Facilitation Technique: How To Explain A Workshop Exercise

you should really only show people how to do an exercise one way you shouldn't give them options something that really like gets under my skin is when i'm at a workshop and and this is just because i'm a little bit of a workshop freak but it also causes confusion generally i hate this so much seriously i didn't even realize how much i hate it until i started talking right now it's when a facilitator says something like okay so we're going to do some voting now take a few dots and just start voting and then someone's

like uh how many dots and and the facilitator is like oh you know four or five and then someone else is like uh red or green dots and they're like oh yeah whichever color you want and then someone's like how can i just put like can i take a whole bag of can i mix the dots yeah you can you can do what you want this is not you're you're supposed to be this confident guide you're supposed to be the person giving people the the guard rails and the frameworks for getting this work done and

if you're giving them already multiple options on how to do an exercise you're not making them happy you're confusing everybody have one way of doing an exercise and stick to it one way at aj and smart i'm even strict about the paper people use or the color of the post-it or the shape of the post-it you tell people take a yellow rectangular post it right now take a sharpie write hmw on the top left and let's go do not give people alternatives unless and i'm leaving this till the very very very very end you still

want to be flexible you still need to be a person who's helping you're guiding them so of course if there's an issue within the team where they can specifically do that one way of the exercise because you're missing some paper or something else of course you can improvise in this moment but always start with there's one way of doing this exercise there's only one way and this is the one way we're going to do it and we're not going to discuss it please get that in your head do not offer people alternatives be confident in

exactly the supplies you want them to use and exactly how you want them to do it this is super important there's one way to do an exercise [Music] [Music] you