Pick up a recipe

Many workshops, exercises and training courses follow a recipe and a model. This recipe is good to follow so that you don't forget important points, main messages, dialogue, involvement, testing, plan, underlines, brainstorming, etc.

Here are a number of recipes that you can follow slavishly or change completely according to your wishes. The recipes also recommend some tools that you can download or purchase.

The purpose of a workshop/course is for the participants to learn more together on a specific topic or issue.

The topic can be, for example, getting better at praising and recognizing, serving customers, managing employees, surviving in the wilderness, gaining psychological freedom.

The topic can also be, for example, making new internal agreements about cooperation, about culture, about saying what you want to do and doing what you say, about prejudice, about retaliation, about the plan for a good meeting.

Regardless of the topic, you can put together a plan that inspires, motivates and gives the participants so much blood on their teeth that they actually start to use the new and even tell others about their new insights.

In general, for all 'gatherings' where people should preferably show up, - it is important for the further work of the group that the start is extremely important. It always starts with an invitation.

Invite them

All events, meetings, courses, parties, etc. start with an invitation.

'I would be happy to see you on Thursday at 3 pm for an informal meeting.'

You can reveal more or less about the content. It can be too detailed and it can also be too undetailed. The invitation should contain enough information to make people want to show up and even look forward to it. If there is a requirement to attend, you should also write that. But that is why the meeting can be both fun and serious.

There are countless ways to invite. Email, SMS, phone, letter, fireworks, a short film. Find a proportion that suits or surprises appropriately.

If you invite them, the chance that they will show up and want to participate is the greatest. The joy of anticipation, a little preparation, a little involvement.

If you don't invite them, the chance that they will stay away is the greatest. Maybe they will show up but not be mentally present.

Synchronize them

I once arrived at a lecture where about 300 people who did not know each other showed up.

Outside the door stood a man with a basket full of eggs, rhythm eggs it was. The man welcomed me and gave me an egg. I walked into the room and there was a fairly large group of people making a rhythm with their rhythm eggs. I didn't want to stand out, so I started to beat the same rhythm with my egg. Suddenly I was part of the group. As I sat down, I looked around. There was nothing but smiles and nods and recognition. We all sat like that until a person stepped forward and began the presentation, which was about something with presentations.

A fantastic start. A synchronizing start. Synchronization can take a myriad of forms. Shake hands with everyone at the entrance. Start with a song. A countdown. A quick name-calling round. People and employees and children and guests and visitors are always individuals when they arrive. If you, as a manager, want them to be a group, then you have to synchronize them. Everything gets easier from here.

If you synchronize them, you turn a bunch of individuals into a 'community'. Every morning they show up, every time a new meeting starts, every time they show up for the 'gathering', they are individuals.

If you don't synchronize them, they remain isolated individuals. Why should they get involved? Why should they care? Why should they listen?

Involve them

You can talk them all to sleep and never let them speak. It will surely make for a boring meeting, a dead-end workshop, or an exercise that is only interesting to the leader. You have to put them through one or more tests.

If you involve them, they become interested. If you involve them, the curiosity, the commitment, the desire starts.

If you don't involve them, you can read it in their eyes. They slide further down in their seat. They are unfocused.

What did we try?

What are we going to do with it?

So what?

More to come (the page is under construction)