How to create a workshop

It takes work to maintain a positive vibe in a group environment. Expecting a constructive and constantly engaging atmosphere to magically happen is a bit unrealistic — you have put in the effort.

Since remote work has become more common, this issue has been on managers’ and group leaders’ minds. The popular team building event organization company TeamBuilding noted that interest in virtual team building activities has spiked by 2,500 percent — not just as a result of going remote but also to make up for the lost sense of connection that’s so familiar to office spaces.

This interest in communal events shows how team leaders and business owners are keen to keep employees engaged in a particularly difficult time. Even before remote work became widespread, Bain & Company pointed out in its Time Talent Energy report that employees who feel engaged and inspired are 125 percent more productive than even staff who say they’re satisfied.

This may seem like an obvious point, but it reflects the importance of maintaining enthusiasm and engagement within your teams and considering different ways to nurture that positive attitude through continued learning and camaraderie. In essence, a communicative, open-minded atmosphere is one of the most important elements of a workplace. A great way to foster it is by conducting workshops with your team to instill a sense of confidence and trust.

A workshop is simply a group of participants engaging in discussion or planned activities related to specific topics, techniques, or tasks. The looseness of this definition is helpful if you’re just learning how to create a workshop, as it gives you room to explore and develop the activities that work best for you and your company (or even your classroom or any other community).

Remember that while you can plan for as many workshop elements as you can think of, it’s also important to maintain an improvisational spirit when it comes to the tasks and results. There may be trepidation, hesitation, and other roadblocks as you get individuals to open up and learn more about each other in new environments. Trust that the people you manage (and other leaders you work with) are able and willing to learn and grow — and carry that spirit with you as you learn how to create a workshop.

Identify the topics

When you’re figuring out how to create a workshop for you and your team, start with finding a central purpose or project you want to tackle. This will help you set the roadmap for what will eventually become your agenda, and it will define the goals you want to achieve and the outcomes you want to see.

To start, think about where your business stands and where you’re aiming to take it in the next five years. If you’re looking at pressing issues, consider areas of your business where performance has been flat or morale or enthusiasm has been low. Ask yourself if these are signs the team itself is not in the right place or if the business structure prevents people from connecting and growing as a unit.

Often it’s the latter — and a good workshop is just the trick to break folks out of their funk. Consider a sales and marketing team having trouble generating and closing new leads. If the problem is consistent between departments, there’s an opportunity — and a responsibility — for leadership to step in and work with employees to address the issues. A workshop is an excellent opportunity to bring teams together to discuss what’s getting lost in translation or what people are failing to anticipate about each other’s needs. These are two basic but great potential starting points for a workshop where everyone can work through issues as you plan the details.

On the other hand, maybe the purpose of your workshop is not to reflect on how things are going or to reinvigorate the team. A workshop is also a catalyst for idea generation and growth, serving as a collaborative springboard for a team to research and explore new opportunities for your company. It’s not just good for team building and camaraderie but also for generating bursts of creative possibility.

For instance, a marketing and advertising company fielding new business requests can handle them during intensive but exciting brainstorming workshops. These would explore creating plans of action or identifying new areas of opportunity for incoming or potential clients. Here, the topics would focus on the clients themselves — their needs, their goals, their blindspots, or other observations.

Your topics are important to clarify, but they’re just the first stepping stone to fleshing out a full workshop. Don’t be afraid to expand and experiment with the topics as the workshop goes on — or, if in the later planning phases, you see other opportunities to tackle related subjects.

Plan the logistics

In handling how to create a workshop, plan out the logistics of your event with some clear direction in order to set your group up for success. Even if you make room for on-the-fly adjustments and a free flow within the event itself, you need to create a defined set of rules and activities to ensure the experience is worthwhile for everyone.

Who (attendees)

The participant list for your workshop may not always be as obvious as you think. Consider the attendees based on their involvement in the topic, their willingness to participate, and your knowledge of what they can contribute to a constructive environment. It’s also important to maintain a healthy number — too many might stifle some important voices, and too few will mean you’ll have less variety of thought during brainstorming.

Aim for not many more than 12 attendees with a variety of roles in your organization and differing levels of seniority. Mix it up to represent different levels of experience and age ranges to allow for diverse viewpoints in the workshop.

In the case of the marketing/advertising agency hunting for new business, the workshop organizer would think about what they’re trying to accomplish and who can help them reach that goal. They’ll want representatives from different key departments — creative, account management, strategy, etc. — but they’ll also want people who can provide energy. If the client works in fashion and someone in the office is a sartorial superstar, they can likely contribute their knowledge to the conversation and expand the rest of the team’s understanding and creativity.

What (agenda)

Perhaps the most important element in understanding how to create a workshop, the agenda sets the ground rules and maps out the activities that make the event productive and special. Agendas for successful workshops focus on building team-oriented momentum and getting people to engage with each other and their responsibilities in new and innovative ways.

There’s plenty of room for creativity in building an agenda. Consider some classic examples. Warm-up exercises — whether loosely improvisational or revealing, like ice-breakers — let people unwind a bit and set themselves into an easier mindset. Try some easy ones, like two truths and a lie (everyone goes around and says three things about themselves, and other participants guess which of the statements is untrue). Simple interactions like this tear down formalities among unfamiliar people and help them find common ground.

Then there are the activities themselves — the main event designed to get creative juices flowing and let people explore their comfort with one another to find solutions or learn something new. These activities should focus on discovery, so take the opportunity to make them fun if you can. Sometimes it’s an open-ended brand brainstorm, and sometimes it’s as out there as the spaghetti challenge.

Where (location)

The “where” in workshop planning is more than just picking a room in the office to use for a few hours. There’s much to consider to ensure your time with peers is valuable. Ask yourself some of these basic questions to make sure the location leads to success:

• Is this an in-person or virtual event? Could it be a combination of the two?
• Will I need break-out rooms? Will I host group huddles or rotate activities?
• What kind of supplies do I need for each location (whiteboards, notebooks, pens, games, snacks, water, laptop, etc.)?
• Is this a multi-day workshop? If so, how does that affect locations? Do I need to provide meals?
• Would this workshop be more effective as an out-of-office retreat? Am I running a more creative event that could work outdoors or incorporate other physical activities (e.g., an escape room)?

Establish goals and next steps

As you get a feel for how to create a workshop, it’s important to always keep your why in mind. In addition to your topic and agenda, you want to know the goals you need to accomplish or be specific about the questions or issues you need to resolve. Coming out of the experience, you and your attendees should be confident about the next steps to take.

Let’s say you’re independently running a public workshop — like a yoga practitioner teaching new instructors. The practitioner comes in with clear goals for this experience, such as their students coming away with new knowledge of the practice or ways to incorporate it into their existing exercises.

If they planned the workshop well, the practitioner would also think about next steps and further applications of the lessons. Maybe they’d assign specific “homework” to attendees based on their performance in the activities and familiarity with the topic. Furthermore, a savvy host would even invite particularly interested attendees to a second-level workshop that expands on what they learned in the first.

This is just a basic example of the types of inputs and resulting outputs you need to host and run a solid workshop. While both will certainly be malleable depending on the makeup of your group activities, having solid points to work toward will provide structure to this elastic experience.

Plan for a follow-up

Coming out of a workshop can feel like a revelation. Spirits are high, people are connecting more than they have with each other, and everyone is thinking about possibilities. It’s all too common for this feeling to fade if you don’t nurture and maintain it. A key part of knowing how to create a workshop is making sure you’re following up on your accomplishments with action items to keep that post-workshop momentum going.

Equipped with the next steps you’ve derived from your workshop, consider the ways you can amplify the applicability of the workshop’s outputs. One way could be sending out an action plan with individual roles and assignments, planning a recap meeting or presentation on the workshop, or organizing a follow-up workshop.

Concurrently, think about the people who didn’t attend the workshop but who may be affected by its results. Communicating the outcomes and findings of your group experience and translating them to the rest of the workplace is essential. Let people know what worked, what didn’t, and what might be changing going forward.

Use Jotform to set up your workshops

As you better grasp how to create a workshop, the last thing you want to do is create unnecessary burdens in getting things up and running. Using Jotform, you can make your setup a breeze and prevent any friction for your attendees.

Using Jotform’s workshop registration forms for both in-person and virtual events, you can quickly get a head count on attendees, collect pertinent information, or even collect fees if the workshop is for an external audience. These are just two examples of the many event registration templates Jotform offers, which you can customize with Jotform’s Form Builder.

You can incorporate your own branding into these forms and even use them to collect registration fees through a variety of payment processor integrations. Plus, you can analyze these forms and submissions in a data management platform like Jotform Tables to track and manage attendees.

Learning how to create a workshop is a fun and outside-the-box experience. Take the time and make an effort to understand the rhythms and key points that go into a successful event. Using these ideas and tips for putting on workshops of your own, you can set up group activities you’re really proud of. More importantly, it will leave your attendees feeling invigorated and creatively uplifted to confidently tackle the challenges facing your business or organization.

Photo by Matheus Bertelli