Delivery Matters

Stories behind workshop plans,
sticky notes and markers.

Tag: Facilitation stories

How to make training more engaging: 8 essential tips

You can have the best content in the world, the most updated statistics and information, but when it comes to training, great training content is just not enough. We’ve all sat through sessions that feel like (and in fact, are) a slow march through a PowerPoint deck. The information might be useful, but it is not memorable. In an era of distractions and short attention spans, what can help us design training that actually sticks? In this article, we will look at 8 essential tips to make in-person or virtual training more engaging, with plenty of real-life stories and examples from my own experience training newbies in facilitation and group…

How to improve the learning experience with workshop transitions

Most learning experiences guide participants through different blocks of content to help achieve the desired outcome. But how can you ensure that no one gets lost along the way? Workshop transitions are a method of seamlessly and purposefully moving between content blocks and engaging learners, but how do they work? For this post, we talked to Anja Svetina Nabergoj - Lecturer at Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University - about creating a more effective and engaging learning process by using purposeful transitions between workshop exercises. You'll learn what workshop transitions are and how to use them in your designs too! All workshops and courses are an opportunity for…

How to run a hybrid board meeting – an example from Daniel Unsöld

Hybrid meetings have become more common but integrating even a single online participant can be a challenge. In this facilitation story from Daniel Unsöld, you'll see how he and his team set up and ran an interactive, 4-day hybrid event with 40 live and 10 online participants. Daniel takes us behind the scenes, exploring the tech set-up and planning of the conference. He also explores how a large scale hybrid meeting plays out in practice, what activities he used to bridge live and online participants, and shares some of his learnings too! For in-house company meetings, great solutions are available from big names like Microsoft or young start-ups like Owl…

Asking better questions: an interview with Michael Ambjorn and Martin Gilbraith

Good facilitation can so often come down to asking the right questions at the right time. Great questions and strong communication are part of what enables a group to truly explore a problem, go deeper, and make progress. By asking the right questions and empowering others to do the same, you can help a group find the right answers. But how can we create an environment where it is safe to ask tough questions? How do we know the questions we're asking are the right ones? What are some of the methods and approaches we can use as facilitators to create a better culture of communication? To celebrate the launch…

Creating profound change: an interview with Malin Morén and Trevor Durnford

No team wants to create meaningless change. We want the changes we make to our teams and organizations to be radical and impactful. What's more, we want to collaborate effectively and ensure everyone in the group can contribute to making changes they believe in. But how can we best motivate teams who might be resistant to change? How can we help leaders and their teams come together to self-organize change and how might co-facilitation bring something special to the table? To celebrate the launch of The Power of Facilitation - a new book about how groups can use facilitation to create great results - we're speaking to the contributors to…

Courageous conversations & visual facilitation: an interview with Rosanna von Sacken

Helping a group have deeper, more meaningful conversations is a cornerstone of great facilitation. Whether working with a team to solve problems or build relationships, creating a safe space for discussion and engagement is the foundation of progress. But how might we create those spaces and conversations in practice? What might we learn from the field of visual facilitation and how could we apply it when we facilitate meetings and workshops? To celebrate the launch of The Power of Facilitation - a new book about how groups can use facilitation to create great results - we're speaking to the contributors to the book about their approaches and ideas. In this…

Is there workshop magic in your meetings?

For a second, close your eyes and place yourself in Orlando’s Universal Studios at the height of the August summer. It’s hot, humid, and packed full of parents and kids navigating the landscape. You are in one of those never-ending lines to experience Harry Potter’s magic. Every time you turn a corner you hope to see the carriages pulling up but instead you see a sea of heads in that all too familiar winding pattern. Out of the corner of your eye, you spot the signpost that reads, "About 45 mins from here” – ugh! The line drags on and on. A commotion is happening just ahead of you. Someone's…

How we ran our company retreat (hybrid!)

At SessionLab, we’ve always been a fully remote company. We love being a globally distributed team who can do our best work wherever we are! But seeing each other at our in-person team retreats have always been an integral part of our culture and are a massive part of building team cohesion. We previously aimed for a full team retreat twice a year. After a fun and productive team meeting in Barcelona in February 2020, we were already anticipating the summer meeting when we would see each other again. Sadly, the global pandemic had other plans. The world turned upside down, including the world of workshops and work retreats, too.…

8 things I learned facilitating socially distanced workshops

For many workshop participants, returning to a live environment after such a long time away can be stressful, tense or just plain odd! For some, the prospect of a socially distanced workshop is scary enough to be a barrier to entry and can seriously affect the efficacy of your session. To define the term, a socially distanced workshop is a live workshop where measures designed to limit close contact are in effect. This might mean limiting participant numbers, using large rooms with carefully distributed seating, the wearing of masks, the limiting of movement around the room, or other factors based on local or organizational guidelines. I ran a series of…

How to Run a Virtual End-of-Year Team Event – Real Example

Whether you call it a holiday celebration, Christmas party or year closing event, each year you and your team likely hold a session to bring everyone together and close the year before heading off for the holidays. At SessionLab, we felt it was important to hold a team session to close the year, have fun, reflect, and appreciate everything we had achieved. The goal was to raise spirits before people went away for the holidays, celebrate the year, and build team bonds and experiences that would persist into the New Year and beyond. As a fully remote team, most of our meetings and team building events are virtual by default-…

Using Asynchronous Learning to Engage Online Learners (Case Study)

For many facilitators, trainers, coaches, and teachers, transitioning existing content from live workshops to a remote setting has become a massive and necessary undertaking. As the facilitation landscape has shifted to online formats, asynchronous learning, or blended learning environments, those leading courses and workshops have needed to adapt. While redesigning for online learning is a challenge, it's also an opportunity. With the right approach, design, and process you can make your remote workshops as vital, engaging, and productive as their live equivalents. This might mean switching to a blended learning approach where students or participants work primarily in an online teaching environment with some control over the pace or direction…

Facilitation skills for team management: 30 managerial skills to learn from facilitators

Team management often requires people to wear multiple hats and occupy many roles at once. A good team manager is a leader, a coach, a trainer, a mentor and much more besides. But what can team managers learn from facilitators and the world of facilitation? Can you be a better manager by learning techniques from expert facilitators? We think so! After a conversation with Myriam Hadnes, founder of Idayz and host at the Workshops Work podcast, we thought about some facilitation concepts and skills that a team manager could use when working with a team. Here, we’ve collected 30 management skills and tips that can be learned by taking the…

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