Our goal: Easy Inclusion of new presenters
Ideally, we would like to have at least 3 Facilitators willing and able to present each workshop.
With 12 Workshops (leaving aside the advanced series), each having 3 facilitators, we would need at least 36 collaborators.
To help out
- When someone in your team has completed all 12 workshops, suggest they volunteer to help facilitate one of the workshops.
- They will not be thrown in at the deep in – they can observe until they become comfortable to present
- Although it’s always important to facilitate with enthusiasm & passion
- You do not need to be an “out there” personality to be a facilitator
- These are small friendly groups, and it’s good to develop your presentation and people skills in a small friendly group
- We are keen to ensure that you can facilitate at a higher level
- Where possible, rather than going into detail, refer to the detail contained in the Workshop and Syllabus content
- In other words, avoid the temptation to get into too much detail (which can also be boring)
- You will be facilitating on Zoom by sharing the content for your chosen workshop
- Emphasise what content the attendees should revisit after your session
- As much as anything else, you want to show attendees enough to make them curious to want to know more
- Attendees can easily find the content via the Builders menu
- There are some brilliant videos and other content which can significantly help your attendees
- Ensure you have viewed these yourself and can show your participants where to find them in the Syllabus.
- When you have viewed these videos, you will be able to promote them enthusiastically (if you are genuinely passionate about the value you receive from a resource, others will naturally want also to view it)
- Where possible, rather than going into detail, refer to the detail contained in the Workshop and Syllabus content
- We have great notes for each Workshop that will make it easy for you to facilitate them.
- We also have summarised bullet points that you can use as reminders when you are facilitating (or feel free to make your own)
- The ‘Welcome and Orientation (Workshop 01)’ facilitator will deliver content at an overview level (without going into much detail)
- Subsequent Workshops will go into a deeper level of detail and constantly reinforce the principle introduced in Workshop 01
- We find the quick quiz questions at the end of the content for each workshop to be highly effective and popular.
- Please strongly the participants in your workshop to do the Quiz – it doesn’t take long, they are fun and usually contain some penny-drop moments
Stay on track
Potential Issues
It can be challenging to keep a workshop on track.
On the one hand, everyone loves to get to know one another and explore ways to advocate for one another.
However, if you take this approach too far, everyone has a great time but learn very little!
On the other hand, if you ‘present’ the entire time, you may be able to sprout a lot of information, but it can be tedious, and how much will sink in?
Allowing for some degree of interactivity is excellent.
However, many people are also keen to use this time effectively to learn to get better at network building.
(We exist to help learn how to build their networks rather than to facilitate networking!)
Another thing to watch for is ensuring the strong personalities do not take more their fair share of the conversation space (fortunately, most CC collaborators are not selfish and keen to encourage others to have their say)
Many new members make the mistake of believing it’s about them!
- In other words, if they understand it, they don’t need to know where to find it in the system.
- If their goal is to build a team of team building advocates, that would be a huge mistake!
- Builders need to learn what is in the system. Then, the content in the system can do the heavy lifting for them rather than wasting their precious time being ‘the expert’ for everyone.
Also, some people will naturally absorb the content much faster than others.
Don’t hold everything up by playing to the “lowest common denominator”.
There are plenty of ways for some who is struggling a bit to get more help.
Finally, it is vital that you convey the intended messages and content and don’t sidetrack with an agenda about which you are passionate.
Always be mindful of accomplishing the workshop’s objectives rather than giving a popular but off-topic presentation.
Potential Solutions
- If you are running out of time, make sure you promote
- Other great talks by very experienced workshop facilitators
- The end of workshop Quiz
- Relevant areas of the Syllabus
- Encourage people to come back and do the session again
- With experience, you’ll find your presentation will flow well
- Before facilitating, make sure you have bullet points to follow
- Learn the content (don’t try just to wing it)
- Keep track of the time – where are you up to in the content vs the time remaining
- Increase your economy of words
- Keep your presentation relatively “high level”
- Don’t go into too much detail
- Instead, always point to where the information in the system
- Promote the Nuts and Bolts sessions
- Every week a ‘Nuts and Bolts’ session is run by very experienced network builders
- These sessions go into more depth on areas of particular interest (for example, how to make a list of great network-building candidates)
Facilitate assuming their Connector is distracted
The Connector’s objective is to build relationships in their team
Proactive participation in the regular weekly onboarding sessions (especially the first 4-6 weeks) is ideal for a Connector to build relationships with new team members.
It’s great to help people learn how to build their networks.
The by-product of the learning process is the relationships you build.
Onboarding new team members give you the chance to get to know people much better and build trust with them by figuring out how you can best advocate or help them.
Nevertheless, many of those that attend your Workshop may have a Connector that is currently distracted by other issues.
A distracted Connector means that not only is the Connector failing to build the relationship with their team new member, but their team member may also be struggling with the how-tos.
Also, they may be missing some fundamental concepts, which could significantly impede their tangible results.
Your workshop can be a lifeline for participants who have a distracted Connector!
Also, if you come across people who appear to be struggling, find out who their Connector is and see if you can facilitate a better outcome for them. Another great option they may be able to take advantage of is our weekly Nuts & Bolts series.
Promote & Reinforce
In many cases, people only retain a small percentage of what you present during your workshop.
So it helps if
- You promote that your participants review the Workshop and Syllabus material you covered during your session as part of their ‘homework.’
- That you reinforce relevant material covered during prior workshop sessions (especially if that content is likely only to have been covered at a high level)
- It is so important that we all sing the song: follow the system
- The last thing you want to be is the ‘expert’ (experts don’t duplicate well)
How to facilitate your Workshop
When you facilitate, you’ll find you can’t just ‘wing it’ on the night.
You do need to prepare!
After a while, it will become second nature.
Sharing Your Screen
Then show your participants how you go into the Builders Menu and select ‘Our Workshops’ to display the following Workshop grid.
It’s always worth doing a quick live demo of the Search facility, as shown in the following screenshot:
Then select your Workshop.
Use the “Facilitator notes for this workshop”
The CC has developed notes to guide you on the essential things to mention during the facilitation of your workshop.
You’ll find these are very useful.
You can access these notes from the ‘Facilitate a Workshop’ option of the Builders menu.
After choosing the workshop you are facilitating, the notes for your workshop are as shown in the following screenshot.
Create your own Bullet Points
Read the notes about how to facilitate your workshop contained in the “Notes for the Facilitator” drop-down and make your own “Bullet Points” that remind you about the vital points you need to make during the workshop you are facilitating.
They need to be brief as you won’t have time to read a long list while you are facilitating.
The more you rehearse before your session, the less you’ll need to rely on your bullet points.
If you have dual monitors, you can display “Bullet Points” to remind you of essential points on your non-shared monitor.
If you don’t have an extra monitor, print out your bullet points so you have them to refer to.
Notes:
- To have the best chance of keeping your workshop flowing with great energy, only use these bullet points to remind you to present content you are thoroughly familiar with
- Feel free to develop bullet points that may be more meaningful to you. However, make sure to use these bullet points and “Facilitator notes for this workshop” as a base.
Who’s facilitating this week?
It’s essential to have a Workshop ‘Owner” who will:
- Develop, share and set up an initial schedule of who’s facilitating each week
- Hopefully, there will be a least 3 regular volunteers available to facilitate, one of whom volunteers to be the ‘owner.’
- Discuss and suggest changes to the Workshop content with the other facilitators (see below)
Set up a Roster!
You can set up a roster any way you like.
However, you can click here to download a very simple proforma roster set up in Google Sheets.
Notes about the proforma roster
This sheet has 3 simple columns, as shown in the following screenshot.
To enter the date, double click in Column A and a calendar will appear as shown in the following screenshot.
To enter the names of the facilitators in your group, use the following steps
Highlight Column B (by clicking on B), then right-click and select as follows:
Then the following screen will then be displayed.
Now you can easily select who’s facilitating, as shown in the following screenshot.
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How to suggest content changes
We are committed to continual Improvement!
All the content for each Workshop is first composed in a Google Document (thankfully with the aid of the Grammarly Chrome extension)
We then copy and paste this content into your workshop’s web page.
The content is then displayed in ‘Accordions’, making it far easier to read.
Make suggestions
If you believe your workshop content (including the Notes for presenters) could be improved by adding, changing or deleting content feel free to make suggestions!
Here’s how to make your suggestions:
You will find the link to the Google document containing the material for your workshop in ‘Notes for Presenters’ as shown in the following screenshot:
Click the link to the Google document in ‘Notes for the Facilitator’, you will be taken to a document that looks like this:
Note: These ‘Accordions’ correlate with the drop-downs that appear on the webpage of the Workshop you are facilitating.
Let’s say you wanted to edit Accordion 01. When you click on this link, it will take you to a screen that looks like this:
Go up to the top right corner of the screen and choose as shown in the following screenshot:
When you are in “Suggesting” mode
- Your edits will appear as suggestions.
- Google will send an email to the CC notifying us of your suggestions
- When we get a chance, we will review your suggestions, and possibly incorporate them in the document and manually include them on the corresponding web page