How can you align team workshops with your team's goals?

1 Define your workshop purpose

Before you plan any team workshop, you need to have a clear and specific purpose that aligns with your team's goals. What do you want to achieve with the workshop? How does it relate to your team's vision, mission, and values? How will it help your team overcome challenges, improve skills, or generate ideas? Write down your workshop purpose in one sentence and use it as a guide for the rest of the planning process.

2 Choose your workshop format

Depending on your workshop purpose, you can choose from different formats to deliver your content and engage your participants. For example, you can use a presentation, a discussion, a brainstorming, a simulation, a game, or a combination of them. Think about what format best suits your topic, your audience, and your time frame. Consider how you can balance information, interaction, and feedback in your workshop. Also, decide whether you will run your workshop online, offline, or hybrid, and what tools and resources you will need.

3 Prepare your workshop agenda

A workshop agenda is a document that outlines the structure, content, and timing of your workshop. It helps you organize your workshop and communicate your expectations to your participants. A good workshop agenda should include the following elements: a title, a purpose, a list of objectives, a schedule of activities, a list of materials, and a summary of outcomes. You can also add some tips for participation, ground rules, and contact information. Share your agenda with your team before the workshop and ask for their feedback.

4 Facilitate your workshop

Facilitating a workshop is not just delivering information, but creating an environment where your team can learn, share, and create together. As a facilitator, you need to set the tone, guide the process, and support the participants. Here are some tips to facilitate your workshop effectively: start with a warm-up activity, introduce the purpose and objectives, use clear and engaging language, encourage participation and interaction, ask open-ended questions, provide constructive feedback, manage time and energy, and deal with challenges and conflicts.

5 Evaluate your workshop

Evaluating your workshop is essential to measure its impact and identify areas for improvement. You can use different methods to collect feedback from your participants and assess the outcomes of your workshop. For example, you can use surveys, polls, quizzes, interviews, focus groups, or observations. You can also use metrics such as attendance, satisfaction, engagement, learning, behavior change, or performance improvement. Analyze the data and use it to refine your workshop design and delivery.

6 Follow up on your workshop

Following up on your workshop is a way to reinforce the learning, sustain the momentum, and celebrate the achievements of your team. You can follow up on your workshop by sending a thank-you note, sharing a summary of key points, providing additional resources, assigning action steps, setting deadlines and milestones, tracking progress and results, offering support and coaching, and recognizing and rewarding success. You can also plan future workshops based on your team's needs and goals.

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?