Facilitating with Confidence: How to Run Dynamic and Productive Workshops, Webinars, and Meetings
Most group sessions, whether a workshop or a team meeting, are flat-out boring. The group leader tends to do most of the talking or ‘presenting’, while the participants try to stay awake or end up staring into space or multi-tasking on their phones.
And those participants are lucky to walk away with any kind of result. They might even forget what the session was about before they get back to their office!
But that all changes with a good facilitator.
When the session leader uses expert facilitation skills to generate discussion and participation, the whole atmosphere changes.
People become engaged with the content, share ideas, discuss insights,
…and get the results they need.
So why isn’t everyone using facilitation skills?
Because it doesn’t come naturally to most people. When you’re the expert, your first instinct is to explain everything.
But people learn best and retain that information when they discuss ideas, ask questions, and explore the relevance to their own situations.
Then they walk away not only having internalized what they
Luckily, anyone can learn the facilitation skills needed to run their group sessions more effectively.
And so can you with our course – Facilitating with Confidence.
Listen to the Course Introduction
Audio PlayerHere’s a quick snapshot of what’s covered and what’s in the course.
Introducing…
Facilitating with Confidence: How to Run Dynamic and Productive Workshops, Webinars, and Meetings
Facilitation Skills
“The facilitator’s job is to support everyone to do their best thinking. To do this, the facilitator encourages full participation, promotes mutual understanding, and cultivates shared responsibility.”
Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision Making by Sam Kaner, et al.
Facilitation Skills for In-Person Workshops
If you are a trainer or a coach, it is probably quite clear to you how important facilitation skills are for workshops.
On the other hand, if you’re a small business owner, you might be wondering why you would want to do workshops at all.
Content For Your Session
For the content of your session, you need to have some materials ready. Using the example above, you might have some slides introducing various types of technological tools to introduce to your audience.
During the content, the goal is to focus on your topic of expertise and provide helpful, actionable solutions for your attendees. Give them something that will offer instant results they can see and feel. This is how to provide great takeaways for your participants.
Planning Your Webinar
To host a successful webinar, thorough planning is crucial. There’s a lot that goes into planning an engaging webinar. Let’s dive in…
Facilitate Your Conference Calls and Meetings for Better Engagement
Conference calls and meetings can serve a number of important business purposes. They can be used to resolve problems, manage projects, brainstorm, or collaborate with colleagues and clients.
However, if not run properly, conference calls and meetings can just be time wasters.
Conclusion and Next Steps
Remember that facilitation is not the same as presentation. Good facilitation skills involve guiding a group to share their ideas and opinions. This strengthens all aspects of your business by turning presentations and meetings into highly interactive opportunities for learning, collaboration, and problem-solving.
The results will benefit everything from lead generation to customer conversion and loyalty to back-office operations and project management.
Facilitating vs. Presenting
For many people, when they hear the word “facilitating,” they picture a classroom led by an instructor or a presentation they have attended. They may erroneously think that facilitating and presenting are the same thing, but the two are markedly different.Your practice is only as good as the quality of services you offer. Your clients need benefits only you can give them, and your services need to live up to the promise of your UVP. Learn how to size up the competition and make sure you always come out on top.
Engagement Tips before the Workshop Starts
There are a few things you can do to engage your participants before the workshop even starts, to set the tone and increase involvement as early as possible.
Creating Engaging Webinars
Webinars are another extremely popular way to engage with prospects and customers. You can use engagement strategies during webinars that help you learn about your audience and build stronger relationships with them to grow your business.
You can use webinars to introduce your expertise to a new audience and build credibility and authority in order to convert those leads to customers.
In addition, webinars can either be paid or free, single or part of a series.
Technical Help on Webinars
If possible, partner with someone to help you administer your webinar. Typically, there is a presenter and a moderator. The moderator manages behind the scenes to ensure that the technology is working as it should and to respond to and address questions as they arise.
Strategies for Making Your In-Person and Virtual Meetings More Engaging
Once you have your audience in the meeting, it can be hard to keep them engaged. Here areOnce you have your audience in the meeting, it can be hard to keep them engaged. Here are 8 great ways to engage your audience whether in-person or online.