There is an art to facilitating workshops, especially if you wish it to be impactful. Today’s guest is Myriam Hadnes, who founded Workshops Work to support individuals and organizations to grow their facilitation skills. She shares her thoughts on helping clients create a smoother workshop, drawing from the best practices she has learned from navigating and growing as an expert in the field. What is more, Myriam adds some tips for facilitators to avoid mirroring negative effects in the workshops. Tune in to this exciting episode as Myriam joins Michael Zipursky to share more about designing a workshop that truly works.
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In this episode, I am joined by Myriam Hadnes. Welcome.
Thank you.
You are the Founder of Workshops Work, where you help individuals and organizations grow their facilitation skills. You have a PhD in Behavioral Economics. You’re the Founder of NeverDoneBefore, a community for expert facilitators to help grow their skills, which is often research and development departments and so forth, I believe. I want to get into a lot of this and have you share your story of how you’ve built this business.
Our readers will be excited to learn and will find value in learning about some of your best practices when it comes to facilitation and workshop because for any consultant, regardless of your industry or where you are in the world, you’re probably doing some kind of workshops or some kind of facilitation, even if it’s in the form of meetings with buyers and with clients when you get into an engagement. Why don’t we start off? Before you started doing what you are doing, I know you’re originally from Germany and you’re now in Amsterdam, but what were you doing before you built this business around workshops and facilitation?
I used to be an academic.
A recovering academic.
Still recovering. I was teaching Economics, then I built a study program in Vietnam for Vietnamese students then worked in higher education university strategy. I was the strategic advisor to the university professor at Luxembourg. I’m a University President in Luxembourg. At some point, I dropped out because I realized that the public sector was too small and political. I needed something else. I moved to Amsterdam to redesign my life.
I tried out different things and came into facilitation basically because I started a meetup through idea parties and couldn’t find a job because, as an academic was my skillset, I didn’t fit into any HR box. It was through the meetups that then people started to ask me to help them to design workshops, to eventually facilitate the workshops or pay me for the design without even facilitating them. It was grown from within. What is maybe particular in my vito and solo career compared to others is that I didn’t have my previous consult, my previous employer as my first client because I came from academia. I didn’t even know what facilitation was when I started my business. When I look at most of the consultants around me, they quit their job and their first big client is their former employer.
It’s very common. We did a study on this a little while ago at Consulting Success. I don’t remember the exact statistic, but it was quite a few. For the majority of people, their first client was not necessarily the employer that they left, but it was one of their previous employers who was the most common initial client for most people.
It makes the jump very easy and quite safe. I jumped off the cliff without knowing what would be there, then what paid off was that I’ve always enjoyed networking, even during my academic career. I was lucky enough that my first client basically reached out a few weeks after I officially started my business, that they got the budget to have an internal summer school at the European Investment Bank, which is a European institution, and hired me as a consultant for that to help them build that up from scratch.
I have a few questions. The first is you mentioned that you were doing idea meetups.
For a mastermind, you get what you pay for. If you are charging little, then the quality generated is very little. If you charge a bit higher, it will attract. Click To TweetI call them idea parties.
What is an idea party?
I basically made that up. I think in nowadays’ language, I would call it a mastermind. I invited people to come up with a challenge and then, with a group of twenty or so, we brainstormed solutions and I had my very particular design on how to go about this brainstorming and then the promise was that they would leave with ideas, solutions and new friends.
Were you charging for this or was it free?
The initial ones were free and then I charged maybe 5 euros. I never made sense out of it. I eventually called it a mastermind and had the brilliant idea of doing a, “Pay as you want,” then we realized that for a mastermind, you get what you pay for. If you are charging little, then the quality that is generated is very little. If you charge a lot, then everyone will be happy because it attracts the right people.
It’s like most things in pricing, even beyond masterminds, that not only is it true for you. If you charge a lower fee, you’re going to typically get people that are not as high caliber. That’s partly because their mindset is they’re not seeing the big picture, but it’s also a negative for the client because if they’ve invested less, they tend to be less invested in achieving an outcome or result because if they don’t take action, they don’t have as much to lose.
Whereas if they’ve invested, let’s say, $10,000 into being part of a mastermind, or in some cases it could be, there are masterminds that are a $100,000 per year, it’s like you’re going to definitely make sure that you take big action because you want to achieve the result. Otherwise, it wouldn’t make sense. I think that’s a very interesting perspective that you’re sharing.
It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Also, if you invested so much money, then you want to tell yourself that you made the right investment decision. As you say, you will put in more effort in order to make it work and you will share with more people how successful this was, including yourself, to keep the self-image right.
That’s the idea party. Where do you get the people? How are you inviting these people? Was this like on Meetup.com?
It was mostly on Meetup.com and then I was part of a co-working space. I told the people in the co-working space and they invited their friends. It was very grassroots.
You mentioned your own framework or approach to how you wanted to conduct this idea party. Where did that come from with that knowledge of how to structure that kind of an event or a gathering to make it productive?
My background is in Behavioral Economics. I have for my PhD 1 Experiment to basically measure how humans take decisions and nudge them to take better decisions. I have observed many people on how we go about communicating with each other, but also as I was always interested in communication and how we give advice. For instance, the first activity that I always did was brainstorming questions instead of ideas because we always get defensive if someone throws ideas at us, especially if they don’t have enough context about what the problem is about.
If I invite people to come with a challenge and to pitch their challenge in two minutes, how good will the ideas be for people who paid 5 euros to join this idea party? By asking them, “What are the questions that come to your mind, listening to these challenges?” You have all the different perspectives. Basically, the person who brings in the challenge goes back with an abundance of new perspectives and angles that they can look for a solution within themselves.
That reminds me of Liz Wiseman’s book, Multipliers. It talks about the concept of the best leaders asking great questions. As a leader, typically, you want to give the direction and say, “Do this because you know or you believe that you know,” but the best leaders tend to focus on ways to get questions out of their team. It sounds like you’re starting off by, rather than giving people ideas, you’re focusing on helping people to ask the questions that are making them think. Because of that, they’re able to see bigger opportunities or more expansive opportunities or landscapes. I would also imagine they’re almost priming themselves subconsciously to be more open to the ideas that are going to flow out from that discussion.
It empowers them to find their own solutions because if they find an answer to the question and they didn’t answer the questions on the spot. It was basically a little gift package for them to go back to with these questions. I love what you’re saying about the leaders asking questions. I have the impression that many get the idea of the value of asking questions wrong, which sounds terrible, but I think that if we’re asking questions that could have been a Google search, we’re wasting everyone’s time because do the Google search. When we come together in real time where we are sharing our most important resources, which is attention and time, then let’s ask questions where we are interested in someone’s perspective and then we want to generate these moments of wonder of curiosity.
This makes me think of the connection to what’s happening in the world with Artificial Intelligence or AI. Everybody is talking about AI, ChatGPT, Google Bard and all these different kinds of technologies and tools. I could be completely wrong, but my perspective and observation are that one thing that AI is not going to replace is strategic thinking or creative thinking. Even though you can probably pull out and extract questions from ChatGPT or whatever the AI is, you’re probably not going to be able to extract the kind of thoughtful questions that somebody who’s being thoughtful and thinking deeply, strategically and creatively.
That’s the value that, let’s say, a facilitator, a workshop or any consultant brings to their clients. Clients or consultants that are concerned about AI taking away their job might take off some roles of what you do, but the real value that you can add is not going to be taken away because that comes from the strategic or creative thinking that AI in its form, certainly I don’t believe can do. What are your thoughts on that?
This can become a very long tangent and I love it. I agree that AI can help us with strategic thinking or cannot help us with strategic thinking. I do believe that AI-powered assistance is highly creative. When you ask about twenty different ideas, let them do the brainstorming, but then let’s do the part where, “What are we doing with these ideas? How can we bring them to the next level?” and then it becomes interesting.
What I find sad is that some AI or ChatGPT as competitors, I think we need to learn to collaborate with them because we learn to better communicate and to be very precise. If we are asking a question that’s not precise enough for ChatGPT, we don’t get anything of value. We can learn to be better communicators through collaborating with AI because when I ask a friend or a coworker colleague a question and I get an answer that is not satisfactory, I get frustrated, “You don’t understand me.” When I don’t get the right answer from ChatGPT, I don’t get frustrated. I realize, “I wasn’t precise enough.” Imagine how we can grow our own self-awareness that we’re asking the one question because we trained our question-asking skills with ChatGPT.
It’s a new lens through how to look at it, rather than viewing it is being negative, positive or whatever, it sounds like you’re taking the approach of where you understand what the limitations are, but at the same time, you’re open to the benefits and possibilities of it and finding ways to harness those inside of your business, even inside of communication in a more general way.
You don't start a podcast because you think that it will be quick conversion, quick cash. There should be a deep passion and curiosity. Click To TweetWhat I also see, if you don’t know anything, ChatGPT can be very dangerous to use because it invents information. I asked ChatGPT, “Write me a workshop plan for a 90 minutes workshop about communication and about asking questions,” fantastic, but then if you add up the times, it doesn’t end up to 90 minutes. If you look closer to it, you’re like, “Maybe you cannot start with this warmup because you first need to create a safe space,” for instance.
It’s a wonderful start for me then to say, “I can work with that. I know that I have first to create the safe space and that maybe I need to address the timings.” If you know a lot, you can enhance and 10X your productivity with ChatGPT and even creativity because it will give you ideas you have never considered. If you don’t know anything, then it’s very dangerous because you’ll start posting stuff that the real experts identify very quickly as not true.
It’s easy for us to go down a bit of a rabbit hole and tangent on AI conversations. I want to bring it back to focusing on you and how you built this business. You mentioned that the first client came from doing these meetups or idea parties. Somebody then recognized like, “You seem to have a skill around facilitation workshops. We now have some funding. Can you help us?” Fast-forward from that point, how did you start getting more business coming to the point where you felt, “I now have a business where I’m helping people with facilitation and workshops?”
The wheel accelerator came through the podcast.
How long ago was that? When did you start the podcast?
April 2019. In May 2023, it’s precisely 216 weeks.
From the time you start the podcast, at what point, like how far time or number of episodes in were you when you went, “This is starting to help me with the business.”
I was speaking to avoid for 30 weeks or episodes, then between 25 and 30, I got the first call or a message on LinkedIn, “You’ve been in my ear all the time, you’re exactly whom we need.”
Was this an organization?
This was a big organization, and they invited all of their salespeople from around the globe to come to the headquarters. They wanted a conference that is rather a workshop. In all the previous years they headed, they had speakers talking to all these salespeople, but now the organization went through a transformation. They wanted to be more collaborative. They thought that what they need is a workshop approach. Instead of hiring me to design the conference for them, they hired me to enable their team to design the conference.
Thirty weeks, it’s almost like a year of speaking to the void or not releasing any fruits of your labors. To some people, that would seem like insanity, the fact that you keep going when nothing is working. They would look at it and say, “I’ve tried it. I’ve done it for not only a couple of months, it’s now been several months, and I’m not getting results. I’m spending this time and money. Maybe this doesn’t work for me in my industry, business.” In all this talk and mental chatter, you kept going. Why did you keep going? I
I don’t know how it’s for you, but for me, you don’t start a podcast because you think that it will be quick conversion or quick cash. There is a deep passion and curiosity. The podcast is called Workshops Work. I interview facilitators. I thought initially that after twenty episodes, I’m done. How many conversations can you have about facilitation and workshops?
How many conversations can I have with consultants? Here we are, after 300 episodes in, and I feel the same way.
The beauty of it, and I couldn’t see it back then, is I built a network of facilitators and experts around the globe. Now I’m working rather as an agency. if companies come to me and say, “We need workshops on the topic of psychological safety, and our employees work globally, we need to deploy these workshops or training in fifteen different languages at different time zones, it needs to be always the same quality, always the same warmth.” I can provide that.
That came as a result of doing the podcast because you were interviewing the people that were already facilitators or associates. Was that the intention? Did you see that? There’s no strategy. That was organic. As you did it, you started to realize, “This is an opportunity.”
I started the podcast initially because I thought it was a marketing strategy, not necessarily for me, but for the professional facilitators. Every time I pitched myself as, “I’m a facilitator,” people would say, “You’re a consultant.” I’m like, “No, I’m a facilitator. I facilitate workshops,” and people would go, “Workshops? As if someone’s still doing that.”
What’s the stigma? Why would somebody respond, like, “Huh? Workshop?”
The kumbaya people who sit in a circle ask you how you’re feeling and throw around sticky notes, and then the next day, everyone wakes up with a hangover. Nobody remembers what has happened and nobody wants to clean up the mess.
I must be going to better workshops. When I hear the word workshop, to me, it feels like a very productive and experienced outcome and result. It is something like getting your hands in. It’s interesting that stigma exists. I’m certainly not part of that crowd.
They’re people that are traumatized from bad workshops. There’s an art in the craft of designing these experiences. I thought, “Let’s launch a podcast to show the world what facilitation can do and what it means to be a facilitator.” I thought that I would then attract these clients so that I could host workshops for them. What I then realized 100 episodes in was, “I am celebrating my podcast guests. These are my heroes. How can it be true that I am promoting them, giving them a stage, and at the same time kind of competing? It didn’t sit right.” It was about then.
It's only when you invest the money that you will then also put the work in to make it happen. Click To TweetSuddenly, I started building a community or facilitator that was NeverDoneBefore. What is the playground where experienced facilitators can test their new ideas? That’s why there are research and development departments, and then through this community, which is global, we have over 40 countries in the community, now it becomes the interconnection with the agency and the community, with the podcast guests. Suddenly, it becomes one big ecosystem.
What’s powerful to me is you spent 30 episodes doing this, multiple months in and before I was saying it was years, it’s time putting into this week in and out. What you’ve created now would not have happened if you did not do the podcast. Sometimes you don’t know what’s going to occur unless you try it. Taking the step and the action created the opportunity where that opportunity likely wouldn’t have come if you wouldn’t start it and continued going.
On the one hand, the podcast is also educational for myself. Everything I know about facilitation, I know for my podcast guest. If someone would listen to the 215 episodes, they would know as much as I do. You might recognize that you can have a copywriter. You cannot have a copy speaker. What you speak on the podcast, that’s 100%. You. You cannot be more authentic. I do long form. My interviews are usually one and a half hours long. I cannot fake it. It’s as much as me as they can get. It’s a nice way to build relationships. I heard someone say that podcasting is caring at scale.
Let’s go back to that the podcast was the initial driver of starting to get more business coming in. Let’s fast forward to now. What’s working? How are you generating leads? How are people finding out about the business?
It’s mostly still the podcast. I have an entire piece of machinery behind the podcast. I obviously have an editor, but then I have a copywriter who would repurpose the nuggets. For every episode, I write a one-page summary. I do care at scale. My weekly newsletter has an opening weight Of 60%. People read the newsletter.
What’s inside the newsletter?
It’s a one-page summary. One part is a thought of the week that I had reflecting on something that usually has to do with either leadership facilitation or personal development. It’s a summary of the podcast and a one-page summary.
You have an editor for the podcast and a copywriter. Are they full-time or contractors?
They’re contractors. I work with contractors. I every a team of six in total.
You’re managing all that like you’re the central hub for all those six contractors.
I was thinking of the moment when I could make the jump to just struggling as a freelancer to generate some income and to make it fun to run a business and eventually transform into a limited company. I was hiring a virtual assistant before I could afford her.
Tell me about that. I have two questions. What is the first thing that you got her to do? Why’d you bring on that virtual assistant? Why did you then make that leap to hire a VA before you felt that you could afford it?
It was for all the repetitive tasks. All the backend uploads the newer episode, creates a landing page and all these kinds of things. That was the year of the pandemic. I was hosting my first festival for the NeverDoneBefore community. There was a lot of back and forth and tech stuff in the background. I realized that if I spend all the time with the nitty gritty that is repetitive or very time-consuming, it’s not even that I don’t have time to generate leads, but I don’t have time to generate thoughts that will generate leads.
One way of looking at that, and I don’t know who’s the person that says but it’s always resonated with me, is that when you are building a team, whether it’s a VA, part-time freelancer or full-time, there are two parts to it. The first is that you’re getting somebody to help you with something and usually, that’s going to be something that is maybe lower-value work for you, which means you get to focus on higher-value work.
The other area that most people don’t pay attention to, but in my mind is critical, is that you’re buying back your time. That’s the one asset. None of us gets to create more or new time. Here, by doing that, you’re creating and buying time. That’s a very valuable investment. Let’s come to where you were because at that moment, you didn’t feel like you were in a financial place to be able to afford that, but you still did it. How did you justify that in your mind and take that leap?
The mental piece to it is you’re buying back time, but also you’re, “I gave myself the clear signal that I will be able to afford it and that’s worth my time.”
You were operating not based on where you were, it sounds like making the decision. You’re thinking, “This is the person I want to become. Therefore, I need to operate and make decisions based on who I want to be, not who I am today.”
When looking at consultants and those who want to become higher-paid consultants, that’s also how we have to speak with our clients. If they would pay what they cannot already afford, then they will stay in whatever place they are. If they want to make the big jump, it’s only when you invest the money that they will then also put in the work to make it happen. By hiring the VA, getting out of my comfort zone, making a financial stretch, I knew that now I had to make the money and that I had the capabilities to make that money.
The concept many years ago, I learned of this idea of being a mirror. If you want to attract clients willing to invest at high levels with you paying premium fees, then you need to do this. You can’t be the kind of person that goes around trying to skimp on every little thing and go, “I know I need this coaching and support, but I’m going to put it off X number of months until X perfection stars align.” You can’t operate from that place if you want to then meet clients who, when you meet them, say, “Let’s move forward. Let’s do it. I’m okay to pay these high fees.” You need to act the way that you want others to act.
You need to mirror your behavior in the way that you want others to also because it tends that energy attracts and you tend to connect more with those that you are operating at the same level. If you’re surrounding yourself with successful people, you’re going to tend to become more successful yourself by being part of that community. If you’re surrounding yourself with people who aren’t thinking about business, not talking about business and are always negative or not taking action or they’re holding their potential back, it’s unlikely that you’re going to be successful and breakthrough or makes it a lot more challenging to do so.
The magic of a workshop comes from everyone feeling valuable and the best version of themselves to contribute and grow bigger than its parts. Click To TweetThere’s much truth to the saying that you become the average of the five people you spend the most time with. It is because of the mirroring. It’s very inherent human behavior that we do mirror people and just to their behavior and thinking for bonding. That’s a survival strategy. We have to become the average of the five people. If it doesn’t feel scary to start working with a coach, then it’s the one coach.
My first thought was different people that we’ve spoken to over the years and sometimes we know that they need the help and they know they need the help. Otherwise, why would they be on a call? Why would they be even exploring it? The reason that sometimes people don’t move forward is because of the exact same reason they reached out. It’s like they know they need the help. They know that they’ve been delaying making a decision, hesitating, and then they do it all over again. They keep hesitating. I think about all the years that we’ve invested in our own coaches, mentors, programs and all that. In many cases, it’s a pretty significant investment that we’re making.
You can look at it and go like, “That’s a lot of money. Maybe we should hold off our way to try and do something cheaper,” but at the same time, it’s like, “Do you want to stay where you are or do you want to level up and get to that next place?” The way to do that is by learning from those that have already done that and where you can get new ideas and perspectives to help you to see bigger and then take bigger action or, in many cases, more effective action.
It’s a mindset you need to nurture and grow in. Thinking back to my very early days when I started my business, I think I had the most impressive-looking website and I didn’t even know what to sell. I spent much so money on designers to create this amazing website. I invested in a coach and at some point, had to break up with him because he was pushing me into developing funnels, all that stuff and pricing. I don’t even know what I’m selling. When the first client called, I could send them to a website, they looked at it and it looked as if I was “professional” enough for them to hire me, and then they believed that they would get the quality and after they got it, then it becomes a word of mouth business.
I want to talk to you about workshops in a little more detail because consultants in whatever format are delivering their expertise, whatever their industry and specialization and so forth. There’s an element of workshops that they are probably bringing. Even if they don’t offer “workshops” as a service or as an offering, they’re likely holding a workshop or facilitating some kind of a meeting or an experience with clients. I want to cover two parts. The first is, what are the most common, biggest mistakes that you see people making when it comes to workshops? I’m sure you’ve seen them over and over again. What tends to come up? The second is, what’s the secret sauce or what’s the best practice for running a highly successful, impactful workshop?
The biggest mistakes start with trying to be someone that you’re not.
What do you mean by that?
If you’re wearing the head of a consultant and you are there basically to run a workshop because you need some outcome and input, then it’s very easy to think that, “I’m the consultant. I know it all. I have to come across as super professional.” Very often, you become stiff. If you are tense and stiff and try to be someone who you are not mirroring everyone on the other side of the table or the screen will also be stiff and have the impression that they are not good enough. Although I think the magic of a workshop comes from the fact that everyone feels valuable and the best version of themselves in order to contribute and to grow bigger than its parts.
How do people do that? Let’s say that makes sense. People that are joining us can see that as well. What steps can they take to be more natural, be themselves and get those in the room with them, whether virtual or real-life physical, to feel valued and part of that experience?
The first step is to acknowledge that as soon as you step into a workshop, which is not a training, all the wisdom is in the room already.
I mean, you tell the people in the room. Do you say that to them?
Yes, because they’re there for a very specific reason. A successful workshop starts even before the workshop starts. You need to have a purpose. Why are we having this? You’re expecting people to invest their two most important resources, time and attention. Why can’t we do this honestly or why can’t it be an email? It’s not an email because we need the perspectives and input from everyone who’s in there. Why is everyone there? Everyone needs a role. If someone is there to, “Let me be the fly on the wall and I observe. I don’t have time. I come in the first ten minutes and then I disappear,” it doesn’t work because it’ll send the signal to the others that it’s not important enough. Whoever doesn’t have a role, then they very quickly become disruptors.
They will be the ones who say, “We’ve been discussing this for fifteen years already. Why do we have to come up with this again?” If they don’t know why they’re there, they don’t know why we are discussing this again. It’s very important to be clear about who is there and why. Very often, we step into the trap we over-invite, “If we invite Peter, then we also need to invite Sarah. If we are inviting Sarah, then how will Michael look in there?” and then suddenly you have all these people there and they don’t know what they’re doing there and then they won’t engage.
Let me ask you a question related to that. Let’s say that a consultant is running a workshop or facilitating some kind of meeting that is critical to the success of an initiative or a project. The CEO is going to play a key role. The consultant knows that, but for whatever reason the CEO has delegated this to others in management.
When that happens, what should the consultant do? If the consultant knows the CEO needs to be part of this conversation, but they’re not. They’ve delegated it. Have you ever seen that kind of situation? If so, what’s the best way in your experience to make sure that you do have the right people in the room? The second part of that question, if I can add, is where maybe the company’s saying, let’s bring in these other people, but you as the facilitator or the consultant, the advisor know that those people should not be in the room for whatever reason. How do you handle those two situations?
With the CEO, who doesn’t have time, it depends on who the sponsor is. If the CEO is the sponsor of the workshop and they have an interest in the outcome, they have to be there. Sometimes it can be valuable not to have the sponsor or the CEO in the room because you want to avoid leadership bias. It’s important to phrase it and maybe he or she can come in the first ten minutes to say, “This is important to me and I will not be here for these reasons. I want you to be creative or whatever. I come back for the last ten minutes to listen to what you have created,” at least to give it some framing. There are many reasons why it’s very often good not to have the CEO in the room.
If they’re there, I very often like to give them the task of being the “fly in the wall” to observe, ask questions and listen instead of speaking too much and then summarize what they have heard and picked up from the conversation. This has such a beautiful impact because then the people fear heard and appreciated. CEOs usually are fast thinkers. They can level it up. If they delegate it to people who then delegate it and then invite people who shouldn’t be there, I have told clients that this is not possible and we cannot invite them. What I usually do, especially for these high-stakes workshops, is I have conversations with everyone who will be in the space.
It’s before the workshop.
It doesn’t need to be long. It can be fifteen minutes. What is good is I clarify with them what their role will be. If they don’t know and I don’t understand, we think together whether it makes sense for them to be there and if they want to be there, then it’s on us to figure out what will be the role and how can they contribute actively because even if someone is, “It’s my assistant. You would take notes,” but otherwise not participate, no. We have AI for that. We’ll record. If it’s an assistant, what perspective can he bring in that we are otherwise missing, someone who knows the backend and the cause? It is super valuable.
You’re making sure that whoever is in that room has a very clear role and purpose or some value that they can add. What about the situation where, and I think many consultants have encountered this, there’s somebody that is part of the communication chain or part of they’re in the room and they tend to be toxic or negative. They’re a detractor and are not adding value. How do you handle that? How do you recommend that people navigate that situation?
Nobody is intrinsically toxic or wants to be a distractor. Put down their urge to over-contribute by giving them a role to use it. Click To TweetThere are different parts to that. I think that nobody is intrinsically toxic or wants to be a dis distractor. It’s usually because they don’t know why they’re there. They don’t feel heard. They felt overstepped or something. Something has triggered them so that they have the urge to over-contribute in whatever shape or form. The best strategy is to avoid that by having the conversations beforehand.
If I get the sense that there is someone who knows it all and if I know that this person is there, how can I give them a role to use that? “Sarah, I know exactly that you have 100 ideas on this topic already because you have thought about that swiftly, I ask you to hold back for a minute and let the others speak first and then I’m sure that you can add something that we haven’t thought about.”
You’re thinking about based on the interaction with them, if it seems like they might dominate or add negativity, you’re going to try and position them or work with them and almost like guide them that they’re less likely to act in that way, but they’re still going to be able to add some value and to contribute.
The challenge is to find the silver lining of these kinds of behaviors and see how they can contribute another perspective. Many non-facilitated an option that is underused is breakout rooms. Even when we sit all around one table, we’d never have a conversation with more than four people. If there are more than four people around the table, it’s either one person speaking and everyone listening or a conversation between 2 or 3. What happens are usually site conversations and then people start whispering or exchanging glances.
Online, it’s the same, with the only exception that we cannot have site conversations. How can we help everyone to contribute if there’s no space for all these people? Break them up, and say, “Take 4 or 5 minutes. Discuss in a one-on-one or in a group of three, and then come back and share.” People feel safer in a smaller group.
The process is very thoughtful. I love the idea of having these conversations, these calls in advance to set the stage to make the workshop or meeting itself significantly more effective, likely also more kind of efficient and productive. I want to get your thoughts on pricing for a moment. People often wonder what does the market bear when it comes to workshops? I have two parts to this question that’s coming to my mind. The first is if we look at workshops by themselves, what’s the range that you’ve seen? I know there are a lot of variables and factors. I welcome you to share maybe what some of those more common variables and factors are. What’s the high end of a workshop that you’ve seen and then what’s the lower entry starting point for a workshop from a pricing perspective?
It depends on so many factors. If you have a C-Suite in a workshop strategy offsite, then obviously, you have to price it in the $10,000s. How much time would they use preparing this workshop? If it’s peanuts, then it won’t be worth their time.
One day, $10,000, $20,000 or $30,000, something like that.
Maybe a day of $10,000.
If someone is focused on delivering workshops, if let’s say a core offer for them, what have you seen people do or what do you suggest that people do if let’s say they want to earn more than $10,000 per engagement?
A trainer bridges the knowledge gap within the group. But a facilitator is a vehicle to bring the knowledge of the group together. Click To TweetI must be clear. The $10,000 per engagement, that’s the upper range and for strategy workshops. Focus on the value instead of, “Nobody buys a workshop.” There’s no client who comes to you and says, “I want a workshop.” They want you to solve a problem with their resources. Otherwise, they would hire a consultant. A facilitator doesn’t come with a solution. They come with a process and questions that help their people solve the problem, starting with what is the cost of not having the workshop? If, for instance, they need a strategy workshop to increase sales, what if they don’t solve this problem and bankruptcy or they have a talent problem and need to attract more talent? What is the real value of solving this problem?
That’s exactly the guidance that we work with clients through in terms of pricing. Nobody wakes up saying, “I want to buy a strategic planning session or this deliverable. It’s the outcome, result and the value to be created.” How do you view the difference between a workshop and a training to make the distinction for those that may not be clear yet?
You can facilitate training, but I think in general, a trainer comes in to bridge a knowledge gap. The group needs knowledge that they don’t have yet. They’re hiring a trainer who hopefully uses facilitation in their method to help them learn these skills. A facilitator comes in with the belief that all the knowledge is in the room already. The number of people who are sitting there have everything they need, but they lack the vehicle to bring that out and put the pieces of the puzzle together.
It’s a very clear way to see the difference between those two things. There’s much more that we could keep talking about and going over here. I want to respect the time that we have on the calendar, but I want to also make sure that people can learn more about you, your work, podcast and community for facilitators and everything else that you have going on. Where should people go? Where’s the best place, the one maybe website that they should go to or destination to find out more about you and everything else that you have going on?
The easiest way is LinkedIn. I’m an open book on LinkedIn. From there, they’ll find me and find their way to my newsletter.
They get 60%-plus open rates, which is unheard of and not an accurate term, but it’s so far above the standard that people need to check that out. I’m interested in checking it out because I want to see the goodness you got in there. That’s the magic. I want to thank you so much for coming on here and sharing a bit of your journey. I know there’s much more we could dig into, but I appreciate what you’ve shared so far and enjoyed the conversation. Thanks for coming on.
Thank you so much for the invite.
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