for them”
As Erik works with certification students, he sees the agendas and sessions they’re able to create. The students effectively integrate learnings from the program into their SessionLab agendas, showcasing their workshop design skills and facilitation style. This focus on practical application ensures that participants leave with the tools and confidence they need to facilitate impactful sessions in their own environments.
Voltage Control Use SessionLab to adapt in real-time and meet client goals
One of the main challenges Voltage Control faces is balancing the outcomes identified by the client with the steps needed to achieve them. Erik explains, “We have a finite amount of time to guide participants to the outcomes. SessionLab really meets us right there in organising a session, allowing us to move blocks around, so we can tweak timing in the moment.” This flexibility helps Voltage Control stay organised and dynamic, especially when multiple facilitators are involved.
Erik and the team use SessionLab whilst facilitating too to time check, and make sure they’re hitting the key pieces for each method and activity.
“We can move things around in real time in a way that helps my collaborators flex based on what’s coming up in the session.
Voltage Control also use SessionLab to help keep everything documented. Having the ability to revisit any previous session, allows to collaborate and share agendas with clients or team members. When managing larger, complex conversations at scale using templates helps ensure the teams stay aligned
“Recently, we worked with a client on workshops across the globe, and having everything set up in SessionLab meant we could efficiently provide facilitators with the resources they needed to succeed.”
Conclusion
When facilitators are equipped with the right tools to design effective workshops and engage participants, they can drive meaningful outcomes for their organizations.
For the team at Voltage Control, that success begins with a flexible and dynamic session design. SessionLab plays a part in helping Erik Skogsberg create impactful learning experiences, enabling organizations to navigate complex conversations and achieve the outcomes they are hoping for.
“SessionLab has helped us be more purpose and outcome-focused. We can easily create an agenda and see the big picture.”
Carrin is the community and partnerships manager at SessionLab. She’s helped community initiatives and NGOs tackle complex problems through facilitated design thinking workshops. As a lifelong learner, you’ll find Carrin hosting SessionLab community events featuring guest facilitators, trainers and coaches sharing their experiences.
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