The Workshop Survival Guide: How to Design and Teach Workshops That Work Every Time
London: Robfitz (2019), 209 pp.
ISBN 978-1-07-134437-8
Signature commbox: 00-Management-E 2019
"The first half of the book covers everything you'll need to know about designing and refining the session itself. With a good design in hand, teaching a brilliant workshop goes from arduous to nearly automatic. The second half of the book shifts from ahead-of-time design to day-of facilitation." (Publisher description)
I. WORKSHOP DESIGN ESSENTIALS
Maintain goodwill with regular "a-ha" moments, 3
Don't start with the slides (do start with the Skeleton), 7
Vary the Teaching Formats to improve energy, attention, and learning, 32
The five essential Teaching Formats, 37
Design your exercises and refine your schedule, 63
Begin with the bare minimum number of slides, 69
II. FACILITATION ESSENTIALS
How to introduce yourself without making everyone hate you, 88
Don't treat your audience as bigger than it is, 93
Seating and group formation, 99
Getting more from your exercises, 107
Answering student questions, 114
How to recover the crowd after an exercise, 119
Overcoming hostility, skepticism, and troublemakers, 126
Staying on schedule and dealing with delays, 144
Charisma can be manufactured with a clicker, a watch, and some small behaviors, 152
Protect your own energy by hiding during breaks, 156
Using co-teachers, expert guests, and helpers, 159
What to do when everything goes wrong, 166
Serve the people in the room, even if there aren't so many of them, 174
Summary of Part 2 (and a facilitation checklist), 176
CONCLUSION AND FINAL THOUGHTS, 179
Appendix: Advanced Teaching Formats, 182
Appendix: An example of inventing, testing, and perfecting a new exercise, 203
Maintain goodwill with regular "a-ha" moments, 3
Don't start with the slides (do start with the Skeleton), 7
Vary the Teaching Formats to improve energy, attention, and learning, 32
The five essential Teaching Formats, 37
Design your exercises and refine your schedule, 63
Begin with the bare minimum number of slides, 69
II. FACILITATION ESSENTIALS
How to introduce yourself without making everyone hate you, 88
Don't treat your audience as bigger than it is, 93
Seating and group formation, 99
Getting more from your exercises, 107
Answering student questions, 114
How to recover the crowd after an exercise, 119
Overcoming hostility, skepticism, and troublemakers, 126
Staying on schedule and dealing with delays, 144
Charisma can be manufactured with a clicker, a watch, and some small behaviors, 152
Protect your own energy by hiding during breaks, 156
Using co-teachers, expert guests, and helpers, 159
What to do when everything goes wrong, 166
Serve the people in the room, even if there aren't so many of them, 174
Summary of Part 2 (and a facilitation checklist), 176
CONCLUSION AND FINAL THOUGHTS, 179
Appendix: Advanced Teaching Formats, 182
Appendix: An example of inventing, testing, and perfecting a new exercise, 203
