The Workshop Survival Guide

How to design & teach workshops that work every time

Rob Fitzpatrick, Devin Hunt

Publisher: Amazon Fulfillment, 2019, 209 pages

ISBN: 978-1-071344-37-8

Keywords: Human Resources

Last modified: Oct. 31, 2022, noon

Whether workshops are your whole world or just a small part, this book will equip you with the tools to design and run a brilliant session, every time, with no stress or drama. And you won't even need to turn into a charismatic superstar to make it happen.

Folks tend to think a successful workshop is all about the facilitation (which does matter, and we'll cover that too), but the real magic is in the design you do ahead of time. It's a simple process that anyone can learn, and which will get you to the real goal: a happy, smiling audience who walks away with more than they arrived with.

    • Why this book (and these authors) can help
  • Part One: Workshop Design Essentials
    • Maintain goodwill with regular "a-ha" moments
    • Don't start with the slides (do start with the Skeleton)
    • Vary the Teaching Formats to improve energy, attention, and learning
    • The five essential Teaching Formats
    • Design your exercises and refine your schedule
    • Begin with the bare minimum number of slides
    • Summary of Part 1
  • Part Two: Facilitation Essentials
    • How to introduce yourself without making everyone hate you
    • Don't treat your audience as bigger than it is
    • Seating and group formation
    • Getting more from your exercises
    • Answering student questions
    • How to recover the crowd after an exercise
    • Overcoming hostility, skepticism, and troublemakers
    • Staying on schedule and dealing with delays
    • Charisma can be manufactured with a clicker, a watch, and some small behaviors
    • Protect your own energy by hiding during breaks
    • Using co-teachers, expert guests, and helpers
    • What to do when everything goes wrong
    • Serve the people in the room, even if there aren't so many of them
    • Summary of Part 2 (and a facilitation checklist)
  • Conclusion and final thoughts
    • Appendix: Advanced Teaching Formats
    • Appendix: An example of inventing, testing, and perfecting a new exercise

Reviews

The Workshop Survival Guide

Reviewed by Roland Buresund

OK ***** (5 out of 10)

Last modified: Nov. 12, 2023, 1:37 a.m.

 An OK book that gives generic advice about what to think about when doing a workshop. No details, and too generic to rate higher than OK, but there is nothing inherently wrong with it either.

Comments

There are currently no comments

New Comment

required

required (not published)

optional

required

captcha

required