"Could you facilitate our leadership team workshop next week?"
Over the years, I've received variations of this request countless times. Sometimes there are several weeks to prepare. More often, there are only a few days.
If you're someone who enjoys saying yes to new challenges—as I do—you've probably experienced the same dilemma. It's an exciting opportunity to work with a leadership team and make a real difference. But there's also a lot at stake. Expectations are high, preparation time is limited, and you know that the success of the workshop depends largely on you.
Looking back, I realise that I often started preparing in the wrong place.
My instinct was to build the agenda, collect presentations and think about activities.
Today, that's almost the last thing I do.
Over the years, one observation has fundamentally changed how I think about facilitation:
The agenda is rarely what determines whether a workshop is successful. It's the conversations the agenda creates.
That realisation has gradually reshaped how I prepare every workshop, whether it's a leadership offsite, strategy session, team development day or organisational transformation.
Rather than starting with activities, I now return to the same four principles.
Understand. Align. Engage. Commit.
Understand
1 · Listen before you design.
Every workshop is ultimately about people.
That's why understanding them comes before designing anything else.
If you're a doer like me, this is probably the step you're most tempted to skip.
When time is short, it's easy to think, "I already know what the workshop needs to achieve."
Looking back, I've realised that's often where the biggest mistake is made.
The success of a workshop is frequently determined long before anyone enters the room. Not by the agenda, but by how well we understand the people who will be in it.
Even when preparation time is limited, I try to speak not only with the sponsor, but also with a handful of participants. These conversations usually take no more than fifteen or twenty minutes, yet they almost always reveal something I hadn't considered.
They uncover different perspectives, hidden concerns and expectations that rarely appear in the original briefing.
This is where the gold is hidden.
These conversations don't simply improve the workshop.
They challenge my own assumptions before I ever step into the room.
They also create an early sense of ownership because participants feel heard before the workshop has even begun.
If I had to choose one preparation activity that has had the greatest impact on the quality of my facilitation, it would be this one.
Once you truly understand people, designing the workshop becomes remarkably easier.
Some of the questions I'm curious about
- Why are we really bringing people together?
- What would success look like from different perspectives?
- What conversations aren't happening today?
- What assumptions might we be making?
- What might we be missing?
Align
2 · Design the workshop around the conversation, not the agenda.
Great workshops aren't built around agendas.
They're built around journeys.
This is probably where my own thinking has changed the most.
Earlier in my career, I designed ambitious agendas. I wanted to create as much value as possible by moving from one activity to the next. If we were running behind, my instinct was usually to speed things up.
Today, I see that very differently.
Some of the most valuable moments in a workshop happen when people pause, reflect or suddenly connect ideas in ways they hadn't before.
Those moments can't be planned.
But they can easily be rushed.
That doesn't mean every discussion should continue indefinitely. One of the earliest lessons I learned through Design Thinking still guides me today: ideas rarely become better simply because we spend longer discussing them. Time-boxing creates focus, momentum and energy.
The real challenge lies somewhere between those two realities.
Knowing when to stay with a conversation because something meaningful is emerging—and knowing when it's time to help the group move forward.
I'm still learning that balance today.
What has changed is that I no longer see the agenda as something to protect.
Instead, I try to stay present in the conversation, sensing when slowing down creates more value than speeding up.
To me, that's one of the real arts of facilitation.
Some of the questions I'm curious about
- What is the real challenge we're trying to address?
- What themes keep appearing across conversations?
- What can we leave out?
- What journey do I want participants to experience?
- Where should we slow down—and where is it time to move on?
Engage
3 · Design participation, not presentations.
Participation doesn't happen by accident.
It's something facilitators intentionally design.
Earlier in my facilitation journey, I spent a lot of time looking for new activities and methods. I believed better facilitation came from having a bigger toolbox.
Today, I think differently.
People don't become engaged because of great facilitation methods. They become engaged because they feel their perspective matters.
For me, that starts in the very first minutes.
An opening activity should do far more than simply warm people up.
It should help people connect—with the purpose of the workshop, with one another and with the challenge they're about to explore.
Some of the most effective opening conversations are surprisingly simple. They invite people to share an experience, a challenge or a perspective that others in the room may never have heard before.
In corporate life we spend a great deal of time working together, yet surprisingly little time understanding one another beyond our roles.
Those first conversations create trust. They encourage openness. And they lay the foundations for psychological safety throughout the rest of the workshop.
As the day progresses, I increasingly rely on smaller groups rather than long plenary discussions.
I've also learned to resist giving every group the same task. Instead, I divide the challenge into different perspectives and let each group explore one part in depth.
When everyone comes back together, the conversation becomes much richer because every group contributes something genuinely new.
Whenever possible, I also nominate a facilitator for each table beforehand.
That creates ownership across the room and allows me to spend more time listening, observing and supporting the conversations that matter most.
For me, plenary sessions are rarely where the best thinking happens.
They're where ideas connect.
Some of the questions I'm curious about
- How can everyone feel their perspective matters?
- What opening conversation will build trust?
- Which discussions belong in smaller groups?
- How can different groups explore different perspectives?
- Who can help create ownership across the room?
Commit
4 · Create ownership, not just action plans.
A workshop only creates value if something changes afterwards.
This is probably where I still see the greatest opportunity.
Most workshops finish with clear actions, good intentions and plenty of energy.
Yet a few weeks later, very little has changed.
For a long time, I believed agreeing on an action plan was enough.
Experience has taught me otherwise.
I've gradually come to believe that the team's commitment often mirrors the leader's commitment.
When leaders continue referring back to the workshop, revisit commitments and keep the conversation alive, the workshop becomes part of how the team works.
When leaders immediately return to operational mode, the team usually does the same.
The workshop slowly becomes another good day that everyone remembers—but nobody builds upon.
As facilitators, we can create the conditions for commitment.
Sustaining that commitment, however, is largely a leadership responsibility.
This is also where I believe coaching and mentoring can play an important role. Supporting leaders after the workshop often determines whether the momentum becomes lasting behavioural change or quietly fades away.
Some of the questions I'm curious about
- What are we genuinely committing to?
- Who owns each commitment?
- How will we revisit them?
- How will the leader keep the conversation alive?
- What do we want to be doing differently six months from now?
A final reflection
Looking back, facilitation has taught me far more than how to design workshops.
It has taught me how to listen more carefully, simplify complexity and create the conditions where people can think better together.
Perhaps that's why I no longer see facilitation as simply running better workshops.
I see it as helping organisations have better conversations.
Because every strategy, transformation, leadership programme and innovation initiative ultimately succeeds or fails because of the quality of the conversations people have along the way.
I'm still learning every time I step into a room.
And perhaps that's one of the things I enjoy most about facilitation.
I'd be genuinely curious to hear about your own experiences. What has been the biggest lesson in your facilitation journey?
And if you're preparing a leadership offsite, strategy workshop or team development day, I'd be delighted to act as a sounding board before or after the event. Sometimes a single conversation is all it takes to completely change how we think about the day ahead.
