10 key lessons on effective workshop delivery

Today, I was roped into facilitating and co-hosting a workshop last minute for a professional services firm (PSF).

The exact material of the workshop is something that I am no longer as close to anymore so I was ‘in at the deep end’ - to put it lightly. This provided a useful reminder for me of the importance of preparation for any presentation - no matter how small (something that I am passionate about - when I have sufficient warning).

Here is a brief skim through some of the key lessons that I was reminded of during the course of the day in delivering effective presentations:

1. Beware of your ‘ummming’ and ‘errring’ between sentences or words - this horror is best revealed to yourself by videoing your presentation. Bad news for me today was that even I could hear them in real-time as I was saying them! This boils down to not having rehearsed the material sufficiently - not my fault in this case.
2. Slooooow down. The faster you speak, the more eager you can sound to get the ‘ordeal’ over with (perhaps the audience would have thanked me for sparing them!)
3. Have some real life anecdotes or stories up your sleeve. This helps keep the energy and interest level of the audience up. Again, this requires decent advance preparation and research. Ideally, try to intersperse the stories about every 10 minutes to avoid eyes rising up to the ceiling in a sleepy trance-like state.
4. Have a strong beginning and end - your audience won’t remember much in between but they will likely remember these.
5. Visuals are all important. Big, colourful and minimal.
6. Online software demonstrations require good preparation and knowledge of what to do when things go wrong…..
7. Interjections of humour can help. As can injecting some energy by walking around the room and digging out the old flip-chart for a bit of audience participation. Helps especially when the content is a tad dry.
8. If it’s a small audience, get them to introduce themselves at the beginning and give a little background about their relevant experience. This helps you gauge the level at which to pitch the talk and allows for the audience to speak up (and therefore participate) from the outset.
9. Keep to the allotted time particularly if the content of the seminar or workshop is particularly heavy on technical detail - your audience will appreciate it. We got this right and, yes they did!
10. Ask for audience feedback on forms. You might not want it after a difficult course but it is in your interests in the long-term to help build your skills and develop the course. (Yes, we did and no, it wasn’t that bad!)

I look forward to hearing your suggestions.