On 16 July 2021, I successfully conducted a mini-workshop online.
This was for a group of individuals, all experts in their own fields, who wanted to learn how they can conduct their own workshops.
As they weren’t educators themselves, they weren’t sure about how to go about it “properly” - where to start, what to say, what to do.
And I quickly assured them that there wasn’t one “proper” way to do it. It all depends on where they are starting from and what they are trying to accomplish.
Because they already have valuable experience and knowledge, getting them to come up with something to run a workshop on wasn’t difficult.
Once we got the topic and sub-topics settled, I taught them the 3 most important parts of running a workshop:
1) Preparation
2) Opening
3) Closing
I firmly believe that the best way to alleviate anxiety and feel confident is to be as prepared as possible, making the correct types of preparation.
To help the participants of the mini-workshop, I prepared a set of templates and scripts for them for each of the 3 parts.
We briefly talked about the Delivery of the content, during which I told them that they don’t need to feel like they have to speak like a world-class speaker because:
a) They are not giving a speech.
b) In teaching, well-prepared content is way more important than delivery skills.
We rounded off the session with Questions, and they asked some really interesting ones, like “How do I engage a bored participant?” and “How should I structure a workshop to sell my services?”
We took about 30 minutes to go through all the questions before we ended.
Based on their feedback, they learned a lot of useful tips and were particularly grateful for the templates and scripts.
I intend to run at least one more round of this mini-workshop - I just need to set a date and get it going!
