Wow, time really flew by!

There’s nothing a facilitator loves to hear more than, “Wow, time really flew by!” My assumption is that the one percent of people who don't agree might have been running in and out of the room. A workshop is successful when participants leave saying, "I learned so much, it's so deep, and it's so relevant that I can absolutely apply it to my career and my life.” ... and they actually apply what they learn outside the workshop... So, how do we make that happen every time?

Designing for Experience

We don't believe in just throwing a lot of concepts and information at an audience. We believe in experiential learning because that's how adults really learn. Even in a keynote for a hundred or a thousand people, we ask ourselves, "What can I get them to think? How do I bring them to my journey? What do I get them to do?" Our core rule is simple: we never speak one-way for more than five minutes. Our designs are built around meaningful engagement every 3-10 minutes. We'll use everything from having people raise their hands to drawing, answering questions, or even embodying a word. It's how we help concepts stick in their minds.

Preparing for Relevance

You can't deliver a great workshop without doing your homework. You have to speak to the audience and the decision-makers to understand their world. We can only make the content relevant when we speak their language and their context. I remember delivering in three different countries in two weeks. I started in India, where I hyped up my energy and used a Bollywood production as an analogy. The next day in Japan, I had to do a complete 180, being calmer, more collected, and patiently waiting for participants to warm up and speak up. My examples shifted to the way of the samurai or the art of making matcha. A week later in Australia, I could be more casual, bringing in examples of surfing and bushwalking. All of this was possible because we did the work to understand the local context first.

Here was the workshop that I ran with Milan with our original content on 7 ways to increase to leadership...

(the work we did together before being together)

Delivery for Impact

When I'm in the room, I always focus on one to maximum three things (Power of 3!) that my participants will learn and how they will immediately apply it. We talk about what's the one thing they'll do as soon as they get back to their desk. Our debriefs always focus on their experience, their learnings, and their applications. It's the reason we consistently achieve over 90% satisfaction at a bare minimum. When you have a workshop where time flies, it's because it's engaging, relevant, and applicable—and that's a powerful combination.