Risk-free ways to develop workshop skills on your consulting work
A short guide for solo consultants who want to try out workshops
Reputation is no joke.
This is especially true if you are the brand itself.
This is why many independent consultants avoid stepping outside their circle of competence: If you're used to be excellent at your domain of expertise1, it can be very uncomfortable to try out new skills.
Some solo consultants feel like this about workshops.
Workshops intrigue them but feel a bit risky.
Workshops demand slightly different skills.
Useful skills, but different nonetheless.
The best way to look at this sort of stuff is to think in terms of progression.
Let me show you:
At the very top of the ladder, a workshop facilitator is akin to a maestro.
She has a deep understanding of the principles, the techniques and the subtler nuances of human nature.
She uses this knowledge to work with large groups, to guide people towards shared visions and solutions and to untie knots that used to feel impossible.
But you don't need to become a maestro.
You can just aim at applying some very dependable principles.
At the lower rungs of the ladder, a facilitator is more like a competent practitioner. They understand the tools and have some tricks up their sleeve, but operate in much more controlled environments.
Becoming more confident facilitating workshops
The trick to build up your confidence is to practice in forgiving circumstances.
Here are some ways you can do it2 :
Join people running workshops where you can see, plan and run sessions yourself
Begin in-house, on purely internal matters that no client will ever see or judge.
Introduce "workshop moments" into your regular work. Not full workshops.
Offer a longer session addressing a very specific problem you know well
Join people running workshops where you can see, plan and run sessions yourself
The first step is the one that made the most difference for me. For years I've been part of events like Design Thinking Jams, Service Design Jams, Game Jams, startup weekends and the like. These have helped me a lot. Not only in teaching me techniques, but also in meeting people and learning where my gaps were.
Begin in-house, on purely internal matters that no client will ever see or judge.
If you have a small team, you can start running short collaborative sessions. Internal debriefings after client work are a great opportunity to do this. Later on you can also do planning sessions, internal strategy sessions, process mapping sessions, etc. .
As you see, workshops and their techniques can help you even before you sell a single one.
If you don't have a team, doing these with close friends can help, but is not the same, i'm afraid.
Introduce "workshop moments" into your regular work. Not full workshops.
You are now more confident, you've increased your repertoire of how some tools work. You've seen how different people react to the workshop environment and you can see a bit more nuance.
Do not offer a long workshop yet.3
You will appreciate the extra practice with clients first.
Let's say your current consulting practice helps clients with their fiscal planning:
You can add a short exercise at the start, where you collect client's main doubts.
You can get your client to help you focus on between 3 courses of action.
You can use your client's help to create a timeline of fiscal obligations relevant to their industry.
My tip is to begin with one thing and do it several times for different clients.
Then you can add more of these "workshop moments” into your standard practice.
Including a retrospective exercise into your work is very easy and adds a lot of value. This is something that Agile software development teams do all the time.
There are many templates that non-experts can use and can be a springboard to more complex stuff. You can add this to the end of a client project and take the opportunity to demonstrate how much you both achieved.4
If you keep doing this, you will become more comfortable running "workshop moments". It is inevitable. As you do, you can increase the number and duration of these in your habitual work.
Offer a longer session addressing a very specific problem you know well
When you feel confident in your tactical workshop skills, you can plan your first workshop.
For your first workshop, pick a problem your client has that you know very well. Something that you've noticed that comes up again and again throughout different clients.
Focus on these:
What's the result you expect from this workshop
(always start with the end in mind)What are the constraints you have to work with
(time, resources, information, etc)What questions will the workshop to answer
(it's much easier and coherent to start with these)What activities can be used to find answers
(each workshop activity is best to find different types of answers)
When you first brush up on your workshop skills and then create your own workshop that solves a problem you've solved before (but not with a workshop) you are playing it much safer. It is hard to fail if you do it like this.
Of course your first session will not be as good as your tenth, but it will not be a bad one, for sure.
I write weekly about how experts can integrate Workshops in their service offerings.
If you run a small consulting practice and want to learn more about these, follow along for practical tips.
A question for you:
What is you biggest challenge in adopting workshops as part of your consulting services portfolio? Please let me know in the comments, I'm genuinely curious and would love to answer your questions.
Which is why they can go at it solo. If they were not above average at their subject matter expertise they'd probably not do it.
I didn't include anything here about getting training, reading books or attending courses. These things are extremely valuable and will be necessary. But on their own, they don't usually increase your confidence. Also, it is possible you fall into a rabbit hole of learning techniques and end up avoiding to practice them.
Anything longer than 1h30, give or take..
Visit funretrospectives.com for loads of ideas