10. Achieve First Team Building Workshop Outcomes
In Step 10 of our 12-step course in how to design a Right-Minded Team Building Workshop, you’ll learn how to:
- Prepare yourself to facilitate first team building workshop outcomes
- Decide how to properly close the workshop
Preparing to Facilitate Team Workshop
Do these tasks and you’ll be an effective facilitator:
- Welcome everyone when they arrive and create a positive atmosphere.
- Memorize the outcomes; make sure you understand the agenda and ground rules.
- PCA—Present, Clarify and gain Agreement on the outcomes.
- Know the agenda—by now you should almost have it memorized!
- Know how to present clear instructions for the exercises.
- Decide how to interact with all teammates, especially difficult ones.
- Before the workshop, reaffirm preventions and interventions with the leader.
- Set down the PCA ground rules, which should include a decision-making agreement.
For more about facilitation prep, look in the Resouces section of your book for 14 Characteristics of a Successful Team Building Facilitator.
A Word about Decision-Making
I strongly recommend that, at the beginning of the workshop, you explain and facilitate a short discussion and agreement about decision-making.
Here’s what you might say.
Our discussions today will result in creating work agreementsA Work Agreement is a collective teammate promise to transform non-productive, adversarial behavior into collaborative teamwork behavior. More. Ideally, you want to achieve consensus, which means that everyone will actively support your new work agreements. But if you simply can’t come to consensus, your fall-back method will be for the team leader to decide.
To summarize, the decision-making agreement is this: you will go for consensus, with your leader as the fall-back decider. Will everyone support this agreement?
Properly Close Workshop
Don’t forget to allocate enough time to properly close the workshop.
A thorough closing takes at least 30 minutes.
Your closing will go something like this:
- Review all work agreements to ensure clarity and commitment to live them.
- Agree on how the team will track progress, such as using the team performance survey.
- Discuss and agree on the next 90 day’s goals and actions.
- Agree that over the short term, the full team will review work agreements every week.
- For the remaining Punch List items, agree when the team will address them.
- List workshop positives and things to do differently in the next workshop.
- Finally, ask teammates to share any appreciations they have for others.
- And then, the leader has the last word and adjourns the workshop.
And finally, it’s not unusual for the team leader, at the end of the workshop you just facilitated to thank you for your positive contribution to their team’s success. In the Resouces section of your book, read the article called Maria’s Effective Workshop Close and how she praised her facilitator.
In the next lesson, Step 11, we will discuss how to track team progress. You just might, as the facilitator, have some design responsibility.
Can’t Wait? Links to All 12 Lessons
Over 2 Hours of Audio Instruction from Dan Hogan, Certified Master Facilitator.
These lessons will continue to arrive in your email.
Introduction – How to Design a Right-Minded Team Building Workshop |
Step 1 – Start with the End in Mind. Leader Defines Purpose |
Step 2 – Leader Meets Facilitator. Shares Purpose & Outcomes |
Step 3 – What the Leader Wants May Not Be What the Team Needs. Facilitator Uncovers Root Causes |
Step 4 – Facilitator Presents First Draft Team Building Plan to the Leader |
Step 5 – Leader Announces Workshop and Prepares Teammates |
Step 6 – Facilitator Conducts 9 or 20 Question Right-Minded Teamwork Survey |
Step 7 – Facilitator Interviews All Teammates |
Step 8 – Facilitator Presents Second Draft Plan to Leader |
Step 9 – Leader & Facilitator Finalize Agenda and Workshop Plan |
Step 10 – Achieve Workshop Outcomes |
Step 11 – Track & Report Progress for the Next 90 Days |
Step 12 – Leader & Facilitator Begin Designing the Second Workshop |