Leadership activities are a great way of developing the skills and competencies needed to be an effective leader. It’s not easy to learn these skills, especially when so many leaders don’t receive effective training or support. In this article, we’ll explore the leadership activities you should master in order to lead a high-performing team and become a better leader!

Learning the why and how of being a great leader alongside practical techniques and frameworks is one of the easiest ways to become a better leader.

Anyone in a leadership role has both a big influence and responsibility for their team. Some of the aspects they need to pay attention to in order to be a good leader are:

• Setting the climate of a workplace
• Making decisions
• Inspiring team members
• Setting values for their team
• Improving team spirit and cohesion
• Being responsible for their team’s communication and wellbeing
• Developing leadership skills in other team members

There are a number of tools to help you with leadership development. Coaching, peer support circles, and leadership development workshops can all help one to become a better leader.

Leadership activities such as those featured here are also effective at introducing leadership concepts and learning how to solve common leadership challenges. You might run these leadership training activities during a workshop, add them to an ongoing learning program or simply introduce them to managers as needed.

In this guide, we’ve grouped leadership activities by these core competencies, so you can choose the right activity to help yourself or others develop their leadership skills. Let’s dive in!

What are leadership activities?

Leadership activities are exercises designed to help develop leadership skills and enable leaders to be more effective in their roles. They can include activities that help train new leaders and improve core leadership skills like problem-solving, active listening, or effective group management.

You’ll also find that the best leadership development activities give leaders tools and techniques they can use on the job. It’s one thing to know that leaders need to be good listeners, but quite another to be given a framework and toolkit that means you are a great listener who always helps their team feel heard and understood.

The exercises below are not only great to use when training leaders, but they are practical techniques leaders can use with every team member immediately, whatever their leadership style.

What are leadership activities used for?

While managers might approach tasks differently based on their leadership style, there are skills and competencies that all leaders should learn in order to best service their team. Learning how to be a good leader can be difficult, so using exercises and activities to improve leadership skills in a safe, experiential environment can help leaders be more effective in their role.

If you’re running a leadership development program, you might use these activities during the training program. For example, after conducting a self-assessment and deciding how they want to develop as a leader, participants might work on improving their leadership skills with these activities.

Whether you’re running such a program and developing managers internally with workshops or simply want to brush up on your own leadership skills, these exercises are a great place to begin.

A bespoke leadership development workshop (like the one featured in this leadership template!) is also a natural place to include these activities.

In SessionLab, it’s quick and easy to design a leadership workshop fit for your needs. Start by dragging and dropping blocks to design your outline. Add minute-perfect timing and instructions to each activity to refine your agenda.

When you’re ready to share with collaborators or participants, export your workshop agenda in PDF, Word, Powerpoint or invite them directly to the session.

Leadership training activities for building a positive work climate

Leaders are role models to their colleagues and organization. Their leadership styles, principles, and values determine the culture that drives their organization’s behavior.

That is why a competitive, paranoid leader can easily create an organization where team members are similarly competitive and less open to collaboration. While a leader who is open and inclusive will create a climate of openness and inclusiveness. How they behave, and what they consider the norm, also affects which kinds of behaviors are enforced and celebrated and which behaviors are punished.

The following leadership activities can help you in recognising important leadership behaviors that result in a productive workplace. They can also be used by leaders to set the stage for team bonding and a great workplace environment with their team. A must for all leaders!

Leadership Envelopes

Leadership games like this help groups translate abstract leadership principles into practical on-the-job behaviors. Participants work in groups to come up with real-life applications of different leadership principles.

The groups conduct multiple rounds of discussion to build upon each others’ ideas, and in the end, evaluate the best ideas to identify the most useful behaviors. This is also a great activity to run with all your team members. Seeing how they consider and respond to different leadership styles can help you focus on the right approach as a leader!

Leadership Envelopes #leadership #issue analysis #thiagi 

Leadership exercise in groups, working with practical leadership principles.

This activity helps groups to translate abstract leadership principles into practical on-the-job behaviours. Participants work in groups to come up with real-life application of leadership principles. The groups take multiple rounds to build upon the ideas of each other, and in the end, evaluate the best ideas to identify the most useful behaviours.

Your Favourite Manager

In this activity, participants take on three different employee personas and list the behaviors of a positive leader or manager and a negative one from the perspectives of those employees. After some individual reflection, participants compare their lists, first in pairs and then in groups. Finally, they collect the ultimate do’s and don’ts for managers and leaders.

Any activity that encourages deep reflection on your own leadership style and those of your role models is a wonderful way to grow. I’ve been especially inspired by how some of my old bosses approach problem solving while I was a team member working beneath them.

My Favourite Manager #management #leadership #thiagi #teamwork #remote-friendly 

Participants work individually, assuming the roles of three different people and brainstorming their perceptions of three most favourite managers and three least favourite managers. Later, they work with a partner (and still later, in teams) to prepare a list of dos and don’t-s for improving employees’ perception of a manager’s style.

Leadership Pizza

This leadership development activity offers a self-assessment framework for people to first identify the skills, attributes and attitudes they find important for effective leadership, and then assess their own development in these areas. This framework is also a great tool to set individual leadership development goals in a coaching process.

We love activities that allow team members to reflect on different leadership styles and assess their own skills and preferences. The visual format makes it easy to share and reflect on leadership styles later too!

Leadership Pizza #leadership #team #remote-friendly 

This leadership development activity offers a self-assessment framework for people to first identify what skills, attributes and attitudes they find important for effective leadership, and then assess their own development and initiate goal setting.

Playing with Status

The best leadership training activities often allow managers to work on their leadership skills while also providing an opportunity to reflect on their leadership style and how it might affect other employees.

Playing with Status is a role playing game where pairs enact a job interview or coaching session and enact different versions of the conversation based on whether each person has high or low status. By experiencing the effect of status on the relationship, would-be leaders can consider how they interact with other members of their team and create a more positive workplace culture.

Heard Seen Respected

Standing in the shoes of others, practicing empathy and ensuring that everyone on a team is able to be heard is a necessity for great leaders and your team in general. In this activity, participants shift between telling stories where they were not heard, seen or respected and then being listeners who do not pass judgment. 

Remember that leadership training should often start with the fundamentals of respect and empathy. If you can’t respect and empathize with your team members, how can you expect them to do the same for you? Keeping things simple with an activity like Heard Seen Respected can be an especially effective option whether you’re working online or offline. 

Team building leadership activities

Every leader has an integral role in the formation of the teams they work with. Whether you are consciously working on it or not, your attitude and actions as a leader will significantly influence team cohesion, communication and the team spirit of the people you work with.

This comes through in small everyday actions, the way you share responsibilities, the way you empower colleagues, and the way you foster a cooperative work environment as opposed to a competitive one.

Sometimes, it can also be effective to run team building activities with your company that are expressly focused on helping teams come together and bond. Try using the following leadership team building activities with new teams, or groups that need to spend a little time getting to know each other better.

Marshmallow challenge

The Marshmallow Challenge is a team-building activity in which teams compete to build the tallest free-standing structure out of spaghetti sticks, tape, string, and the marshmallow that needs to be on the top. This leadership activity emphasizes group communication, leadership dynamics, collaboration, and innovation and problem-solving.

It’s a wonderful game that allows participants’s natural leadership qualities to shine through, and it helps teams have a lot of fun too!

Marshmallow challenge with debriefing #teamwork #team #leadership #collaboration 

In eighteen minutes, teams must build the tallest free-standing structure out of 20 sticks of spaghetti, one yard of tape, one yard of string, and one marshmallow. The marshmallow needs to be on top.

The Marshmallow Challenge was developed by Tom Wujec, who has done the activity with hundreds of groups around the world. Visit the Marshmallow Challenge website for more information. This version has an extra debriefing question added with sample questions focusing on roles within the team.

Blind Square Rope Game

This activity is a tried and tested game that asks teams to communicate well and solve a problem as a team. Not only is this a fun team building activity, but it’s a great way for potential leaders to step up and help their team win!

Start by tying a length of rope into a circle and then instruct participants they will have 20 minutes to turn it into a square, with fifteen minutes to plan their actions and five minutes to implement. Here’s the catch – no one may touch the rope until you begin, and every team member is blindfolded during implementation. This is an effective leadership game that is great with both small groups and larger teams separated into breakouts.

Tower of Power

All leaders need to work closely with other members of their organization in order to succeed. This leadership game encourages groups to work together in order to build a tower with specific (and sometimes tricky!) rules before than reflecting on what worked, what didn’t and what they would do next time.

It’s a wonderful activity for leadership training, as it provides an experiential way to explore leadership concepts, all wrapped in a fun game!

Minefield

When teams work together well, something magic happens. But what elements constitute a high performing team? As a leader, how can you help ensure those conditions are met? In this leadership game, participants must work together to get every team member across an obstacle while blindfolded.

It’s a simple concept that creates a perfect space for exploring how teams operate and the role leaders have within them. Bring plenty of fun obstacles (squeaky toys are best) and encourage groups to think strategically for best results!

Crocodile River

The Crocodile River is a team-building activity in which group members need to support each other in a task to move from one end of a space to another. It requires working together creatively and strategically in order to solve a practical, physical problem. It tends to emphasize group communication, cooperation, leadership and membership, patience and problem-solving.

Crocodile River #hyperisland #team #outdoor 

A team-building activity in which a group is challenged to physically support one another in an endeavour to move from one end of a space to another. It requires working together creatively and strategically in order to solve a practical, physical problem. It tends to emphasize group communication, cooperation, leadership and membership, patience and problem-solving.

Human knot

This is a simple game to help team members learn how to work together (better). It can also focus on the group’s understanding of communication, leadership, problem-solving, trust or persistence. Participants stand in a circle, close their eyes and put their hands into the circle to find two other hands to hold. Then they open their eyes and the group has to try to get back into a circle without letting go, though they can change their grip, of course.

Who are you? The pirate ship exercise

Every member of a group occupies a different position in the team. An effective team leader is one who considers their role and is aware of where employees also stand.

This leadership training activity is an effective method of getting a group to consider their roles with the metaphor of a pirate ship. Start by sharing the image and invite each person to consider which person on the deck they most identify with. Is it the captain, or perhaps is it the person repairing damage to the hull? What follows is an effective conversation on roles within a team.

Collaborative leadership activities

Whether you’re leading a small group or working across a massive organization, part of your role of a leader is to help their team work together more effectively. Removing obstacles to effective collaboration and creating frameworks for better teamwork is something you’ll be doing as a leader.

Use the activities below to develop the skills necessary to facilitate better collaboration and working habits between team members.

Circles of Influence

Effective teamwork is often about identifying where each member of a team can have the most impact and use their skills best. Leaders often need to find ways to identify where to direct their team and consider how different skills and working styles fit together to make a cohesive team. This activity makes it easy to facilitate this process and encourage employees to reflect and be proactive too!

We love that this leadership exercise encourages every team member to take responsibility and action. When looking for leadership qualities in a group and considering who you might want to develop into a future leader, this is also a great place to start!

Team of Two

Whether you’re leading a team of just a few people or hundreds, the reality is that many of your discussions and interactions with the people you will lead will be interpersonal and one-on-one in nature. Developing the skillset you need to solve issues in your team when they arise and finding ways to ensure these conversations are productive is one of the most important things you can do as a leader.

Use Team of Two whether working online or as part of an in-person session to help your working pairs and interpersonal relationships go from strength to strength. By articulating needs and consequences clearly, this leadership exercise helps people communicate efficiently and see the results they need – a must for anyone in a leadership role! 

What I Need From You

One of the most important leadership skills to cultivate is clarity: being clear in what you expect and need from others in your organisation or group is an integral component of high-functioning teams. With What I Need From You, each team member involved in the exchange is given the chance to articulate their core needs to others and respond in a structured way.

This kind of clear, direct action is great at unblocking conversational roadblocks in both large and small groups, and is something all leaders should have in their toolkit.

Generative Relationships STAR

The relationships between the members of a team can make or break the work you do together. In this leadership training activity, leaders learn how to help a group understand their current working patterns and identify possible changes.

Each participant will individually rate the current performance of the group on the 4 points of the STAR compass tool included. Next, small groups will discuss their choices and find points of alignment and disagreement. Finally, the whole team will discuss the first steps they can take to improve relationships and performance for the group.

Team Canvas

When it comes to enabling true collaboration throughout your organization, it pays to involve your team members in helping shape the way you want to work together. Different leadership styles may call for a different approach to this process, but it’s always helpful to see a complete example of how you might define your team culture and working processes.

In this workshop template, you can see a complete agenda for a team canvas workshop. This will take a team through a process of co-creating and defining everything from your goals, values, assets, and rules. Effective leadership often means tapping into group intelligence and enabling your team to take shared ownership of their success. Team Canvas great way of achieving this!

Inspirational leadership activities

Great leaders inspire others. However, there are many different reasons why someone will find a leader inspirational. Developing the skills to inspire team members and lead with this energy is important, whatever your leadership style.

In order to grasp what facilitates inspiring leadership, try the following exercises. You’ll be surprised at how thinking more deeply about your own role models or what your values can help you in all of your leadership interactions!

Leadership Advice from your Role Model

Everyone is asked to think of a role model they look up to and ask themselves: If a young person would ask these role models for leadership advice and what kind of advice that would be.

Facilitate a group conversation where these pieces of advice are shared and contradicting points are discussed and reconciled. Given diverse enough responses, this structured sharing activity might be a good introduction to the concept of situational leadership.

Leadership Advice from Your Role Model #skills #leadership #thiagi #role playing 

This structured sharing activity provides a faster, cheaper, and better alternative to buying and reading a lot of books: You tap into the wisdom of the group—and of their role models.

Living Core Values

The core values of your organization are a great place to look when you want to inspire your team members. Leaders should be involved in defining and exemplifying their core values and also helping create space for the team to share how they’re living those values. The result is an inspiring leadership exercise that allows a leader to help the group celebrate their wins and also suggest places for improvement.

Start by choosing one of your core values and asking activity participants to share a story of how they have been practicing this core value. After sharing, ask the team to reflect on what inspired them from the story. As with any leadership development game, be the first one to share a story to help guide the discussion. Running this exercise will not only help inspire a team to greater heights but also surface any areas that need improvement – it’s a great method to have in your leadership toolbox!

Campfire

Throughout human history, stories have been a consistent source of inspiration. Whatever your leadership style, finding time to share more about your own story and create space for others to share theirs can be massively useful as a leader.

In Campfire, start by creating a selection of 10-20 sticky notes relating to a concept you wish to explore with the group. Put these on the wall and then invite your group to review them and consider stories they might tell related to one of those words. Start the storytelling session yourself and think about how you might inspire and elicit further stories from the rest of the team before passing the torch to the next person around the campfire!

This is a great activity to run during leadership training or when team building. Creating safe spaces for people to share their experiences is a leadership skill you absolutely want to cultivate and practice!

Letter from the Future

Leaders are often called upon to inspire their team members about the future of their product or organization. Employees who are excited about where you’re going are more likely to work together well and be energized to see results. This activity is useful for helping inspire a team, or even just to inspire yourself as a leader and get your vision for the future down on paper!

Begin by asking your team to speculate on what the world will look like in five years. Next, ask them to write a letter from the future detailing what the group has accomplished in that time and how they overcame any challenges.

Share the results to inspire the group for what you might accomplish and also start creating plans for how you’ll create your desired future. You might even find that running this activity solo is effective when thinking about how you want to develop as a team leader!

Leadership activities for personal development

A good leader is one who helps uplift and upskill the members of their team. These leadership activities are designed to help you encourage participants to be more autonomous, take initiative and work on their personal development.

If you’re new to a leadership role or trying on various leadership styles, these can also be great activities to practice on the road to leading a team. Growth and development is a vital aspect of employee happiness and fulfilment – be sure to bring ideas for enabling others to your leadership role.

Roles in a meeting

Learning by doing is an important aspect of effective leadership. Sometimes, you have to try something new and approach the task with an open mind while working to the best of your ability. This simple method is a great way of encouraging participants to take an important role during a meeting and also take part in developing and refining those roles.

If you’re running a leadership development program and want to start upskilling participants, this is a great way of delegating some simple leadership roles. Plus, it helps encourage the group to contribute and engage with how a successful meeting is put together too!

Alignment & Autonomy

One of the most impactful things a leader can do is get out of a team’s way and allow them to perform more autonomously. Doing so effectively means people can take ownership of their work, be more invested, and develop their skills too. But how can you do this without creating chaos or misalignment?

In this activity, you first help every team member align on your goals and then reflect on where they can take more ownership and be more autonomous in their work while still contributing to the goals of the team. Not only is this a great way to help your team develop, but it also takes work off your plate as a leader and can enable you to get out of the trenches if necessary.

15% Solutions

One of the biggest barriers to personal development is being overwhelmed by what you need to do to achieve your goals. As a leader, you can help your team by enabling them to take the small, important actions that are within their control.

Start by asking participants to reflect on where they have the discretion and freedom to act and how they might make a small step towards a goal without needing outside help. By flipping the conversation to what 15% of a solution looks like, rather than 100%, employees can begin to make changes without fear of being overwhelmed.

The GROW Coaching Model

The best leaders are often great coaches, helping individual team members achieve their potential and grow. This tried and test method is a wonderful way to help activate the development of everyone from a new start to an established leader.

Begin by teaching your mentee or group the GROW acronym (Goal, Reality, Obstacles/Options, and Will.) and guide them through a process of defining each section and collectively agreeing on how you’ll make progress. This is an effective leadership activity that is great for leadership training and is equally useful when it comes to help any team member grow.

Decision-making leadership activities

An important aspect of leadership development is learning how to make informed and intelligent decisions while also ensuring you listen to your team. A leader who bulldozes their team into a decision without first listening to their expertise is not going to make their team feel valued.

The outcomes of uninformed decisions are often poor or frustrating for those involved too. While leaders are justifiably responsible for making final decisions, it’s integral to find methods to do so in a well-reasoned way.

These leadership activities are useful when it comes to making good decisions while involving your team members in the process and developing a leadership style that creates space for others.

Dotmocracy

When solving problems as a team, it’s common to have various options for moving forward. As a leader, it often falls to you to make the decision for which solution or direction to pursue. But how can you do that while also creating space for the opinions of your team to be heard?

Dotmocracy is a tried and tested facilitation method for making informed decisions with the help of your team. After presenting the available options, give everyone on your team a number of dots to indicate which option they prefer. You’ll want to adjust the number of votes based on the number of options there are to choose from. A good rule of thumb is to have fewer dots than there are options, giving just a few for every team member.

Leaders want to be on hand to break any ties and to facilitate discussion around what is chosen, but when it comes to making decisions with your team, this method is hard to beat.

Impact and Effort Matrix

The hallmark of a good decision making process is transparency. Leaders should know why a decision is made and should be able to clearly explain their thinking to team members. As such, the best decision making activities make the process open and easy to understand.

Start this activity by creating a 2×2 matrix and then place possible options on the matrix based on the expected impact and effort it would take to achieve them. This makes it easy to prioritize and compare possible decisions while also including team members in the process.

An inclusive leadership style means bringing your own knowledge to the table while also listening to the opinions of the team. When running this activity, be sure to combine these aspects to ensure items are placed in the appropriate place on the matrix.

Level of influence

Making the right decision is often a process of weighing up various factors and prioritizing accordingly. While there are many methods for doing this, being an effective leader often means making this as simple as possible.

We love this decision making activity because it asks the group (and its leader!) some simple questions to narrow down possible options and makes it easy to prioritize too. Start by asking the level of influence a team has to make possible actions happen and ranking them accordingly.

Next, choose those items that you have the most influence on and then prioritize the ones you really want to happen. This simple, two-step process is a great activity for leadership development as it is something any leader can use with ease!

Fishbone Analysis

Making good decisions requires a complete knowledge of the problem at hand. For leaders who may no longer be on the frontlines of their department, it’s important to surface insights from their team and understand the root cause of any problem before making a decision.

In this leadership activity, start by choosing a problem area and adding it to the head of the fish. Next, brainstorm ideas that might cause the problem and add these as categories to the skeleton. Brainstorm on each of these categories and ask why is this happening in order to dive deeper and fully understand the issue at hand before making an informed decision as a group.

Leadership exercises for setting team values

Usually, the values of a leader are mirrored in the organization. If shortcuts are common practice for the leader, then she will see shortcuts made by her team members all across their projects. But if learning and self-improvement are important to the leader, then this will be a good foundation for these values in the whole organization, too.

To be more aware of your own values as a leader and then bring these ideas to your team, try these leadership exercises!

Explore Your Values

Explore your Values is a group exercise for thinking on what your own and your team’s most important values are. It’s done in an intuitive and rapid way to encourage participants to follow their intuitions rather than over-thinking and finding the “correct” values.

It’s a good leadership game to use to initiate reflection and dialogue around personal values and consider how various leadership styles might chime with some values more than others.

Explore your Values #hyperisland #skills #values #remote-friendly 

Your Values is an exercise for participants to explore what their most important values are. It’s done in an intuitive and rapid way to encourage participants to follow their intuitive feeling rather than over-thinking and finding the “correct” values. It is a good exercise to use to initiate reflection and dialogue around personal values.

Your Leadership Coat of Arms

In this leadership development activity, participants are asked to draw their own coat of arms symbolising the most important elements of their leadership philosophy. The coat of arms drawings are then debriefed and discussed together with the group.

This activity works well with equally well with leadership and team members. Creating a visual representation of what you stand for in the form of a coat of arms can help create a memorable asset you can refer to and rally behind in the future.

Your Leadership Coat of Arms #leadership #leadership development #skills #remote-friendly #values 

In this leadership development activity, participants are asked to draw their own coat of arms symbolising the most important elements of their leadership philosophy. The coat of arms drawings are then debriefed and discussed together with the group.

After the exercise you may prepare a coat of arms gallery, exhibiting the leadership approach and philosophy of group members

Team Purpose & Culture

Ensuring all group participants are aligned when it comes to purpose and cultural values is one of the jobs of a leader. Teams and organizations that have a shared and cohesive vision are often happier and more productive and by helping a group arrive at these conclusions, a good leader can help empower everyone to succeed.

Even with multi-discipline teams and organizations with different leadership styles, this method is an effective way of getting everyone on the same page. This is a framework you’ll likely use again and again with different teams throughout your career.

Leadership communication activities

Leaders are usually viewed as the parents of the organization. It is expected from them that they take care of their people and make sure that proper norms and rules are followed. One of the key areas where a leader has a large influence is the style and amount of communication between people.

Active Listening and giving effective feedback are critical skills to have as a leader but are also crucial for your team members. In fact, the issue that leaders rank as one of the biggest barriers to successful leadership is avoiding tough conversations, including giving honest, constructive feedback.

Develop good communication practices with the following leadership games and activities.

Active Listening

This activity supports participants in reflecting on a question and generating their own solutions using simple principles of active listening and peer coaching. It’s an excellent introduction to active listening but can also be used with groups that are already familiar with this activity. Participants work in groups of three and take turns being “the subject” who will explore a question, “the listener” who is supposed to be totally focused on the subject, and “the observer” who will watch the dynamic between the other two.

Active Listening #hyperisland #skills #active listening #remote-friendly 

This activity supports participants to reflect on a question and generate their own solutions using simple principles of active listening and peer coaching. It’s an excellent introduction to active listening but can also be used with groups that are already familiar with it. Participants work in groups of three and take turns being: “the subject”, the listener, and the observer.

Trust battery

Every time you work together with someone, your trust battery – the trust you have towards a certain person, or the ‘emotional credit’ that person has in your eyes – either charges or depletes based on things like whether you deliver on what you promise and the social interaction you exhibit. A low trust battery is the core of many personal issues at the workplace.

This self-assessment activity allows you and your team members to reflect on the ‘trust battery’ they individually have towards each person on the team and encourages focus on actions that can charge the depleted trust batteries.  It also works great when promoting virtual leadership and working with online teams!

Trust Battery #leadership #teamwork #team #remote-friendly 

This self-assessment activity allows you and your team members to reflect on the ‘trust battery’ they individually have towards each person on the team, and encourages focus on actions that can charge the depleted trust batteries.

Feedback: Start, Stop, Continue

Regular and constructive feedback is one of the most important ingredients for effective teams. Openness creates trust, and trust creates more openness. This is an activity for teams that have worked together for some time and are familiar with giving and receiving feedback. The objective of Start, Stop, Continue is to examine aspects of a situation or develop next steps by polling people on what to start, what to stop and what to continue doing.

For those in charge of online leadership, it’s vital to find ways of having difficult conversations in constructive ways virtually – try this method when working to resolve issues with your distributed team!

Feedback: Start, Stop, Continue #hyperisland #skills #feedback #remote-friendly 

Regular, effective feedback is one of the most important ingredients in building constructive relationships and thriving teams. Openness creates trust and trust creates more openness. Feedback exercises aim to support groups to build trust and openness and for individuals to gain self-awareness and insight. Feedback exercises should always be conducted with thoughtfulness and high awareness of group dynamics. This is an exercise for groups or teams that have worked together for some time and are familiar with giving and receiving feedback. It uses the words “stop”, “start” and “continue” to guide the feedback messages.

Reflection: Team

All leaders know the value of structured and considered reflection. Teams that take the time to reflect and improve are those that can grow and by creating an environment of reflection, team leaders and managers can help their group move forward together.

This method is effective for both offline and virtual leadership development. It helps a group progress from individual reflection through to full group discussion in a way that encourages constructive thought and minimizes potential frustration or antagonistic conversation. 

Leadership conflict resolution activities

One of the most important leadership skills you’ll want to develop is the ability to mediate and resolve team conflicts. Even the most connected and effective teams can run into conflict and it will fall to managers and team leaders to help get things back on track.

Even for established leaders, navigating conflict can be difficult! These leadership development activities are designed to help groups manage and resolve conflicts more effectively.

Giving leaders a framework they can trust and use with their team right away is always a good use of time, and we’d recommend teaching these methods to all new leaders!

What, So What, Now What?

It’s easy to get lost in the woods when it comes to managing conflict. Helping a group see what happened objectively and without judgment is an important leadership skill, and this framework helps make this process easy.

Start by working with the group to collect facts about what happened before moving towards making sense of them. Once everywhere has been heard and given space to process these facts, you can then move towards suggesting practical actions. By following this kind of framework, you can manage a conflict in a pragmatic way that also ensures everyone in a group can contribute.

Conflict Responses

All of us can be guilty of handling conflicts in a less than ideal manner. Part of developing as a leader is identifying when something didn’t go well before finding ways to do things better next time.

In this leadership activity, ask the group to provide examples of previous conflicts and then reflect on how they handled them. Next, ask everyone to reflect on how they might change their behavior for a better outcome in the future. As a leader, use this opportunity to lead the way and be honest and vulnerable. It’s your role to provide a model for interaction and its always worthwhile to see how you can do better as a people manager dealing with conflict too!

Bright Blurry Blind

Finding opportunities to reframe conflict as an opportunity to solve problems and create clarity is a very useful leadership quality. Often, conflict is a signifier of a deeper problem and so finding ways to surface and work on these issues as a team is a great way to move forward and bring a group together too.

In this leadership activity, start by asking the group to reflect on the central metaphor of bright to blind issues or topics, based on whether the problem is out in the open or unknown. Next, invite small groups to ideate on what issues facing the team are bright, blurry, or blind and then discuss them as a group. By working together to illuminate what is blurry or blind, you can create a one-team mentality and start resolving problems that can lead to conflict too.

The Art of Effective Feedback Workshop

All leaders will need to give effective feedback in order to help their team develop and do great work. The best leaders also solicit feedback from their direct reports and use this is an opportunity to grow. But how can you teach these feedback skills and help leaders develop this important skill?

Check out our Effective Feedback Workshop template for a complete agenda you can use to develop this leadership skill. You’ll find a ready-to-go workshop with a guide and PowerPoint presentation you can use to help anyone in a leadership role give and receive better feedback.

Workshop design made easy

Designing and running effective workshops and meetings is an important leadership skill; whether it’s staying organized and on time during your daily stand-ups or planning more involved sessions.

With SessionLab, it’s easy to create engaging workshops that create impact while engaging every member of your team. Drag, drop and reorder blocks to build your agenda. When you make changes or update your agenda, your session timing adjusts automatically, saving you time on manual adjustments.

Collaborating with stakeholders or clients? Share your agenda with a single click and collaborate in real-time. No more sending documents back and forth over email.

Explore how you and your team might use SessionLab to design more effective sessions or watch this five minute video to see the planner in action!

Now over to you…

I hope you have found some useful tips for leadership development workshops above. Now we’d love to hear from you!

What are your favorite leadership workshop ideas and training exercises for leadership development? Did you incorporate any of them into your facilitation practice?

Have you tried any of the activities above? Let us know about your experiences in the comments.

These activities create space for fun and play in big teams, whatever your environment. In this post, we’ll share our favorite large group games alongside tips for running them too!

Whenever you design a session, you’ll want to consider the number of participants so you can plan activities appropriately. With very large groups, it gets harder to involve everyone, but it’s important that you do. Research has proven that play is vital not only at home or in the classroom, but at work too!

These large group games are designed to help you encourage play, connect and team build with groups of twenty or more people. They are also easy to run in parallel in smaller groups and are designed so that everyone can easily organize themselves easily.

We’ve categorized them for the following purposes, so you can find a suitable activity whether you are running a specific event or are looking for ideas for large group games you might use in the future!

Group games for breaking the ice

Do you need some large group games to get people moving and raise the energy level in the room? Or an activity that helps to break the ice and get participants comfortable talking to each other?

Consider these exercises and group activities for kicking off your next training workshop or large group team building session. They’re great to get large groups comfortable with one another in a fun, playful way.

Rock-Paper-Scissors Tournament

This is fun and loud energizer game based on the well-known “Rock, Paper, Scissor” game. People play against each other in pairs until the first win. But instead of the losing players becoming eliminated from the tournament, they become a fan of the winner, and they cheer for them as the winner plays against a new opponent. You repeat the process until there are only two players left with a huge fan base cheering for them. The last two players have to play until one has won twice.

As this group activity tends to get loud, it’s best to play it somewhere outside. The great thing about this game is that it works whether you’re looking for a small group activity or large group game – it scales very easily and requires very little preparation!

Doodling Together

Doodling Together is a fun and creative game where the group gets to collaboratively draw postcards through a series of instructions as participants complete the postcards started by others. You can simply use this technique in parallel groups as the instructions are easy to follow.

It is a great group activity to establish creative confidence, collaborate effortlessly and build capacity for working together as a workshop group. Large group games rarely have the potential to be more hilarious and creative!

Bang!

Bang is a group game, played in a circle, where participants must react quickly or face elimination. One person stands in the middle of the circle as “the sheriff”, pointing at other players who must quickly crouch while those on either side of them quickly “draw”.

This is a good activity to generate laughter and it can also help with name-learning for groups getting to know each other. For a party or event with more than 30 people, it is best to play it in parallel groups. If you’re looking for energizers for large groups, this is one of the best group games to help get people excited and raise their energy level.

3 Question Mingle

In this group game, every participant creates three thoughtful questions that they want to ask other group members to get to know them better. People start to mingle to ask and answer questions in pairs. After asking a question and listening to the answer, they hand over that question. Thus, in each one-on-one meeting, participants will swap one question each.

This allows your team to learn interesting facts about each other and works with a group size of up to 50-60 people. A more thoughtful group game, 3 Question Mingle is great whether you’re working with internal teams or at a conference where you’re trying to encourage participation.

Group Order

Help teams get to know each other better with this fast, simple ordering game. Start with everyone standing and milling around your space and ask them to organize themselves into a line based on a criteria such as height, number of pets, time at your company or something else entirely! Helping friends learn something new about each other while getting into a line is a great addition to a team building session, and can help kick-off any group event.

Though the number of people playing is dependant on available space, I’ve found this quick game a hit, especially playing with ideas and ordering criteria that are a little outside of the box!

Icebreaker: The Group Map

Large group icebreakers are a wonderful opportunity to get to know each other and share a little about yourself with the team. This game invites participants to imagine the available space as a map of the world and place themselves where they are from.

This first step is often energetic as people try to find their relative geographies and move around the space. Next, ask your team to reflect on where they are from and then share some positive memories or experiences from that place. As with any large group activity, it’s helpful to go first and demonstrate the kind of thing people should share and set things off in a fun, light mood.

Apple, Orange and Banana!

Complexity isn’t your friend with a large group. Sometimes, all you need is a quick game with simple instructions in order to get things kicked off!

Apple, Orange and Banana! is a fast, active energizer that is great for teams of any size. Start by asking the group to form a circle and put their hands on the shoulders of the person in front of them. Next, ask everyone playing to jump forward when you say apple, jump back when you say orange and then jump and turn 180 degrees to put their hands on the shoulders of the person who has behind them. Work up to combining multiple commands to keep your team on their toes and generate lots of laughter too!

One Word Method

Some of the best games for playing with big groups of people are the simplest. This word game invites everyone in the room to contribute a single word to a collective sentence that grows as you go round the group.

I love running this game with kids and adults alike, and it’s really fun to see how things change as every player contributes a word. It also scales well with any number of players and it’s easy for people to learn and improve at with repeated turns. If you’re looking for a hilarious way to spend time with others without a need for equipment, this is a guaranteed hit where everyone wins!

Team building games for large groups

Facilitation techniques that help build team spirit, encourage teamwork and are suitable for running with lots of people are important to have in your toolkit.

These large group games put an emphasis on fostering trust and openness for better collaboration and managing team dynamics effectively. You could use them to initiate meaningful conversation or engage your party in engaging tasks where they work together in order to win.

Working together towards a common goal is often essential to increase cohesion within teams and you should definitely include such activities in a team building or development workshop. They’re also great for bringing a sense of play and fun to proceedings and encouraging everyone in your team to get involved.

Draw your Coat of Arms

This group game helps group members to get to know each other better through a creative drawing exercise: Each participant draws their own coat of arms – a design that is unique to themselves, representing important characteristics, achievements and values of its owner.

If you want to direct the focus of this game then you can instruct your team to the best question to answer in each segment of the Coat of Arms. (E.g. What is something you are very good at? What is something your colleagues don’t know about you?).

When people are finished drawing, they present their work to in their group. The presentation part is practical to do in smaller groups. And whether you have a small or large group, you can arrange a neat Coat of Arms gallery by sticking all the drawings on the wall of the workshop room. Large group games where participants have something to show at the end can be especially effective and can really set the stage for a productive, interactive workshop.

Marshmallow Challenge

In eighteen minutes, teams of 3-5 people must build the tallest free-standing structure out of 20 sticks of spaghetti, one yard of tape, one yard of string, and one marshmallow. The marshmallow needs to be on top.

Since the instructions are fairly simple, it is easy to scale this activity up to 20-30 groups playing in parallel and competing who builds the highest structure. It emphasizes collaboration, group communication, leadership dynamics and problem-solving strategy – everything you want in your large group games. Also, there are marshmallows. All group activities are better with marshmallows!

Helium Stick

The Helium stick group activity gives a simple challenge to teams that require teamwork and coordination to manage. People are lined up in two rows facing each other, 5 to 10 people per row, depending on the length of the sticks you have for the game. Participants point with their index finger and hold their arms out in a way that a stick can be horizontally laid on their index fingers.

The task is to lower the stick to the ground while everyone’s index fingers stay in contact with the rod. Why Helium Stick? Often, the stick will rise first, like helium!

You can easily scale this activity for larger teams, just have as many sticks as the number of lines you will create, and the sub-groups will compete against each other who manages to lower their stick first. A gentle sense of competition can be great for bringing people together – try mixing teams if you’re working with multiple departments and encourage people who don’t normally interact to work together in this group activity.

History Map

Creating something collaboratively is a wonderful way of building team spirit with a large group or party. When we find time to reflect on our shared history and create something tangible as a result, even better!

Begin by rolling out a large piece of paper and draw a timeline representing a shared project, experience or the history of your group. Next, instruct everyone to use the materials provided (colored pens, pencils, even collage materials!) to add memorable experiences and moments to the timeline. History Map is a great activity to run with any number of people, though be sure you bring enough materials for everyone to get involved!

This activity works great on an online whiteboard, and be sure to encourage your virtual team to use GIFs and videos to illustrate the map further! Debrief by going round your team and inviting commentary and reflection.

Cross the Circle

While group discussions can be an effective way of helping bring everyone together, this can be time-consuming and unwieldy, especially with large groups. This activity is a fast, playful way to uncover commonalities and bring everyone together.

Begin with all the players around a circle except for one, who stands in the middle. The person in the middle then makes a statement such as “Cross the circle if you can speak a second language,” or “Cross the circle if you’ve worked here more than three years.” Instruct those who match the statement to cross the circle, though the last person to cross must then stand in the middle and make a new statement.

Continue this game as time allows, and try to give everyone a spot in the middle of the circle! It’s always interesting to note what everyone asks, and this approach allows the team to learn something new about each other too,

Egg drop

This classic group activity is a proven method of bringing a team together for a shared goal while also generating some laughs. Split your participants into two or more teams and provide each team with an egg, a heap of straws, tapes and any other crafting material you wish. Next, ask each group to create a structure that will allow the egg to fall over 7 feet without breaking. To add complexity, add some additional rules for building the structure, a time limit or some other constraint.

When designing a session for groups of more than 20 people, it pays to be organized.

In SessionLab, it’s easy to create a structured agenda for any group event or workshop. Add an opening section, core group activities and closing exercises to build your session in minutes.

Add clear timings and instructions for every activity to stay on track. Need to make changes on the day? Your event timing will automatically adjust so you’ll stay organized, whatever changes!

Party games for large groups

Classic party games are a great way to bring people together, even outside of a party environment. A sense of familiarity can help rouse any hesitant participants and they’re a proven method of helping people having fun.

While all of the games in this post could be used in a party setting, these large group party games are especially conducive to a party atmosphere. Whether at work, home or some other gathering, bring these party games to help engage any large group.

Wink Murder

Inspired by the classic party games Werewolf and Mafia, Wink Murder is a fun game that asks an assassin try to “murder” other players by winking at them.

First, get the group in a circle. Next, get a folded piece of paper for each player and put a cross on one of them. Distribute the papers and let the group know that whoever gets the cross is the assassin. While they attempt to wink and murder the other team, the other players must guess who is the assassin and accuse accordingly. If they guess right, they win. If they guess wrong, they are out of the game.

Snowball

When you bring a large group together, there is almost always a period where everyone is feeling out the room and getting to know each other. Combining this stage with a fun, light activity is a wonderful way of breaking the ice and energizing the team too!

In Snowball, start by asking players to write the answer to five questions relating to a topic of your choosing on a piece of paper. Then, instruct players to join you in a circle in the middle of the room and crumple up their papers into a ball and get ready: you are about to have a snowball fight!

After play has gotten a bit rowdy, stop the game and invite each person to pick up the snowball closest to them. (Pick up another one if someone finds their own!) Finally, ask people to find who wrote the answers on the snowball they’re holding, have a quick chat, and then introduce them to the group!

Human Knot

Solving a puzzle as a team is a great way to bring a large number of people together. In this large group party game, start by organizing people into groups of 7-16 people and ask them to stand in a circle where they are close enough to reach and touch other players. Next, ask each person to close their eyes and connect hands with two other people. Have everyone open their eyes and try to untangle the human knot without breaking the chain.

This activity asks people to engage their problem solving skills while also getting to know each other better! It’s a fun game that scales well to very large groups with multiple human knots being played simultaneously.

What are you doing?

Improv games are a great way to introduce a sense of fun and creativity to any gathering. This group activity asks that a volunteer enters the centre of the room and starts miming an action.

When someone is ready to guess what the action is, they enter the circle and guess the action. The first player then comes up with another action the next player must perform and whispers it to them. They then mime that action for the rest of the group to guess. Encourage participants to be creative in the actions they mime and give to other players and hilarity will often ensue!

Charades

Charades is a classic game for both large and small groups for good reason. It’s fun, easy to teach and often brings a party together around shared jokes and memorable moments.

In a live setting, hand out paper and pens and ask each person to write words that they think would be fun or challenging to act out. Players then draw a a word at random and act it out for the rest of the group to guess.

Below, we’ve also included a version you can use to guess and have fun with teams online. You can replicate the act of writing down prompts using your online whiteboard and have people guess on webcam for a fun alternative that works great in gallery mode, even with groups of more than 20 people.

Active games for large groups

Most teams can benefit from getting away from their desks, standing up and having fun as a group. These activities involve lots of physical activity, running, and movement and can be run in a variety of spaces. There’s some crossover with the outdoor games you’ll see below, but these games can also work great in smaller spaces too!

Whether it’s for a party, team-building session, school event, or conference, try adding one of these ideas to your agenda when you need a burst of energy and physical activity in your schedule.

Giants, Wizards, Elves

This fantasy inspired game where points are awarded to Giants, Elves and Wizards is a fun one to bring to any party or event. To start, split your group into two teams. Each group forms a circle and decides what character they are going to all play for that round. Next, each group stands in a line facing each other and on the count of three, act out the role they have chosen.

Giants put their hands above their heads and roar. Elves put their hands over their ears to make them appear more elvish and make an elvish noise, while Wizards put their hands out as if casting and spell and making a buzzing noise.

When you face off, remember that Giants beat Elves, Elves beat Wizards and Wizards beat Giants. The winning team then has the chance to tag the other team before they get to the safe zone. Everyone who is tagged joins the winning team and you can repeat the game until only one team remains!

Spy

Start by getting all the players to stand in a circle. Tell them they are all spies, and that the aim of the game is not to be caught by the spy catcher. Ask them to silently guess who they believe is the spy catcher and to select one other person who will be their bodyguard. Do this without telling anyone! Next, ask participants to run around and try and position themselves so that their chosen bodyguard is between them and the spy catcher.

This is a great game to get people and energized, and it’s fun to debrief too! Especially if friends may have accused others of being a spy in order to win! Players might try and guess who they thought the spy catcher was or talk about how even a few simple rules can create utter chaos.

Human Machine

Improvisation and silliness combined with physical activity is a sure-fire way of getting a large group engaged in the fun! Start this game by explaining that each team will collaboratively create a machine using their bodies. Choose one person to start by improvising the sounds and movements of a part of a machine or robot. Everyone else observes and then one by one, they join the machine and improvise another part.

This can also be a fun game to play with two teams in tandem, or by briefing the players to create a collaborative machine with a particular purpose, such as generating power or cooking a complex meal. This game is best when played with large teams where the machines can become big and very energetic. Just make sure you have enough room!

The Viking

When looking to engage your team in physical activity, why not take a leaf from the pillaging toolkit of our favorite Nordic invaders? We’ll stop short of any actual raiding, but this game encourages participants to shout Norse words and physical actions to build energy as a team.

Start with everyone standing in a circle. One person begins by shouting the word “Mjolner!” and air punches to the left or right to transfer the role of Viking. Play proceeds loudly and actively, as players respond with different words and by throwing the role of Viking around the room. This is a playful game that works to bring a lot of noise and energy to big teams!

Dance, Dance, Dance.

No prizes for guessing the subject of this active game! Start by organizing everyone into groups of three to five people. Instruct the group that when you start playing a song, one player in each group becomes the leader and starts dancing. Everyone else must follow their moves. When the music changes, another player must then start dancing and lead the group.

This is a fun game to play with friends and for warming up new teams alike. For bonus points, invite participants to contribute a song to a shared playlist before your session so they recognize their favorite song as you go or can guess who contributed what track! I also like to award points after every round for the most exuberant or creative dance moves though when the goal is to have fun, every player wins!

Red Ball

In this improv game for large groups, participants are asked to pass imaginary objects around the circle, beginning with a red ball and ending up with objects like the keys to a Ferrari, a wriggling cat, a sleepy baby and more.

What begins as a quiet group game can quickly become a hotbed of creative chaos that encourages the group to act out the passing of various objects with energy. You might even give the group the opportunity to choose what to pass around next and give players points based on how they correctly (or incorrectly!) handle what’s given to them.

Fun outdoor games for large groups

When the weather allows, it’s great to take your team outside to play group games in the fresh air. These activities benefit from the outdoor setting as they require space to be run effectively.

Some of these games include asking your group to spread out, and a few of them have a bonus angle of including natural elements that can take advantage of your setting too. These are great games to play with young people and adults alike and always help raise the level of group energy!

Blind Square – Rope Game

Seemingly simple games are a wonderful way to engage large teams. We love that this activity encourages everyone to work together towards a common challenge while helping bring individual skills to the surface.

In this outdoor-friendly activity, begin by explaining that all a team has to do is make a length of rope into a perfect square. They have fifteen minutes to plan what they are going to do before everyone is blindfolded and play can commence. It’s so fun to see plans form and fall apart, and this activity works with kids and adults perfectly. Just remember to bring enough blindfolds for everyone! With especially large groups, separate into two teams and see who can create the most perfect square!

Spider Web

Games you can play outdoors with your team are great ways to enjoy the weather, spread out, and also be closer to nature while teambuilding.

This activity requires two ropes, some strong poles or trees, and a supervisor for each team playing. Safety and fun go hand-in-hand when it comes to large groups! Start by tying your ropes from one tree to the other to form a rectangle. Connect string between the top and bottom to form holes in a variety of shapes and sizes. Next, instruct your team that the aim of the game is to get all the members of the group through the web without touching the string or knocking the web.

This is a great game for encouraging players to work together and problem solve in the moment while also having a lot of fun!

Crocodile River

Getting outside is a wonderful way to break up a team-building session and put people into a new frame of mind. This can create a great foundation for setting hypothetical challenges such as trying to cross a treacherous river as a group.

This game asks two teams to work together to collect planks and get everyone in their group across the river. The challenge is that the planks are magic, and sink when not in contact with a person. We love that this game encourages collaboration and critical thinking, while also being fun enough for a party of adults or kids to engage and have fun as a group.

Equilateral Triangles Collaboration

This large group game is a great way to introduce the topic of collaboration in an approachable and fun way. Get all your players standing and start by explaining that everyone in a group should choose two people with whom they will form an equilateral triangle but they do not say who those people are. Next, everyone’s goal is to move around and form that triangle with the other players without verbally communicating.

This game can end up with some hilarious outcomes as your group maneuvers around while aiming to get in sync with one another! It also has some very teachable lessons about clear communication and team alignment you can slot into a larger workshop or conference program. I often like to play a second round to help my team see if they can do better and apply the lessons from the previous round.

Flamingo & Penguins

Getting outside is a great opportunity for movement and running around. Whatever the age of your group, players often benefit from the extra energy and fun of trying to catch other players and

The instructions for this game are simple. One player starts as a flamingo who must then chase the penguins and give them a little peck on the head to make them a flamingo. The last person to be a penguin is the winner!

Demonstrate how each role moves – one arm is raised to imitate the Flamingo‘s head and it lifts its knee with slow, swinging movements, while a Penguin is walking with waddling, fast, small steps – and then send the group on their way!

Stress Balls

Passing information from one person to another in a very large team can be difficult, whether you’re working with adults or kids! Stress balls is a fast paced game where everyone playing gets to practice their communication and teamwork skills in order to win.

Start by getting your team into a circle and as them to throwing a ball around to represent the movement of a message. Run consecutive rounds and increase speed, more balls and rules that reverse direction to keep everyone on their toes. I love using this game to teach some lessons about team communication while also generating energy and laughter!

Near and Far

Warming up a group of more than 20 people at the same time can be a challenge. In this energizing group game, get everyone outside and invite them to silently choose one person to stay close to and another to stay away from. Next, ask your team to start playing, using the near and far rules to move around the space without talking. You’ll quickly notice some interesting dynamics and perhaps a bit of chaos as people try to figure things out!

Near and Far is a wonderfully simple game you can use to teach the importance of communication and connections while having fun and being active. Perfect for a large group session with both new and established teams.

Large group facilitation techniques

Quick games like charades are undeniably effective at getting things rolling, and fun group activities are essential for getting a team engaged, but what if you need to go deeper?

There are dedicated facilitation methods that work really effectively if you need certain conversations to happen in large groups. The techniques below can be used as core group activities for planning and facilitating group workshops with your team. They tend to have only a few guiding principles and rules, which allows smaller groups to organize and manage themselves during a workshop.

Open Space Technology

Open Space Technology – developed by Harrison Owen – is a method perfectly suited for organizing and running large-scale meetings where participants self-organize themselves to find solutions for a complex issue. There are only a few rules guiding the structure of the event, and the agenda is created by the teams attending.

It is a great method for tackling important and complex problems where the solutions are not obvious. The technology can even accommodate hundreds of people!

Open space group activities can be incredibly productive, though remember that there is a degree of self-determination here, and the individual groups in the open space are only as good as their members and the set-up of the session. If you’d like to see a complete open space workshop agenda, you can find an example template here.

World Café

World Café, developed by Juanita Brown and David Isaacs, is a simple yet powerful method to host large group dialogue and is well known among this style of group activity. Facilitators create a cafe-style space and provide simple guidelines for the groups of people to discuss different topics at different tables. Participants switch tables periodically and getting introduced to the previous discussion at their new table by a “table host”.

The structure of this method enables meaningful conversations driven completely by participants and the topics that they find relevant and important. World Cafe works great when slightly informal, with a relaxed cafe-style atmosphere. Group activities like this benefit from the setting of the right tone – make sure to get this right and brief your team before you begin!

Conversation Café

While the World Café is a structured process to encourage the cross-pollination of ideas in a large group, the Conversation Café is structured to begin a dialogue regarding a provocative or complex question. So, here the team members do not switch tables but participate in four rounds of conversation with taking different approaches to exchange opinions and discuss the same topic in depth.

This more focused group activity format helps to build trust and connection between teams and is therefore well-suited to handle controversial or difficult topics among diverse participants. Again this method is very practical when dealing with large groups by setting up parallel discussion groups.

1-2-4-All

This is an idea generation method that is really easy to scale into large groups, yet still allows every participant to actively take part in the process. You split your team into groups of four, share the challenge or question that people should focus on, then kick off the following sequence of activities in the parallel groups: at first, silent self-reflection by individuals, then generate ideas in pairs, and then share and develop further the ideas in the circle of four people.

At the end of the process, the best ideas from each group should be shared with the whole audience. This method allows you to leverage the whole group’s intelligence and ensure everyone will be included. We love this activity as it allows any number of people to contribute without difficulty!

Dot voting

Dot voting – or ‘dotmocracy’ – is a method for prioritizing options and making decisions by a group. Every participant receives a set of colorful sticky dots and they place them next to the ideas they find best – the ideas need to be written on post-its or on a board before the voting starts.

There are different variations: you may give multiple dots to people and they can choose how many dots they assign to each option they like. This tool quickly helps a group to recognize – without spending time on discussions – which options are the most popular. Using group activities that are time efficient can help ensure you cover everything in your agenda.

One thing to watch out for is group bias. The more voting dots an option collects during the process, the more appealing it may become to get further votes from the participants who still have to assign their dots. For this reason, it is wise to use dot-voting not as a final instrument to select the best option, but as an indicator of which few options are the most popular.

Curious to see how this activity fits in a complete process? Check out our Design Sprint 2.0 template for inspiration.

Large group activities for closing a session

So you opened your workshop with large group games that were fun and inclusive, and then included group activities that got the group talking and making important decisions. How then, should you finish the day? What group activities help a team reflect and come away from a workshop with a sense of accomplishment?

The below facilitation techniques will help to effectively close a large group session with any number of people. They are simple, time-bound and allow every group member to share their opinion and find the key takeaways after a workshop or event.

Remember that you should close a session with the same attention and enthusiasm you started with. Group activities such as those below help ensure the energy and success of the session are carried forward and followed up upon.

One-breath feedback

‘Feedback’ has a quite controversial perception. Have you ever met this situation? Someone is asked to present back after a group session and it gets unfocused. It goes on long it’s off the point and people start losing concentration It’s sometimes known as ‘death by feedback’ and can change a group’s perception of the entire session.

This team activity helps to maintain attention and forces everyone to stay concise during a closing round with a natural limit: You are only allowed to share your opinion with just one breath – that is usually no longer than 30 seconds for most people.

In case you have a large group, it works most effectively if you split up the group into circles of 10-15 participants, in order to keep the feedback round under five minutes. Remember that group activities that are timeboxed in this manner can help keep the energy up and ensure you cover everything you need to in time.

Feedback Mingle

Feedback Mingle is a great closing group activity to generate positive energy in any team. At the end of the session, group members are invited to give feedback to every other member of the group via post-it notes. You can use prompt questions to direct the feedback, such as “What I appreciate the most about you…” and “My challenge to you going forward is…”.

After people finished writing a post-it note to everyone else in the group, invite them to mingle and deliver the feedback to each other. The feedback should always happen one-on-one, shared verbally. If you have larger groups, create smaller groups of people who worked together on group activities during the event.

Letter to Myself

You can use this group activity at the end of a workshop or training program to inspire future action. Participants write and send a letter to their future self, in relation to how they will apply the insights and learning they got during the course. For instance, you may ask them to focus on a simple question: “What will I achieve by a certain date?”

When explaining the task, tell the group that you will post the cards/letters in X number of months, and that they should take that into account when writing. You can define the timeframe with the group. Since participants reflect individually in this activity, there is no limitation to scaling this exercise in larger groups.

Designing large group events made easy

Running any event or activity with large numbers of people is a lot to handle. A well-structured agenda is key to facilitating with confidence and staying organized.

With SessionLab, it’s easy to build effective, engaging sessions for groups of any size. Drag, drop and reorder blocks to build your agenda. When you make changes to the plan, your session timing adjusts automatically.

When you’re ready to share your group event with participants and clients, you can invite them to collaborate or create a professional printout to help. you keep on track during the session.

Explore how to use SessionLab to design effective workshops and meetings or watch this five minute video to see the planner in action!

Now over to you…

When you run a group activity that generates energy, laughter and connection in your team, it can have a profound effect on the whole team. I hope you have found some useful tips for running large group games and workshop activities above. Now we’d love to hear from you!

What are your favorite facilitation techniques and games that work well with large groups in workshops, meetings or training sessions? Have you tried any of the methods or group activities above? Let us know about your experiences in the comments.

Want to see even more games and activities? Check out the SessionLab library of facilitation techniques for inspiration and proven methods you can use to improve your meetings, events, and workshops.

In this post, we’ll share a collection of tried and tested ice breaker games you can use to engage and energize groups of any size. Whether you just want to have fun, encourage team building or level-up your meetings, there’s an activity here for you.

An in-depth study from TINYpulse, an employee engagement company, studied more than 40,000 workers’ inputs from more than 300 companies globally. They found a correlation of 0.92 between employee fulfillment and their relationships with colleagues. Since you can end up spending more time with coworkers than with your family or partner, it is a topic that deserves much attention.

But how can you break the ice without also frustrating your team or making them roll their eyes? Using facilitator-tested and proven methods like those below are a surefire way to open your meetings more effectively and engage your team.

You’ll find classic conversation starters like Two truths and One Lie, fun games like The Marshmallow Challenge or even a Virtual Scavenger Hunt! You’ll find our collection of 61 of the best ice breaker games for work separated by category and find some useful tips for running them in your workshop or meeting too!

Purpose of ice breaker games

So how do you avoid creating a frustrating, patronizing ice breaker game that won’t make participants feel like they are wasting their time?

The benefits of a good ice breaker far outweigh any negatives. They can take care of introductions in a much more fun way than just simply going around the room and stating what’s on your business card. They can help people remember names, start conversations and create a positive atmosphere in moments.

When done right, ice breakers can quickly build a sense of community, set the tone for the upcoming session & give participants ownership of the learning ahead.

Icebreaker games are also a great way for people to share their expectations and for facilitators to introduce the topic of the day. They help participants to loosen up, understand each other more and enable better collaboration and networking. Last, but not least, it is a surefire way to energize the group and have everyone focused and ready to go.

Ready to design a session around your chosen icebreaker? SessionLab makes it easy to build a complete agenda in minutes. Start by dragging and dropping blocks, add your timings and adjust with ease to create a minute-perfect session. When you’re ready for feedback, invite collaborators and refine your agenda with ease.

Ice Breaker Games to Get to Know Each Other

Whenever you bring a group of people together for a meeting, project, or event, it’s helpful to get to know each other at the outset.

This does not only mean just memorizing names, but also involves getting the facilitator or leader of the session familiar with everyone and getting a read on the energy of the room.

One of the other major benefits of these games is in allowing group members to break free from dry or boring introductions and get to know each other more meaningfully. Let’s dive in!

• Just One Lie
• Diversity Bingo
• Group Map
• Two truths and One Lie
• Unique and Shared
• Passions Tic Tac Toe
• Jenga Questions
• Quotes
• Speed Dating Icebreaker
• Break the ice with the help of your key
• Whose Story is it?
• Trading Card Icebreaker
• Find Your Pair
• Toilet Paper Icebreaker
• Show and Tell

Just One Lie

This method is an adaptation of the well-known ice breaker ‘Two Truths And A Lie’ to create an activity that can be run throughout a day of a meeting or workshop.

Participants mingle and ask questions from each other while noting the answers on post-its. But everyone includes one lie. The result is that you have a board of interesting facts about all the participants, among them, one lie. Throughout the workshop you can return to these boards for participants to introduce each other and find out what was the lie.

Diversity Bingo

Diversity Bingo is one of our favorite group ice breaker games. This game help participants to get information on each other in a fun, competitive way.

First, create a bingo card containing a grid of squares with a statement or question in each square that will apply to some members of your group and is in line with the objectives of your class, workshop, or event. After each player gets a bingo card, they mingle around introducing themselves and finding other participants who can sign their cards indicating that a statement applies to him/her.

To avoid having people only talk to one or two people and filling up their card, limit the signatures they can give to 1 or 2 per card. When everyone has reached bingo or is super close, you can share something you’ve learned about each other, yourself and the experience of this ice breaker activity.

Group Map

Do you have people who come from many different places to your session? If you’re looking for fun icebreakers for meetings that are active, Group Map is a good bet!

A great way to get to know each other is to have participants place themselves on an imaginary map laid out in the room representing the country according to where they grew up. Ask them to share one internal value they got from that place, and why that is important for them.

Encourage people to share a short story if they want. Sharing customs and values from your childhood can create more understanding and help form stronger bonds – a hallmark of a good icebreaker.

​Two Truths and One Lie

A simple and classic ice breaker game. Each employee shares three statements about themselves – two truths, and one lie. Then, everyone tries to guess which is the lie by asking questions. Try to find out as many details about the statements as possible and watch the speaker’s reactions closely. The whole point is to learn facts about your peers while inserting an element of mystery.

This team icebreaker helps the group learn about each other and gives both introverts and extroverts an equal chance to reveal themselves and discover others’ assumptions. It’s been done before, but if you’re looking for simple ice breaker games for work, this is one everyone is sure to know and requires zero prep from the facilitator.

Unique and Shared

Create groups of 4-5 people, and let them discover what they have in common, along with interesting characteristics that are unique to a person in the group.

This icebreaker promotes unity as it gets people to realize that they have more common ground with their peers than they first might realize. As people become aware of their own unique characteristics, they can also help people feel empowered to offer the group something unique.

Passions Tic Tac Toe

The goal of this icebreaker game is to help the participants to get to know each other at the beginning of an event or to help identify their values during the later part of a training session.

Create a 3 x 3 grid for each participant and have them fill in each block with a different personal passion randomly. After the individual work, have everyone walk around the room and compare notes. When they find the same passion listed in both grids, ask them to sign for each other in the appropriate square. The winner is the participant who manages to have other people’s signatures on three lines (vertical, horizontal, or diagonal). You can continue the game to have as many winners as you like.

​Jenga questions

Jenga is the starting point of many fun gatherings. It’s a super easy ice breaker activity to explain and pick up & anyone can join any time. You can spice up a regular tower-toppling contest by writing intriguing questions on each block (or as many as you can).

When you draw each block, read the question out loud & answer before placing the piece on the top of the tower. This can ignite exciting conversations about everyday topics like favorite downtime activities to more in-depth stuff, like career and self-development goals.

Traditional games with a unique spin can often generate curiosity and engagement in a groups setting. Try having different kinds of icebreaker activities in your toolbox in order to overcome any potential resistance in your group.

Quotes

This fast-paced icebreaker activity allows participants to get acquainted with while also exploring something thought provoking and inspiring. Prepare a set of inspirational quotes prior to the session and the number of participants on individual slips of paper. Put the pile in the center of the room. Each participant picks up one quote, then picks a partner and begins to discuss what the quote says to them, if it is meaningful, and how.

Then after a minute or so the facilitator gives a signal and participants switch partners, and may switch quotes as well if they’d like. This can continue for 4-5 rounds for around 15 minutes. Choose quotes that relate to your meeting topic or company culture for an even more effective opening to your session!

Speed Dating Icebreaker

The goal of this game is to have a succession of very rapid conversations in an extremely short amount of time with as many people as possible. Have people sit in pairs, with colleagues that they don’t directly work with on a day-to-day basis. Determine the time limit (say 3 minutes for each conversation) and set a timer. When it starts, each pair has to start speed networking & find out as much professional info about the other as possible.

While it’s natural for group members to want to spend time with people they know, encouraging your team to mix is an important step to improving team cohesion. Team building icebreakers like this one are great for starting that process!

Break the ice with the help of your key

Games and activities that include physical objects can help ensure the session is memorable and specific to those people present. In this ice breaker, ask participants to sit in a circle and bring their keys with them.

Explain that they will get to know each other through their keys. Ask them that one by one present all the keys they have on their keychain and tell a few sentences about the area the key represents – the city or neighborhood they live in, the activity it represents (bike or locker key) or the person they received it from.

Be sure to start the circle yourself so the participants get the feeling of how it should be done. Bonus points if you can demonstrate openness and vulnerability for your group to follow!

Whose story is it?

Start this ice breaker game by writing your funniest or weirdest story on a small piece of paper. It has to be a true one, no fiction! Then fold the paper up and drop it into a bowl or other container.

The facilitator or the person leading the program randomly reads every story and group members guess who the writer is. This is a great way to get to know each other and find out new things, even if you’ve worked together for a long time.

​Trading Card Icebreaker

Starting a meeting by defining your personality and being creative is a great way to kick off a more involved team project.

This activity from Gamestorming works great because it lets people self-define and share their personality outside of their day-to-day work. This approach means people get to connect more meaningfully and authentically while also creating fun and memorable cards that serve as conversation pieces as the meeting progresses.

​Find your pair

Prepare word pairs, like salt and pepper, milk and honey, sail and wind, etc on separate pieces of paper. Tape one to each person’s back. People then have to walk around and ask closed questions (with a yes or no answer) to find out what their phrase is. Once they find out, they have to find their pair & by continuing to ask questions (these can be open or closed) they have to learn 3 new things about the other.

​Toilet Paper Icebreaker

This is one of those ice breaker activities that is easily prepared in most live settings – you only need one roll of toilet paper. Pass this around, and have everyone rip off how much they would usually use. Everyone will feel awkward & will not really see the point at the beginning & possibly think you’ve lost it.

When everyone has taken off a few squares, they should count them. The amount they have is how many fun facts they should reveal about themselves. A warning though: this is an activity that is best suited for more lighthearted occasions and you’ll want to know your audience a bit before trying this!

​Show and tell

Group icebreakers are important, even in teams that know each other well. For more established groups, where people are more familiar with each other, it’s always good to dedicate a day, or an afternoon for “show and tell”. Each team member gets the chance (not all at once of course) to showcase something – an object or a topic that they are interested in.

Try making this activity part of a group routine at the start of every team meeting for bonus points. Creating this habit gives less exhibitionist characters a chance to share and it is also a great practice to hone presentation skills and handle the attention & tricky questions.

Quick ice breaker games

When you have a tightly packed agenda, it’s useful to have some quick icebreakers you can use to warm up the group in a pinch. These activities are simple to explain, fast to run, and work great in large or small groups. They also can double as after-lunch energizers to encourage team members to engage in what’s next!

Here are some of our favorite games you can use to break the ice in a group in ten minutes or less! Prefer something that requires even less set-up? Check out our collection of icebreaker questions for a set of effective conversation starters.

• One Word at a Time
• Apple, Orange and Banana!
• Conversation Questions
• Diversity Welcome
• Stress Balls
• Object Meditation
• Name Game
• Have you ever? (Stand up if)
• Line Up

One Word at a Time

Ice breaker ideas can come from anywhere, and so can great ideas. Create a surprise sentence by saying one word at a time. Give a general topic. The first person in the group says one word to a topic. The next person continues with another word.

Eventually, the group creates a whole sentence by each member contributing only one word at a time. The outcome is always unexpected & almost always funny. Make sure people don’t say two words when using articles or pronouns.

Apple, Orange and Banana!

Some of the best quick icebreakers promote team bonding by simply encouraging the group to be silly and have fun. This game is designed to do just that!

Start by asking your group to stand in a circle with their hands on the shoulders of the person in front. Explain that when you shout either apple, orange or banana they must perform the associated action: moving forward, backward or spinning around. When the group is comfortable, mix it up by saying two or even three words in sequence!

This great icebreaker game gets everyone moving, generates lots of laughter, and is a wonderful activity to use after breaks too.

Conversation Questions

Sometimes the best and fastest icebreakers are also the simplest! Use this collection of 25 icebreaker questions as the basis for letting to group get to know each other, or have participants answer in rapid-fire!

Small groups might wish to mingle and ask questions one on one, while you might invite larger groups to answer questions by raising their hand to answer. Whatever way you go, these icebreaker questions are a great starting point for team bonding and helping participants get to know other group members.

Diversity Welcome

Quick icebreakers also have the potential to set the right tone for your meeting or workshop. The focus of his activity is to promote diversity and help create an inclusive environment for your session. Start by naming a possible trait of someone who may be present and saying they are welcome. For example, “If you love dogs, you are welcome here! If you prefer cats, you are welcome here!”

Slowly move into deeper territory by naming traits and concepts that resonate with your audience. With established groups, invite participants to share their own welcome, focusing on helping everyone in the room feel safe and welcome.

Stress Balls

We love games that not only function as a fun introduction but also offer a way to improve company culture. Stress Balls is a fast-paced icebreaker that helps highlight the importance of communication and teamwork while also encouraging lots of fun.

Begin by simply asking participants to stand in a circle and pass a ball to their left. Debrief and ask how the task went before asking participants to try again while moving the ball faster. Introduce further complexity until the game becomes a mess! While the result is chaotic fun, it also offers a very teachable lesson about how teams can communicate in order to achieve great results.

Object Meditation

Just because an icebreaker can be done quickly doesn’t mean it can’t also be mindful! This focused meditation activity is a wonderful way to open a meeting and encourage everyone to be present.

First, have everyone choose an object that is close to them and invite them to close their eyes. Next, ask the group to notice how they feel and to consider any feelings that aren’t serving them right now. Invite them to transfer these feelings into the object they are holding for the duration of the meeting and then come back to the room.

Combined with a quick debrief, this method is a great way to gently break the ice with your group. Check out the full method below for a script you can follow too!

Name Game

Use this ice breaker activity at, or very near, the start of a course, workshop or meeting where people don’t know each other to help get to know everyone’s names. Have the group sit in a circle where everyone can see the others. The first person says their name. The next person continues, but after saying their own name, they repeat the first person’s name. This continues with each person repeating one more name. Reassure people towards the end that it’s ok if they get stuck & encourage the others to jump in to help if anyone is lost.

​Have you ever? (Stand up if)

Prior to the workshop the facilitator prepares a list of questions which can only be answered with yes or no. These questions should begin with “Have you ever…?” or “Stand up if…”. The facilitator reads out the questions or statements one by one. For each statement the participants stand up if they could answer the statement with yes.

The questions should be designed to not be discriminatory, intimidating or insulting. Possible topics can be countries visited, dishes, games or sports tried, movies seen etc. This should be quite familiar to people before they attend the meeting or workshop and is quick and easy to understand – ice breaker ideas don’t need to be brand new to be effective!

Line Up

This is a quick ice breaker game where players have to form an orderly line without any discussion, or any verbal cues or help at all. The line is formed by predetermined criteria (like height, or color of each person’s eyes etc.). and gently asks people to start working together to get themselves into order.

With a more familiar group, try adding more complication to encourage your team to think more deeply. This icebreaker helps develop team collaboration and non-verbal communication, and it’s great when kicking of a training session with lots of talking later!

Ice Breaker Games for Meetings

Using an ice breaker at the start of a meeting is a great way to encourage group members to be present and get things started on the right foot. Effective opening activities energize everyone, helping them ‘arrive’ mentally and leave behind whatever task or thought they were previously working on.

They can also help clarify the objectives of the meeting and position the group for what’s coming next. While many of the ice breakers in this collection work well for work, we’ve found these ones especially effective. Here are some ice breakers for meetings to help ensure your next team meeting is a success!

• Coat of Arms
• One Word Exercise
• The real reason why you are here
• LEGO Metaphors
• Weather Check-in
• Rain Icebreaker
• Celebrate the wins in your team
• Mindfulness Icebreaker
• Purpose mingle

Coat of Arms

This game is a great way for players to introduce themselves and their colleagues. It’s especially fun for people who think they already know each other very well – almost every time there are at least a few surprises!

Sometimes these new nuggets of wisdom can have an immediate effect on the employees’ relationships, current projects or challenges. Since you have to draw, rather than explain, it serves double duty for topics like problem-solving, creative thinking and innovation. Fun icebreakers for meetings don’t get much better than this!

One Word Exercise

Pick a phrase that is central to the reason you’ve gathered and have everyone write down or say a word that comes to their mind in relation to it. If you’re leading a meeting about planning an upcoming project, ask participants to share one word that they think describes the goal or the processes that are needed.

Once everyone has shared their phrases, discuss the results. This ice breaker helps explore different viewpoints about a common challenge, before starting the meeting.

The real reason why you are here

When we first arrive in a meeting, we’re often carrying other things with us. The stress of unfinished work, thinking about the evening or just what we’re having for lunch. Encourage your team to be present and think about why they are in your meeting or workshop with this simple ice breaker that helps spark conversation.

Begin by asking the group to state the concious reason for being in the meeting, and then invite them to consider the deeper reasons for being in the session. The surfacing of these deeper reasons for being present can be surprising, but are often useful for the group to discuss while breaking the ice!

Weather Check-in

For some meetings, time can be short. Quick but fun icebreaker activities like this one can be an effective way of getting a read of how everyone is doing while still being time efficient.

Begin this ice breaker by asking each member of the group to share how they are feeling & what’s going on for them right now in the language of weather. For example, I’m feeling like it’s mostly sunny skies with a bit of a rain cloud looming or I feel like I’m in the eye of a tornado! I’ve found this game especially useful when working with remote teams, for whom a metaphor can feel like a safe way to share in a group setting.

LEGO Metaphors

Each participant gets a set of few LEGO bricks (identical sets to everyone – a few items, around 5-10 bricks per person will suffice). Everyone builds something that relates to the topic of the meeting.

Afterwards, everyone gets 30 seconds to explain what their building means (e.g ‘My Home’, ‘Interesting Experiment’, ‘The coolest computer ever’) and how it relates to the topic of the meeting. (Optional: the figures/buildings and the metaphors may be used later on to help discussions around the table.) Remember that icebreaker games for work don’t need to sacrifice fun, and some of the best team building icebreakers are creative and allow people to get in touch with their inner child!

Rain icebreaker

Encouraging everyone to be present and engaged at the start of your meeting doesn’t need to be complicated. By simply getting everyone in the room participating in the same goal, this icebreaker can quickly help everyone “arrive” in the session.

Start by having everyone in the front of the room rub their hands together vigorously. Row by row, get more people to join in until you reach the back of the room. Next, have the first row switch to clicking their fingers and proceed through the room in the same way. Go back and forth between clicking and rubbing in order to replicate the sound of rain and then invite the group to stop and enjoy a break in the shower.

Celebrate the wins in your team

An easy icebreaker that will have everyone feeling good before a meeting. Go around a circle and highlight a story – an action, decision or result – that can and should be praised from each team member. Something where they reached beyond their typical responsibilities and excelled.

Have everyone acknowledge and thank each other for surpassing expectations. This is a great mood booster – by lifting each other up, the energy just starts to vibrate in the room. Everyone likes to be recognized. Ice breakers for meetings that give people the chance to celebrate success can be key in setting a great tone for the meeting to come.

Purpose mingle

The best ice breaker games often have a very clear goal. You can use this method at the beginning of any meeting to set the stage and get people thinking about what they can contribute. It’s a simple way to get started and always gets results!

At the beginning of your session, have people walk around & share with others what they will contribute to that particular session. It’s a great way to enhance engagement & help people set goals and hold themselves accountable. It also makes others aware of everyone’s intent and can help prevent misunderstandings.

Mindfulness Icebreaker

Meetings can sometimes become difficult because attendees come in stressing about the topic or are distracted by things outside of the meeting.

In this mindful ice breaker, ask people to take a few moments to “check-in” with themselves and write down their worries, energy levels, and what else is on their mind. After everyone is done, they should rip up their answers and discard them. This helps them identify their state, let go of their worries and have better focus & more empathy towards others.

Fun Ice Breaker Games to Support Team Building

Ice breaker games are not only useful at the beginning of meetings or getting to know new people. They are also a great way to support team building, by creating a positive atmosphere, helping people relax and break down barriers.

Team building icebreakers can also reveal new information about colleagues that otherwise you wouldn’t discover during your everyday routine. Remember that successful teams are often those who’ve gotten to know each other better on a personal level too!

Team icebreakers such as those below are great for enhancing team bonding and empowering everyone in the group to move forward together. Let’s take a look!

• Break the Ice with The Four Quadrants Activity
• Team Jigsaw Puzzle Game
• Back to Back Drawing
• Scavenger Hunt
• Electric Fence Icebreaker
• Low Tech Social Networking

Break the Ice with The Four Quadrants Activity

The Four Quadrants is a fun and creative team icebreaker than can be adapted for any situation. It is super easy to prep for and set up – you only need large sheets of paper (flipcharts or similar) and markers. Have people draw up a 2×2 grid and ask them four questions. They should draw the answers in each quadrant.

Questions can cover topics like current challenges, stressors, defining moments, moments of pride, fears, desired outcome for the current gathering etc. Afterwards they can show each other their drawings and discuss their creations. The exercise is fun, colorful and visual and can be modified to work with any group and/or topic just by changing the questions.

Team Jigsaw Puzzle Game

Separate people into teams. Give each a very different jigsaw puzzle (with equal difficulty & number of pieces). Each group has the same amount of time to complete the puzzle.

The secret twist is to switch up a few pieces with the other groups beforehand! Fun icebreakers can help keep a team on their toes and encourage creative thinking – try ice breakers for meetings that include an edge of competitiveness and fun to really liven things up.

The goal is to finish before the others – so they must figure out collectively how to convince other teams to give up pieces they need. This can be through barter, merging or changing teams, donating minutes, etc.

This is a longer game, but one that is worth doing, since it encourages teamwork on several levels – internally and externally too.

Back to Back Drawing

Two people should sit facing away from each other. One receives a picture of an object or phrase. Without saying directly what they see, they should describe it to their pair without using words that clearly give it away. Their pair has to draw a specific picture.

The game requires two people to sit facing away from each other, where one team member is given a picture of an object or word. Without specifying directly what it is, the other person must describe the image without using words that clearly give away the image. This is a great team building game to develop verbal communication and is a fun alternative to more traditional icebreaker games.

Scavenger Hunt

Many people have great memories from a childhood scavenger hunt. Recreating this experience to let our the inner child and work as a team is one of our favourite icebreaker games for adults too! Start by creating a list of items that need to be gathered and then split your group into small teams to try and find them all to kick off your scavenger hunt.

Working with a remote or hybrid team? Try the virtual scavenger hunt below! Be sure to put in items that require a wide range of skills and thinking and diverse personalities to be completed successfully. A scavenger hunt is also a great opportunity to mix people into teams who don’t typically work together and bring them together with ice breaker games.

Electric Fence Icebreaker

This is a great energiser that requires players to move about as they build an imaginary electric fence. They have to try and cross it without touching it and getting “electrocuted”. The fence can be represented by a rope or a shoe string tied between two objects. It should be about waist high. Players can’t go under it, this is not limbo dancing!

They must also be touching a teammate with at least one hand at all times. This ice breaker activity requires quick brainstorming, problem-solving and negotiating other ideas. Make sure that people who are uncomfortable with physical contact have an option to not participate but still feel involved in the brainstorming part. Inclusive games make for some of the best ice breakers: be sure to bare this in mind when deciding on icebreaker games for work or your next meeting.

Low Tech Social Networking

The object of this ice breaker game is to introduce event participants to each other by co-creating a mural-sized, visual network of their connections. – great for medium size events where participants come from different organisations. All participants will need a 5×8 index card and access to markers or something similar to draw their avatar. They will also need a substantial wall covered in butcher paper to create the actual network.

Once their avatar is ready, they “upload” themselves by sticking their card to the wall. Then they find the people they know and draw lines to make the connections. This is one of our favourite ice breakers when working with large, multi-discipline groups where connections might not be immediately obvious.

Ice Breaker Games for Small Groups

While many of the icebreaker games above can be adapted for any group size, these activities are especially effective when working with groups of less than 15 people.

These small group icebreakers are great at using the extra space to create opportunities for team bonding and deeper sharing between team members. They’re also designed so you’re not left with awkward silences just because you don’t have a massive team taking part!

• Interview icebreaker
• Magic box
• Paper telephone
• Human knot
• Life map

Interview icebreaker

One of the major benefits of small group icebreaker games is space for participants to talk and get to know each other a little more than they would in a group of 20+ people. Interview is a playful way to get team members talking at the start of a session while also introducing the topic of the workshop or meeting.

Start by getting people into pairs. One person begins by being a reporter and then other will be the interviewee. For three minutes, the reporter will interview the other person on a chosen subject and attempt to get as much information as they can before switching roles. Encourage the group to really get into their roles and provide some example questions to guide the group toward the topic of the day.

Magic Box

Spending time in a small group is a great opportunity to get to know people a little more deeply. This game encourages players to share more about themselves than an average icebreaker, and it’s a fun way to kickstart creative thinking too!

Start by assembling a box of interesting objects (photos will do in a pinch!). Next, invite participants to choose an object without overthinking it and then explain who they are, why they chose the object and what they think the connection between the object and the workshop is.

Paper Telephone

Paper telephone is a fun icebreaker that encourages creativity and laughter by combining two classic games: telephone and pictionary. Start by handing out a stack of small papers and pens, and invite each team member to write a sentence on the first piece of paper. Players then pass their stack to the next person who must read the sentence and then create a visual representation of that sentence on the next piece of paper in the stack.

Play proceeds around the circle, with players needing to transform back and forth between words and images. Often, by the time you get your original stack back, the sentence has gone on a weird and wonderful transformation!

While you can play paper telephone with larger groups, the more people you add, the longer it takes. Doing this icebreaker in a small group means you have more time to share what people came up with and the journey you all went on together.

Human Knot

The human knot is a fun, physical icebreaker that is best played in groups of 7-16 people. It’s a great way to break the ice while also creating energy and a sense of fun.

Start by getting the group to stand in a circle and ask them to close their eyes. Next, everyone reaches out and links one hand with someone across the circle. Then they link the other hand with another person in the circle. Then, ask everyone to open their eyes and try to untangle the knot they’ve made without breaking the chain!

Life Map

Working with small groups creates an opportunity for greater depth. In this icebreaker game, invite team members to draw their life as a map, using common symbols and signs you might find on a map. Stop signs, deer crossings, mountainous areas…the choice of how to illustrate your life story is yours!

Give time after drawing for everyone to share and for others to ask questions. The connections, conversations and shared understandings that come out of this reflective icebreaker can set a wonderful right tone for the work ahead.

Ice Breaker Games to Improve Teamwork and Collaboration

Good ice breaker games usually all have a strong aspect of teamwork and collaboration as people work together in groups to accomplish a challenge or solve a puzzle. Therefore these team icebreakers can also be used as part of team building events and team development workshops. They are meant to fast-track group familiarity and increase the socialization process in a new or existing environment.

With increased social interaction, people naturally learn how to work together more productively – the mood can warm up between colleagues who are normally highly formal with each other. The best ice breakers have the power to strengthen coworker bonds, stimulate better brainstorming sessions, and create an atmosphere of inclusivity.

Here, we’ve collected ice breaker activities to help improve teamwork and collaboration in a more involved manner.

• The Marshmallow Challenge
• Egg drop
• Helium Stick
• Blind square – The perfect square
• Desert Island

The Marshmallow Challenge

In eighteen minutes, teams must build the tallest free-standing structure out of 20 sticks of spaghetti, one yard of tape, one yard of string, and one marshmallow. To complete the marshmallow challenge, the marshmallow needs to be on top and hopefully, not fall off! This icebreaker game emphasizes group communication, leadership dynamics, collaboration, innovation and problem solving strategy.

Genuinely fun icebreakers for meetings can be hard to find – The Marshmallow Challenge is one of those icebreaker games for work that feels almost like play. The Marshmallow Challenge was developed by Tom Wujec, who has done the activity with hundreds of groups around the world. Definitely give it a try.

Egg drop

This fun activity could be used as an icebreaker both for people who have just met and for already existing teams. Breaking people up into groups, each one needs a fresh egg, some straws, masking tape and other items for creating a package to protect the egg.

Using the raw materials provided, the team goal is to build a structure that will support a free-falling egg dropped from a predetermined height (e.g. 7 feet) without the egg breaking. Get to know you games with an element of danger are always fun ice breakers for meetings. This is a method that fosters team communication, collaboration and strategic thinking as well.

Helium Stick

Solving seemingly simple problems as a group to get everyone working together at the start of a workshop. This game requires one long, thin, light rod (e.g. a broom handle) and a bunch of curious participants!

First, line up people in two rows facing each other. Introduce the Helium Stick and ask participants to hold their index fingers out. Lay the Stick on their fingers & before letting go, have everyone adjust their position so the Stick is horizontal and everyone is touching it. The goal is to lower the Stick to the ground in a way that no one lets go of it at any time.

Pinching, grabbing, or holding on properly to the Stick is not allowed. If the group makes a mistake, they start from the beginning. Helium Stick is a fun icebreaker that asks participants to really engage with one another and we’d recommend it for any team building workshop!

Blind square – The perfect square

Blindfold your seated participants. Take a long string or rope with the ends tied together & place it in everyone’s hands. Leave the circle and ask them to form a perfect square from the rope without looking.

When people think they are finished, they can remove their blindfolds to see the result. Ice breakers for meetings don’t always include props or blindfolds, but deploying them effectively can make for a memorable ice breaker.

Blind Square is one of the icebreaker games you can use to highlight leadership and communication – some people will want to take charge, while others are more comfortable following direction. Also, it can be repeated after the first try to see if they can improve their collaboration.

Desert Island

Many of us will have played some variation of this ice breaker game before. This game asks you team: if you were trapped on a desert island, what would you use to survive?

Introduce participants to a list of possible items and have them choose the three they find most essential. Then, they’ll share the items they chose with the rest of the group. This activity works well with a remote team and with larger groups, you may want to separate people into smaller teams where they collaboratively strategize on which items to pick.

Fun Ice Breaker Games

The best ice breakers have the power to strengthen coworker bonds, stimulate better brainstorming sessions, and create an atmosphere of inclusivity.

They’re also incredibly fun to play, making them a welcomed break from regular work activities. They break down barriers that might exist between employees & make it easier for people to communicate with one another.

Ice breakers should also encourage lighthearted interactions that wouldn’t usually take place in the context of a normal workday. When the correct game is chosen, everyone benefits from the energy they bring to any meeting or event. Remember that even some business-critical meetings can benefit from a bit of levity and fun!

Here are some ice breaker ideas for when you just want to have fun with your team.

• Portrait Gallery
• What is my name
• Rock Paper Scissors Tournament
• Minefield
• Crazy Handshake
• The Movie Pitch Icebreaker
• Bang!
• Share a joke
• Sound Ball
• The No Smiling Icebreaker
• Hello Kitty

Portrait Gallery

This ice breaker activity is a fun one that requires some creativity. It enhances a sense of community because people have to draw the others as a group – not just between the drawers, but the recipients of the portraits too. The outcome is very visual and colorful and the result images can be put up in the meeting room afterward! Meeting ice breakers that produce physical results that can be shared can really help ensure the good vibes of the meeting continue afterward!

​What is my name

Stick the name of a well-known celebrity or public figure on people’s backs. Have players mingle and ask each other questions to find out who they are. This is a light game that initiates easy conversations without forced & awkward small talk. Make sure the figures are generally well recognizable. What is my name is one of those icebreaker games for work that is easy to set up and get going and is fun for all involved.

Rock Paper Scissors Tournament

This is a warm-up to really get a group energized. It is a game based on the traditional Rock Paper Scissors game but with a twist. The people who lost become fans and have to cheer for the players still in the game. The final is cheered on by a large crowd & the excitement is through the roof! If there are a larger number of people, you can have multiple tournaments. Fun icebreakers don’t need to be complicated. Keep your ice breaker simple and ensure everyone can get involved easily.

Minefield

Set up harmless obstacles in the room you’re meeting in. Use squeaky toys, whoopie cushions, bubble wrap and the like. Everyone takes turns going around the course while blindfolded, guided by their teammates. The goal is: help each to navigate through the minefield.

While this game often results in lots of laughter, it also helps teach the importance of clear communication and trusting your team.

Crazy Handshake

This ice breaker helps people ease into a group and brings out their creativity without a lot of effort. Splitting the group into pairs, each pair develops a creative handshake. Once done, the pair splits and each individual partners with another group member. The newly formed pair then teaches each other the original handshakes and together creates a new one. You can break up and pair off people as many times as you want.

The Movie Pitch Icebreaker

Divide players into several groups and have each team come up with an idea for a movie they want to make. They should prepare a pitch within 10 minutes. Once everyone had a chance to tell their idea, all players vote on which idea deserves ‘funding’.

The winners won’t start to make their film, but they should get awarded with either a funny object or some treats. We love using creative icebreakers like to ease people in and get used to collaborating and giving feedback ahead of the main discussion.

Bang!

For this game, you have to have quick reactions or you’ll be eliminated. Have everyone stand in a circle with one person in the middle as the ‘sheriff’. They must surprise other players by pointing to them. These people must quickly crouch and those on either side of them have to quickly ‘draw’ their weapons. If you are too slow, you switch places & become the sheriff.

This icebreaker is a wonderful way to increase group energy before starting a meeting in earnest, and it also helps people learn names too! If you’re working with an especially large group, note that it’s better to play in parallel before finishing with a final showdown!

Share a joke

Have new teammates tell a joke at their first all-hands meeting. This is a great way to encourage people to be vulnerable and also ensures the meetings start on a cheery note. Remember that opening activities needn’t be complicated to be effective and when looking for ice breaker ideas, don’t discount the simple joy of making others laugh!

Sound Ball

This is a simple icebreaker activity that energizes participants, and it’s also suitable for highlighting spontaneity and teamwork. The activity involves participants standing in a circle and throwing imaginary ball(s) to each other in increasing pace. When throwing the first ball, the person starting should make a special sound that has to be repeated by the catcher upon receiving the ball.

Once the ball is being thrown around at a fairly brisk pace, you can introduce another imaginary ball and start throwing it. When the group gets proficient at it, you can have three or four balls in play!

The No Smiling Icebreaker

This is a seemingly contradictory ice breaker that actually results in lots of smiles. Instruct everyone to keep a straight face and do not smile under ANY circumstance in the first five minutes of the meeting. People turn into children with an instruction like this, and immediately start looking at others, seeing how they are coping. The anticipation makes everyone giggly, so after a while they cannot suppress their laughter anymore. This activity takes zero prep and so is a great one to pull out at the last minute!

Hello Kitty

Starting a meeting with smiles and laughter is a great way to set the tone for the session. In this fun icebreaker, separate your group into teams of kittens and puppiess. Puppies try to make the kittens laugh or crack a smile by simply saying, “Hello Kitty” in an amusing manner. Any kittens who smile or laugh join the puppies until their is only one kitten left standing!

Encourage the group to be creative and be sure to give kudos to the funniest participants or those who manage to keep a straight face!

From icebreaker to completed agenda

Now you’ve discovered the perfect icebreaker, it’s time to create the rest of your meeting!

With SessionLab, you drag, drop and reorder blocks to create your agenda in a snap. Your session timing adjusts automatically as you make changes and when you’re done, you can share a beautiful printout with your colleagues and participants.

Explore how facilitators use SessionLab to build effective workshops and meetings or watch this five minute video to get started!

Now over to you!

Your meetings and workshops don’t have to be boring. We hope you have found some useful tips for practical and fun ice breaker games you can use in your next session!

What are your favorite ice breaker activities? Have you tried any of the methods above? How did you find them? Let us know about your experiences in the comments. Want to see even more great icebreaker ideas? Our collection of icebreaker questions contains heaps of conversation starters you can bring to your next session.

Want to go further? Check out our guide to planning an effective workshop to start building more engaging sessions with better outcomes!

A well-trained and motivated workforce is essential for a thriving business, and that is where the train-the-trainer model comes into the picture. By creating an internal training program where experienced trainers help others gain the skills needed to lead effective training, you can create a learning culture and supercharge talent development across your entire organization. Let’s explore.

Having an internal training program is a powerful way to ensure that employees learn to acquire fast the knowledge and skills necessary to perform well in their jobs.

But how do you make sure that you have the capacity to effectively train employees at a scale? By making subject matter experts employees capable of teaching their colleagues via the train-the-trainer model

What is Train the Trainer?

Train the Trainer is a framework for training potential instructors or subject matter experts to enable them to train other people in their organisations.

In other words: A group of employees receive a compact training program that focuses both on specific training content and on how to teach this training content to others.

For example, a subject matter expert trainer trains a select group of employees on meeting facilitation skills and simultaneously teaches them how to train other colleagues on how to run effective meetings.

The expected outcome is that attendees learn the new knowledge or skill, and they will instruct further batches of people in the organisation. They’ll learn new training methods from a certified trainer and explore how to design everything from their first training session through to a complete learning program.

This approach was first applied in NGOs and non-profit organizations and since then enterprises picked it up and applied it to their learning and development programs.

What are the benefits of the train-the-trainer model?

The core advantage of the train-the-trainer model is its effectiveness to teach new skills and knowledge to a wide range of people within an organisation by involving internal resources to scale training delivery.

Also, becoming an internal trainer and picking up new competencies is a great professional development opportunity for the people involved. Let’s inspect see what are the other benefits that make the train-the-trainer model a frequently used approach in the learning and development industry.

• Cost-effectiveness: It is much less costly to send one expert trainer to train internal subject matter experts, than hiring a large unit of external trainers to deliver every single training session within the organisation. Once you’ve gotten going with the train-the-trainer model, it’s easy to create a system of consistent training where trainers pass on their experiences while teaching skills to other employees.
• Consistency in delivering a training curriculum: The default mode of operation for train-the-trainer programs is that trainers receive the exact same materials they were trained on, and therefore they disseminate the same learning through the organisation. This makes the model ideal for large organisations where continuity of training is important. Additionally, the standardized format allows to measure and compare the performance of each training group.
• Acceptance of internal trainers: In most organisations, people tend to seek advice more from their colleagues who they are already familiar with, than from outside specialists. The train the trainer model helps create supply to meet that demand.
• It fits well in situations where fast dissemination of information is needed. After the initial train-the-trainer course is completed, the freshly minted internal trainers can deliver their courses simultaneously to their colleagues. This is particularly useful when rolling out change initiatives for a whole organisation.
• Tailored learning: Internal trainers have the advantage of knowing the environment and culture of the organization as well as the products and services offered and client needs, allowing them to tailor the training content to the specific needs of the training participants.
• Trainers’ growing subject-matter mastery: Teaching someone else is the best way to learn. As trainers keep delivering training sessions to their colleagues, they will be exposed to handling new situations, meeting new questions and perspectives. As they find their way to answer these challenges, their subject matter expertise will inevitably leap to new heights.
• Developing a competent internal training team: Once people attend a train-the-trainer program and they start teaching their own colleagues, their competence as instructors will keep growing. Next time, when your organisation needs internal trainers for another subject, you already have a group of employees in the organisation who are skilled in training delivery.
• Better training follow-up: Since trainers are in-house experts, they stay around and can easily follow through until the new skills and knowledge become part of their colleagues’ routines.
• Train-the-Trainer has a ripple effect making the enterprise an appealing employer and progressive workplace for attracting talents. A company that provides growth opportunities for their employees and training through innovative techniques is attractive to potential employees.

On the other side, all methods have their limitations, and the train-the-trainer process is no exception. One of the most frequently cited drawbacks is the lack of flexibility it offers to customise and adjust the centrally rolled out training curriculum.

Needs may differ in different units of an organization, and often times there is no time and resource allocated to tailor the scripted training program to the specific needs of different groups.

Secondly, the training programs are often designed to much lecture-oriented focusing on one-way communication and content distribution, lacking powerful experiential learning activities and hands-on practice. This can be improved by thoughtful course design respecting adult learning principles and proper training follow-up.

For some organizations, the best approach for running a train the trainer course is to create their own internal train the trainer course so they can tailor all their training materials accordingly and create a continual culture of learning.

If this is you, check out our guide to creating a train the trainer course for tips on helping create a training course that will help your participants become master trainers.

How to choose the right participants for a train-the-trainer program?

Any training program requires investment, both in time and money. And putting the right people into the course is especially vital for success when deploying a train-the-trainer model. The selection process can be easier by considering these parameters:

• The selected soon-to-be-trainers should be well respected, ideally, a role model and a person employees look up to as well as go to for help. Choose an employee that leads by walking the talk and follows the company’s processes and principles.
• A trainer must possess good communication skills and able to lead discussions as well as listen to their colleagues. Being a good public speaker and presenter is also a big advantage.
• It is important to be reflective and being open to receive feedback.
• Generally a positive attitude and willingness to help colleagues to help to bring the training instruction to real-life application during and beyond the training sessions.
• Some degree of experience and expertise in the given field or subject is a must, since the train-the-trainer model actively builds on the expertise and knowledge of its trainers. Not to mention, in order to be a credible trainer, one needs to be competent in the field she teaches. This is particularly important in subjects relating to technical know-how.
• Flexibility in time and general availability for delivering training should also be considered. Being a trainer requires time away from one’s regular job while training others in the organisation. It is a practical idea to ask the applicants’ managers for support and confirmation that their job permits them to take part in the program.

How do I build a train-the-trainer program?

If you decide to design a train-the-trainer program in your organisation, there are a set of things you need to consider to build an effective model:

1. Clarify the purpose of the program: What are the main goals you want to achieve? Passing on technical skills from experienced to younger members? Build up an internal pool of trainers who can be relied on for a wide range of skill development training? Have internal change agents in the organisation? The answers you give for these questions will determine which area you need to focus on your training curriculum.
2. Design measurement and assessment process: You will need to set measurable objectives for the program and figure out how to measure course outcomes. Tracking progress of both trainers and trainee indicates the effectiveness of the program, and it is essential to be able to evaluate and improve your train-the-trainer program over time.
3. Design the training curriculum: As the train-the-trainer model is based on both teaching subject matter knowledge and training delivery skills, your curriculum will need to reflect on both. At first, you need to define course-by-course, what is the focus content that you want your trainers to train and disseminate in the organisation. You might also use effective instructional design principles to ensure your material is engaging for the format you’re delivering content in.
   
   Secondly, you’ll also need to allocate time to teach participants about group facilitation and training delivery. (Plus, if your trainees will have any flexibility in designing their own training sessions, it is essential to know about adult learning and training design principles.)
4. Create training materials: In order to maintain a consistent rollout and delivery of your training curriculum, you should design and provide all the materials that you trainees will need when they deliver the training content to their colleagues. This may range from detailed training facilitation plans to slideshows and participant handouts.

Further learning

Creating an effective program following the train the trainer model requires a combination of great tools, expertise and good design.

Here are some further resources you may find useful when creating a training program using the train the train model or just if you want to level-up your team’s training skills.

• Creating an effective agenda or training session plan is a core skill for any master trainer. In this guide, explore how to create an engaging training session and design an unforgettable learning process.
• Experiential activities and training games can be a valuable addition to any trainer’s toolkit. Find a selection of exercises and games that can help enable learning and engage trainers in this collection of training games.
• Virtual training is a skill that all trainers need in an increasingly remote-world. While you may cover this in your program, giving every internal trainer a crash course on how to run effective virtual workshops and training sessions is a great booster.
• Running an internal course that follows the train the trainer model means using the right tools. Whether you’re looking for instructional design software to use for self-paced courses or tools to help you facilitate live training workshops, you’ll find great recommendations in these guides.

Do you have any further tips about how to design great train-the-trainer programs?

Let us know in the comments!

Have you been wondering:

• Why you should create a train the trainer program at your organisation?
• How to design using the train the trainer model?
• What are the essential ingredients of train the trainer workshops?

With this comprehensive post, we’d like to support you on your path to designing a train the trainer workshop. Let’s dive in!

Running a train the trainer program can have an incredible impact on the quality of training delivered by internal trainers and on professional development too. When subject matter experts and team leaders are able to deliver training effectively, everyone in the organization benefits.

In this guide, you’ll find a detailed breakdown of a 7-day, intensive train the trainer program including essential theories and concepts, practical tips and activities. You’ll also find detailed explanation of why everything in the course is designed as it is.

Train the trainer sessions can vary in length, scope, and design, though we hope you can take some inspiration from seeing a full outline and build a program suitable for your needs.

Want to learn more about the methodology? Check out our guide on the train the trainer model to get a better understanding of the underlying process.

Prefer to jump right into reviewing the course agenda? Check out our 7-day train the trainer course template to see how everything comes together and adjust the session to your own needs.

The Train the Trainer Model

In our ever-changing world, one of the biggest challenges organisations face is how to stay on top of their game while adapting to new markets, new requirements and environments.

To stay competitive, their workforce needs to be up-to-date with the latest trends and technologies, so it is not uncommon for employees to attend trainings in the workplace.

Running a lot of training programs call for a lot of trainers. Thus, unless you have an endless budget to hire external trainers, you might be better off training your own internal experts who can transfer skills and knowledge to other employees. The train the trainer model is all about ensuring your team has everything they need to do this effectively.

A competent and skilled group of internal trainers will also help a lot in supporting any future change and transformation initiatives that your organisation might undertake. Additionally, having internal trainers allows an organisation to pass on domain or organisation-specific knowledge from experienced employees to newer ones.

The train the trainer model provides an effective strategy to equip employees and subject matter experts with new knowledge on how to teach others and how to foster an environment where everybody feels welcome to improve their skills.

Types of Train the Trainer Courses

Our team members at SessionLab have both participated in and organised various train the trainer programs over the past years. These programs are among the most challenging and comprehensive types of training courses. That is why we love designing and delivering them! :-)

Perhaps you need to design short, 2-3 day programs aimed at equipping subject matter experts with training design and facilitation skills. Or maybe you are preparing a 2-week-long intensive course to develop competency in designing and delivering soft skill training sessions.

In either case, there are a lot of interesting questions about how to build up an effective program. We have had the opportunity to observe a wide range of programs at several international NGOs, and from them we have drawn some best practices outlined in the next chapters.

Let’s start with a brief categorisation. There are a myriad of options on how to structure your course depending on your needs and timeframe. Here are some of the most common formats:

• Short intense (2-3 day event ~ 20 learning hours): This covers the essentials and is typically used to empower subject-matter-experts with basic facilitation and training design skills. The goal is to empower trainees to deliver effective training sessions in their own fields of expertise.
• Long, scattered over weeks: (10-20 days, usually one day per week ~ 80-160 learning hours): If you don’t have an opportunity for a live intense event, then a course format with recurring weekly training days can be a great option to cover all your needs for your first course. Having a week of time between each (set of) course days gives an opportunity for extra assignments and ‘homework’ activities so trainees can practice and prepare for each session. This is particularly useful if you have a diverse group of trainees who won’t need to work as a team later on but want to learn much of the advanced content of a train the trainer model.
• Long intense: (1-2 week event ~ 40-80 learning hours): Beyond the basic skills, it allows for some of the more complex interpersonal topics that a trainer needs to master, such as group dynamics, group facilitation and interaction. Trainees are usually expected to design and deliver sessions on a wide range of non-technical topics (e.g. “soft skills” training sessions). This format is particularly useful if your group of trainees will work together in the future, as the length and intensity of the event will accelerate their team development.

Train the Trainer Agenda Overview

While there is no single best way to design an event for each of the categories above, we have created a high-level template agenda to show the essential topics we would include in a train the trainer program over the course of a week.

The agenda below is optimised for a live week-long event, but you might also break this down into smaller blocks over a more extended period depending on which parts of the train the trainer model you wish to cover.

First, let’s start with the length of the event. 7 days? That sounds like a lot of time to ask of both participants and the organisation. And funding such an initiative is a big commitment.

Remember, the people you train to become trainers themselves will make a tremendous impact on your organisation. A single subject matter expert will likely train hundreds of people each year. That adds up to thousands of employee hours spent on training. Makes sense to ensure they will be trained by someone competent, right?

In the course agenda above, you will find the most essential elements of a train the trainer program designed into a coherent flow. Let’s see below how it is structured and what purpose each session has to offer:

• Day 0: Introduction and get-to-know / team building sessions. (The depth of team building may vary based on what your organisation needs.)
• Day 1: Practice and improve the essential soft skills required for delivering training sessions: presentation skills, facilitation skills and giving effective feedback.
• Day 2: Trainees will be introduced to essential training design principles and will design the agenda for their first Practice Training session.
• Day 3: The focus is on equipping your trainees with practical skills for creating and using visuals and other training materials in their upcoming training sessions and giving useful tips on how to manage the delivery itself. In the afternoon, everyone has their Practice Training delivery session and receives feedback from the trainers.
• Day 4: Days 2 and 3 are mostly about the ‘hard skills’ of designing and delivering a training session. Day 4 is for the ‘finer’ soft areas where your trainees will be trained on how to interact with their own participants during a training session. A lot of advanced topics will be touched upon with the goal of giving actionable tips on how to interact with the group in a session. (Many of these topics can be more focused subjects of an advanced program.)
• Day 5: Time for a break! – Give your trainees a mental break by taking the morning off. The second part of the day should be used to prepare for their final training delivery / exam.
• Day 6: Your trainees deliver their Final Training session (2-hour sessions) and receive feedback. You finish the day highlighting their future path and opportunities as a trainer in your organisation. Close the event with a neat official ceremony.

Check out the detailed schedule and download the complete train the trainer event agenda template in SessionLab.

In addition to the overall course outline, we’ll also cover important elements of a train the trainer curriculum in this guide, such as:

• Team building
• Basic Presentation and Facilitation Skills
• Training Design principles
• Visualisation
• Learning Space Design
• Classroom Management
• Group Facilitation, Interaction and Group Dynamics

Put on your trainer goggles and let’s get started!

And now, let’s dive into a day-to-day breakdown of the agenda with a detailed explanation about what each session is for.

Kick-off and Team Building (Day 0)

Introduction / Kick-off

Every training course needs a proper framing, and it is no different with a train the trainer event. This is the right moment to present the agenda and discuss the expectations you have of your trainees. Make sure also to discuss the expectations the trainees themselves have of the course.

One of the beauties of the train the trainer model is the ‘meta aspect’ of each session. Whatever you do as a trainer during a particular session does not only serve the purpose of that specific session, it also models to your trainees how to do certain things as a trainer.

For instance, when you collect expectations during the kick-off, it has a double purpose:

1. Collect, review and align expectations from participants and yourself (needs assessment)
2. To demonstrate how to collect, review and align expectations at any given training session.

Pointing out this ‘meta’ aspect of the course instantly makes the whole course more fun and complex for your participants.

Beware: trainees still primarily need to be active participants in your course and not just observe the process from the outside. This is important to emphasise whenever you want to shift attention to the ‘meta-process’ of a particular session.

Team Building

It is always useful to have some time dedicated to team building before things get serious and the intense learning begins.

Team building activities enhance group cohesiveness and help participants get to know each other. It is often an integral part of training courses because it creates a safe, welcoming atmosphere and helps participants check in to the event mentally. This is an important learning point for your trainees.

Now, should you plan just a few activities to warm up the group and break the ice, or do you need a more elaborate process to facilitate the forming of a real team?

This really depends on what your organisation needs.

If the group of trainees will be working together in the future, then you might want to put an extra accent on team building. Also, if you want them to have stronger peer support at the beginning of their ‘career’ as a trainer, it is useful to give the bonding process a boost.

Lastly, it is highly useful for your participants to experience a few practical team building activities themselves so they will already have a few familiar tricks up their sleeves when they need a team building game for one of their future sessions.

Optional Exercise for Soft Skills Assessment

We have also included an optional exercise for the welcome day – an opportunity for trainees to get on the stage and a chance for you to assess their knowledge and skills. This exercise requires that you give trainees an assignment well before the course starts – to prepare a short presentation or knowledge transfer session on a topic of their expertise.

During this intro day, participants are given the opportunity to present what they prepared. You might even brief them to facilitate a short discussion afterward so that you get an initial idea of what their facilitation skills are like.

The big benefit is that it enables you to tailor the next day’s skill development session to their specific needs, perhaps as part of a wider talent development initiative.

In general, this intro day may range anywhere from 1-2 hours to a full day. If you need to do thorough team building and want to take advantage of the initial presentation activity, then you may take the whole day. Otherwise, you can just do the essential Introduction and Expectations sessions to kick off the course.

Essential Skills Practice (Day 1)

Most of the time spent at in-classroom training can be divided into a few distinct interaction types:

1. you present as a trainer
2. you facilitate a discussion
3. your participants work on an exercise either alone or in groups.

For the first two categories – beyond some degree of subject matter expertise – you will need to be able to present and facilitate effectively. Building knowledge and skills in this area is a key aspect of the train the trainer model. This is why we have included one session to focus on presentation skills practice and another session to cover the most essential facilitation skills.

Presentation Skills Practice

As a trainer, you will frequently have the responsibility of standing in front of the room and presenting material. The amount of time you spend presenting theory as a trainer may vary largely on the types of training sessions you will run. But in any case, it is important to have solid presentation skills to be able to introduce concepts and theories in an understandable, structured way.

The point of this session is to practice both how to structure a presentation and to practice different aspects of presenting, such as body language, voice and eye contact.

Your trainees should get an opportunity to deliver short (a few minutes) presentations in front of each other and receive feedback from the group on their performance.

And what is better than practice? More practice! :-)

So, after learning some tips from you, they will have another round of presenting and receiving feedback.

It is best to do this exercise in small groups of 4-6 participants. This allows sufficient time for everyone to practice presenting, and you can also assign each ‘audience’ member to observe a different aspect of the presenter’s performance (e.g. body language).

Facilitation Skills Practice

Facilitation skills are essential for any session, but especially for in-classroom trainings filled with human interaction. The focus of this session is to practice the ‘soft skills’ aspect of facilitation, that is, the various small tools and methods that a trainer may use to interact with the group, facilitate a group conversation or lead a debriefing session.

There is a separate session on Day 4 to introduce further facilitation techniques to expand trainees’ ‘facilitation toolboxes’. Those techniques are considered ‘hard skills’ where the focus is on understanding the process of running an activity (Brainstorming, Brain writing, Six Thinking Hats, 1-2-4 Dialogue, etc.).

In contrast to that one, in this session, trainees will practice essential verbal skills, such as Probing, Rephrasing, Redirecting questions and comments, and so on.

Importantly, each trainee should have an opportunity to facilitate a group conversation during the session. While they facilitate, they should apply the various facilitation techniques they have learned.

Most of the time, your participants will have varying levels of experience, so you can choose between these different tactics:

• Design a session that covers the basics of presentation and facilitation and includes plenty of opportunities for practice and feedback. This allows everyone to learn tips and tricks from one another, and more experienced trainees can help younger ones.
• Split up your participants into smaller groups based on their experience / skill level and have differentiated sessions for beginners and those with experience. Keep in mind, this requires that you really have a prior opportunity to properly observe and evaluate the skills of your trainees before the session. It is very important here that you as the trainer evaluate participants personally and do not rely solely on self-evaluations from the trainees themselves.

Lastly, you can benefit a lot from a short session that gives a shared baseline for your preferred method of giving feedback.

People often have very mixed views about feedback, so it’s useful to get everyone on the same page and use one (or a few) models consistently during the event. Whether you choose ‘I-statements’ or any other method, the point is to have a short and effective practice session.

How to Design a Learning Experience (Day 2)

One of the most essential skills for anyone working in instructional design is to know how to structure and build a training session to be engaging and effective.

It is important to understand the basics of how people, particularly adults, learn, what kind of learning styles they may have, and how to design a training program that respects different learning styles while also covering your learning objectives.

These are topics that could be their own full course; however, when there is only one day to cover the basics and give actionable learning during a program, we would include the following:

• How to conduct Needs Assessment
• Setting Learning Objectives
• Learning Styles: introduce a learning styles theory (for instance, Kolb and 4MAT) that you prefer your trainees to follow. Guide participants through the design process with this framework.
• Schedule Design
• How to design an exercise

Adult Learning

Before jumping into the detailed design of this day’s agenda, let’s have a quick look at adult learning. There are a few general principles that can help you orientate yourself while designing your training sessions.

When we learn as adults, it is a different experience than when we were children. We are better able to make decisions, draw conclusions, and recognise patterns. We are less likely to do something just because, because we expect logical reasons and arguments to do it. Malcolm Knowles, an expert in adult learning, identified four principles that help us create an environment where adults learn best.

• Adults need to be involved in the planning and evaluation of their training.
• Experience, including mistakes, provides the best basis for learning activities.
• Adults are most interested in learning subjects that have immediate relevance and impact on their job or personal life.
• Adult learning is problem-centered rather than content-oriented.

These are key principles that should always be kept in mind when designing training sessions and workshops, so getting these clarified early in the training program gives a useful reference point.

And now let’s review how to proceed with a full day that is dedicated to the topic of Training Design.

Needs Assessment

Any professional development program benefits from a solid understanding of what’s needed. Before you start preparing for any training project, you need information in order to know exactly what is expected of you. You need to understand what the needs of the participants are: what are their current situations, and what do they want to improve?

Needs assessment is an analysis conducted to determine what kind of needs exist in a group/organisation and if the training is the best possible way to solve these needs.

Sometimes a training is not going to fulfill certain needs, and this is something that must be considered by, and communicated early to, your trainees!

Trainees should also understand that it is their responsibility to communicate their own needs for the needs assessment and to establish good communication with the sponsor / requestor of the training.

Some of the critical things that should be clarified during training needs assessment:

• Goals of the training
• Topics to focus on
• Who the participants are
• Number of participants
• Experience level of participants for each focus topic
• How long the training event is – How many hours is the effective training time?
• When and where the session will take place
• Logistics (rooms, equipment, visuals, etc.)

You can explain to your trainees that the methods of their needs assessment will primarily depend on the time they have and the availability of their future participants. Surveys and interviews with key stakeholders, including the sponsor of the training and key participants, are essential tools toward getting a good understanding of the group’s needs.

When there is finally enough information to work with, it is time to craft that information into learning goals.

Course Note: Due to the constraints of this specific course (participants have already picked the subject of their practice delivery by this time), trainees will not have the opportunity to do a real needs assessment here. So, the focus of this session is to communicate the proper mindset and approach to needs assessment.

Setting Learning Objectives

Every training session needs clear Learning Objectives, and in this session trainees will practice how to formulate sound Learning Objectives. Fulfilling the Learning Objectives will be the most important guideline for the rest of the preparation process.

In fact, as a principle, your trainees should learn to keep their Learning Objectives fixed and the content and process flexible in order to facilitate great learning experiences.

In general, the Learning Objectives should come out of the needs assessment. It frequently happens that you can’t address every need and expectation, but that’s perfectly okay. It is better to have fewer goals that are attainable than have too many goals and shift the topic every 15 minutes.

A practical way for your trainees to familiarise themselves with setting learning objectives is if they start working on their Practice Training and set the relevant learning objectives. When setting up Learning Objectives for a training session, they should be measurable, so the trainer can decide at the end of the training if the goals were achieved or not.

Giving your trainees an exercise to set up their SMART goals will help make objectives measurable so they can decide at the end of the training what went well and how to improve on the session next time.

If you prefer a different method to set goals, then go ahead with that one. The essence of this session is the importance of just setting goals, even if they’re based on a different model.

Learning Styles

When dealing with a group, it is essential to know that most people learn and acquire knowledge in their own way. To fully involve everyone in a training session, trainers need to create an environment where every participant is able and welcomed to learn.

There are various popular theories about learning styles that respect the diversity of people’s preferences when it comes to learning: Kolb’s learning cycle, the 4MAT model, Fleming’s VAK learning preferences, The 7 Learning Styles – the list could go on.

Often times, an organisation may already have a preference for a model they already use for planning training programs. If not, then you have an opportunity to choose which model you prefer!

For this template agenda, we would go with either the Kolb cycle or 4MAT. We have found that they work well for teaching structured agenda design where there are time constraints, as in our course agenda.

If you have already chosen a different one, just switch to the model you prefer in this block of the train the trainer event. What is important is that your own trainer team must be confident and knowledgeable in using the learning styles framework you choose.

The Kolb Cycle

David Kolb created his learning styles model more than 30 years ago. His experiential learning theory works on two levels: a four-stage cycle of learning and four separate learning styles.

The Kolb cycle emphasizes the cognitive process of how people go through an experience to form patterns based on that experience. Therefore, the Kolb learning style theory is presented as a learning cycle with four stages where learners should go through the full cycle.

Effective learning happens when a person progresses through a cycle of four stages in the following sequence:

1. Having a concrete experience
2. Observing and reflecting on that experience
3. Formulating abstract concepts and general conclusions
4. Testing the hypotheses in future situations (based on the conclusions generated), resulting in new experiences.

It is important to ensure that activities in a training session are designed in a way that allows each learner to engage with the content in the style that suits them best.

Ideally, a training session agenda should be developed in a way that includes each stage and offers a balance of these stages in the process.

Kolb’s learning theory also sets out four distinct learning styles that are based on the experiential learning cycle. These learning styles are determined by two fundamental aspects: how we approach a task and what our reactions to it are.

You may dive deeper into individual learning styles, although it is important to note that the key takeaway here is the balanced design of a training session. Primarily, the role of the Kolb cycle is to provide a framework for you and your trainees to include activities in a training plan in a way in which participants will have the opportunity to engage with a concept in different ways.

The 4MAT Model

Another popular theory, building further on the Kolb experiential learning cycle, is the 4MAT model. This model works around the idea that people need to know:

• Why they are learning something
• What they are learning
• How it works
• And What will happen if they apply this concept

In the case of 4MAT, the emphasis is more on ‘learning preferences’ than ‘learning styles’, which helps to avoid labelling learners with a particular learning style. Regarding training design, the underlying idea is very similar to the Kolb cycle. When designing a training session, try to incorporate the complete 4MAT cycle for each learning block you have.

In practice, it looks like this:

1. Assign an initial experiential exercise that lays the foundations of why a particular topic will be relevant. (This includes the debriefing of the activity.)
2. Provide the theory, and explain what the concept is.
3. Give opportunities for participants to practice how to apply the knowledge they have learnt. This practice may take place with close mentoring, as the focus here is on learning a particular skill.
4. Provide an opportunity for participants to adapt the freshly-learned skills themselves. What if they try applying their new skills in a new context?

You may find more details on the 4MAT framework at the 4MAT for Education and 4MAT for Business sites.

So to sum up the Learning Styles discussion, make sure you teach your prospective trainees to provide multiple ways to engage with a topic in the training sessions they design.

Rather than trying to provide instructions tailored to an individual participant’s learning style, offer a variety of learning experiences/techniques within a training session.

In this detailed session plan about Training Design, you will find a specific example with detailed steps on how to run a learning block on Learning Styles.

Your trainees should get the opportunity to start designing their own session plan, familiarise themselves with either the Kolb cycle or the 4MAT cycle, and then re-design their own session outline based on what they have just learned.

Schedule Design

After learning about the preferred learning styles theory of your course, trainees will start completing their training agenda for the Practice Training. They should get an overview of what it takes to prepare a complete training agenda and then start working toward achieving it. This is a vital part of the train the trainer model that helps build the skills to actually make would-be programs a reality.

This is a very practical session where trainees are presented with the variety of different training modules they might use in a training session, such as agenda review, collecting expectations, group discussions, coffee breaks, etc. Discuss each item briefly, and share best practices on how to calculate and manage timing during training design and delivery. The only exception is the main exercise which can be left as a placeholder at this point since the next session is about Exercise Design.

You may also Introduce a training agenda template that all trainees should use to complete their session design. Having a consistently-used template by trainees will make it easier for your team to monitor the preparations and provide mentoring as needed.

You may choose our SessionLab template, a tool specifically developed for training design, or any spreadsheet template you prefer for this purpose.

Exercise Design

Exercises are an integral part of any experiential learning activity. While designing effective experiential learning exercises requires a lot of practice and experience, you need to start somewhere.

This session will be a starting point for your trainees in understanding the types of exercises they might use and how to design them. Using the train the trainer model, you should provide an overview of the types of exercises in a training session and give guidance on how to choose the right type of exercise.

Your trainees should have practical working time to design the main exercise in their Practice Delivery, and your team of trainers must mentor them and give useful tips on designing exercises that achieve Learning Objectives.

Practice Makes Perfect (Day 3)

The highlight of this day is the first big practice opportunity for trainees to deliver their own training sessions, or to be precise, to practice an abbreviated session, since the 45-60 minutes they have available is really just enough for the one learning cycle that they designed the previous day.

Before the Practice Training sessions start, there are still a couple of practical sessions left to help trainees get prepared.

Visualisation

The goal of this session is to give an introduction to the visualisation tools and techniques participants may use when delivering their training sessions. It is worthwhile to introduce the most common practices for using visuals in a training session (flipcharts, whiteboards, and PowerPoint or Keynote).

As we often do, in this introductory course we will focus on actionable advice, so the emphasis is on giving practical tips and suggestions for each visualisation method.

It makes sense to put an extra accent on the method that trainees will use during their Practice Delivery. In our case, flip charts are used, so by the end of the session trainees should have prepared flip chart sheets for the Practice Training

Lastly, before the Practice Training deliveries start, there is a short session that will provide some practical suggestions for trainees related to the in-classroom training delivery.

There are a lot of small details to pay attention to when running a session, ranging from logistics issues (making sure that all materials needed are taken care of, the room is set up, and other common issues) to body language during the session. These are the final suggestions for trainees before they start their first Practice Training Delivery!

Drumroll…!

First Practice Delivery

Practice makes perfect – that is why you will see two occasions in this course where participants get the opportunity to design and deliver their own training sessions.

This first one is only a short practice (a 45-60 minutes training module) but should be sufficient for your participants to apply training design principles, practice the art of delivering in front of other participants, and get candid feedback on their performance.

Trainees should co-deliver in pairs, and you should make sure that each pair has a trainer from your team observing the session. Depending on the number of your trainees – in our case, 16 trainees – this probably requires two rounds of delivery.

One small but very important thing is to make sure that you have volunteers (not trainees) organized who will attend the Practice Training sessions, so every trainee has an opportunity to practice in front of a real audience.

The goal is fairly straightforward here: get a real delivery experience after trainees have built up their session design, and then provide detailed feedback on their performance so they know what to focus on for their Final Training at the end of the course.

If you have a coaching / mentoring program running throughout the course, which I definitely recommend, you may close the day with optional coaching or mentoring sessions to provide individual or peer group support.

Managing the Group and the Space (Day 4)

There is so much that must be done for an engaging training session beyond just a trainer stepping on the stage, sharing knowledge and facilitating exercises. A lot of this is ‘soft’ stuff and comes with years of practice but the train the trainer model also creates space to explore this as a group.

So, this day is dedicated for all the soft trainer’s skills that make a well-designed session run smoothly in the classroom where flesh-and-blood participants interact with each other and the trainer.

The truth is, many of the subjects that we touch upon this day can be their own subjects of advanced sessions. Debriefing an experiential learning exercise, group facilitation and team dynamics – each are highly complex topics, and covering them in-depth during a single day is not a realistic endeavour.

Now, consider that your trainees are on their fourth day of a really intense learning experience, and they still have their final training delivery session in front of them.

What you really want here is to give them instantly actionable knowledge and tips in order to make their deliveries properly interactive. After they graduate from this starter program and have already delivered a few dozen training sessions of their own, then it is probably the right time to dig deeper into the subtler aspects of experiential learning and group dynamics. By then, your trainees will have their own real-life experience to reflect upon.

So, here are the topics we would include if we had one single day to spend on training essential interaction skills for new trainers:

• Setting up the Learning Space
• Classroom Management
• Group Facilitation and Interaction Types
• Experiential Learning and Debriefing
• Using Questions
• Group Dynamics

Learning Space Design

This session will focus on teaching the fundamentals of how to arrange the classroom to facilitate an interactive learning experience.

The way the room is set up will influence the interaction within the group and the participants’ learning process. For instance, having the session’s flip charts on the walls around can help remind participants of the essential theory of a session. A set of flip charts full of post-it notes created by participants themselves during exercises can provide a sense of creativity and progress.

Table and chair arrangements likewise affect the learning process, as do the kinds of settings you use for group work and individual presentations. It is essential to have enough room for people to do interactive exercises in groups without feeling chained to their seats.

Therefore, participants will be taught how to arrange the space so it helps achieve the desired outcome. This includes the important aspect of selecting the room and arranging seating (classroom, circle, semi-circle, breakout groups), tables, visuals, and so on. A thoughtful design of the training room is an important aspect of facilitating learning, and here are the more common types of room arrangements, recapped by Beth Kanter:

During this session, if location permits, try out the various set-ups with your participants. Discuss the characteristics of each room set-up and which arrangements are best for which activities.

Group Facilitation and Interaction Types

To keep a group of participants engaged throughout a training session, a trainer needs to have a solid toolkit of facilitation techniques at hand. Using different group facilitation techniques is essential to having a balanced interaction during a training session.

If your participants sit in a theater-style arrangement during a whole session, sooner or later you will hear snoring sounds. Likewise, if you only switch between plenary discussion and individual work, your participants might get bored of the monotony. That is why your trainees should be aware of the most frequently-used methods to facilitate interaction within a group:

• One-way presenting
• Individual reflection
• Working in groups
  • In pairs, triads and bigger groups
• Plenary discussion (with the whole group)

There are also practical combinations of the techniques above, such as the 1-2-4 Dialogue method, idea generation techniques and decision-making techniques. You may also introduce facilitation techniques that help to manage bigger groups, for example, World Café, Rotating Flipcharts and Open Space Technology.

Growing one’s personal toolbox is a continuous personal development activity for a trainer, and this session should pique their interest beyond the starter kit.

Optionally, you may also introduce the VAK (Visual, Auditory, and Kinesthetic) Learning Styles concept as a supplementary theory to help trainees in thinking about how to keep a session interactive for participants with varying learning styles.

Classroom Management

We’ve established that managing the attention and energy of people in the room is an essential responsibility of trainers. Beyond generic tips on how to keep up engagement and monitor the energy/attention level in the room, this session also covers how to deal with difficult participants and handle conflicts in the classroom.

When people from different backgrounds and life experiences meet to go through an intense learning event, there will inevitably be various reactions. Some might sit back, others will fully engage, and there will be some who will adopt blocking roles. This is a natural response to some sessions or specific tasks, so it is important that trainees be prepared to handle such situations.

These are situations with which most everyone has some previous personal experience, so a structured sharing session can be the right approach to leverage trainees’ existing knowledge.

As part of this block, arrange a facilitated group discussion or a rotating café style conversation to discuss different topics in smaller groups:

• Keeping up the attention level (using different interaction techniques)
• Handling difficult participants
• Handling conflict situations.

If you look for a specific exercise to address challenging behaviours during a training session, then you might find useful the group exercise “Participants from Hell”. It gives a handy framework for letting participants brainstorm rules or guidelines for handling different kinds of disruptive behaviours.

Experiential learning and debriefing

If you want participants to achieve long-lasting learning in any training event, then experiential learning is a very effective way to do that. In this segment, your trainees will practice how to brief and debrief an experiential learning activity..

Debriefing is the key that enables participants to identify and connect lessons from workshop or training activities to their real world.

We suggest a practical debriefing exercise for this: conduct a real experiential exercise during this session, then focus on the experience of how the briefing and the debriefing were done by the trainers.

This way participants will have the chance to first take part in a debriefing as participants and then analyse the experience they just had.

Using Questions

Using questions is essential during a training session, especially during a debriefing session. Give an overview of good questioning techniques and how to ask questions properly.

In addition, if your trainees are also expected to coach or mentor other people in the future during their career as a trainer, you may dedicate more time on how to use powerful questions effectively in coaching / mentoring situations.

Group Dynamics

Group dynamics play an important role not just in the training room but in our everyday lives, too. As a trainer, it is highly useful to be conscious of the dynamics taking place in the group and to be aware of the best ways to deal with a group depending on its dynamics. In this session, therefore, we introduce the topic of group dynamics and its influence on the training process.

A 90-minute session, as scheduled in our template agenda, gives only enough time to scratch the surface of this topic. Actually, this is an excellent topic for an advanced training development course, where participants already have hundreds of training hours behind them and thus many personal experiences to refer to.

But until then, you have to start somewhere, and this is the point for that.

The commonly used Tuckman & Jensen group dynamics theory, although mostly applicable to teams, may also be used in the training field to explain processes happening within groups going through a long-term training program.

This theory also supports a common view on how a trainer should react throughout each stage of the process.

Aside from starting this session with group dynamics theory, the lesson should be tailored to the group’s needs. For example, you may decide to deliver a sharing and reflection session so participants can reflect on their own group development supported by elements of group dynamics theory.

Of course, your trainees won’t become masters of group dynamics immediately after this session, but they can learn the importance of observing, and reacting to, the dynamics in their own future sessions.

Break and Final Training Preparations (Day 5)

By this point, your trainees have gone through over four very intense days of learning and self-development. It is time to give them a short break before they set out to prepare their Final Training which they will deliver the following day.

Therefore, the schedule for this day is split into two parts:

• Free time in the morning
• Preparation time in the afternoon

It might be tempting for you to try squeezing in more content with another session in the morning. However, our experience is that trainees do reach the tipping point by this day, and some real mental rest helps them to process the learnings of the course so far.

Offering individual free time is one way to go; however if your setting allows, it is best to organise a group leisure activity – something that keeps trainees both physically and mentally busy (e.g. some kind of outdoor activity).

Here’s one tip that might come handy: if you truly want to give space for your trainees to recharge, don’t brief about tomorrow’s Final Training Delivery details yet; save it for the afternoon. Fresher minds will be more effective in tackling the job.

Since this Final Training Delivery will also be done in pairs – everyone will deliver with a co-trainer – you need to make sure that pairs and their topics are chosen in advance. As the trainer of the course, it is your responsibility to facilitate this process. If you prefer, you can directly assign pairs that challenge participants in a healthy way. (Create pairs with complementing strengths, so each person can learn something from the other in the training design and delivery process.)

Or you might poll participants by the topics that each of them prefers to deliver. They won’t have too much time to prepare, so they should be comfortable with the topic of their training session in order to save their focus for the process instead of the content.

After pairs and topics are set, trainees can start preparing for the Final Training Delivery, which will be a 2-hour training session. There is half a day dedicated for preparations. Make sure to have a mentor assigned to each pair who will keep an eye on the training design process. Mentors help whenever trainees are stuck and should make sure that everyone gets a sound training agenda designed by the end of the day.

Lastly, the Final Training Deliveries will take place in two rounds where everyone will be the trainer in one of the rounds and a participant in the other.

To help trainees sign up themselves, create a schedule of the Final Deliveries so everyone can see when they deliver their session and so they can also sign up as participants for one of the sessions in another time slot.

Make sure that you get further participants for the Final Deliveries the following day, not only your trainees, and that those people are also distributed evenly between the Final Deliveries.

Final Delivery & Closing (Day 6)

This is the last day of our program, and time for trainees to put into practice everything they have learnt over the past days. The highlight of this day is the Final Training Delivery, where trainees conduct one more session to practice their freshly-gained interaction skills and to implement the feedback they received from their first delivery.

Final Training Deliveries

Similarly to the Practice Training three days before, the scheduling of these sessions depends on the time you have available and the size of your team. Trainees should again deliver in pairs to practice the experience of co-delivery, and it is essential that one trainer from your team is there to observe and give feedback on the performance.

In our example template with 16 participants, we have split the Final Training sessions into two rounds of 2-hour deliveries, each followed by a round of feedback. You may even decide to record the session if you want to provide really thorough feedback by your whole team of trainers.

The ideal length of this session is somewhere between 2 and 4 hours – that should give trainees a thorough and hands-on experience of how it feels to deliver a complete session. This is the main assignment of the course, and completing it will provide your participants with a sense of accomplishment and closing.

Trainer Development Path

Your trainees have practically completed the course and passed their Final Delivery by this point.

This is just the beginning of their journey as a trainer, and now it is time to point out the various development opportunities they will have in your organisation.

• Present the skill development opportunities your trainees can have in the future (including further training opportunities, advanced train the trainer courses).
• Discuss how they can keep supporting each other in their development path after this course is over.
• Present future expectations and practical next steps they will have as a trainer in your organisation.

Evaluation and Closing

As the event winds down, there will be a few formal but important steps left.

Firstly, make sure that your trainees take the time to reflect upon the week’s program and share their feedback on how to improve your training materials for the future.

You may provide them with a detailed survey soliciting answers around the various aspects of the event and their learning journey. These evaluations should give you useful insights on how to adjust the agenda and scope of your event next time.

Don’t forget to schedule time with your own trainer team, too, after the course is over for an evaluation round.

Lastly, prepare a nice, official closing ceremony for your trainees and hand out certificates for completing the course. They went through a really intense learning process and hopefully built bonds with their fellow trainees that will support them in their upcoming careers as trainers. Your trainees worked hard! Now celebrate the beginning of their journey as a trainer!

Conclusion

I hope you enjoyed this train the trainer design guide and that it gave you some inspiration. Keep in mind, there are a lot of different options for designing and running a train the trainer workshop.

You can have shorter events, or you can have a more extended program scattered over several weeks. You may go more in-depth on certain topics, such as learning styles or group dynamics, and you may set aside some topics as follow-up rounds to cover other learning principles.

Want to keep learning? Explore how to design an engaging training session plan in this guide and create unforgettable experiences.

Review our guide to the train the trainer model to understand the underlying methodology more deeply.

Ultimately, it is your own organization’s needs that should determine what the best formats are for you to teach capable new trainers. For this reason, you should not spare running a proper needs assessment before jumping into the exciting work of designing a course agenda.

Now It’s Your Turn

That’s it for this design guide. Now, we’d like to hear from you:

Do you have any questions about designing sessions using the train the trainer model? Anything specific about this 7-day course template?

Or maybe you have a cool tip that we didn’t include here.

Either way, let us know by leaving a comment below.

A diversity of workshop activities and balanced mix of group facilitation techniques are essential for any facilitated session, be it a strategic workshop, a team retreat, a kick-off meeting, a co-creation session or a regular project meeting.

It takes careful consideration to pick the right interactive workshop resources for your session, the ones that will fit perfectly with your learning objectives, group size, profile of participants, and available time.

You may already have some favorite exercises for different types of events, but as you facilitate more and more meetings, you might not want to use the same workshop activities over and over again.

So what are the best ways to equip yourself with new group facilitation methods? It’s generally a good idea to offer activities you’ve experienced as a participant yourself: because of this, expert facilitators learn mostly from one another. Joining a community of peers and taking part in festivals and events are great ways to pick up new skills.

When in need of some quick inspiration, or perhaps to find detailed instructions for an activity you are not 100% sure of how to run, there is a myriad of resources online that can help you pick the right tool or technique for a specific meeting. Some are hard to navigate and only offer generic tools, while others provide you with precisely described workshop activities with practical facilitator tips in an easy-to-navigate web environment.

Listed below are our favorite and trusted facilitation resources.

8 Most Popular Facilitation Libraries

In the first part of this article, we will list toolkits beloved by facilitators all over the world. This is based on responses to the 2023 State of Facilitation survey.

There are great reasons for these method libraries to be so popular: they are well-organized, contain versatile, easy-to-use methods, and often include visual assets such as canvases and templates.

Spend time delving into these templates and activities for tried-and-tested sessions and workshops especially if you are starting out as a facilitator and want to make sure you have all the basics covered!

Liberating Structures

The aim of Liberating Structures is to enhance creativity, trust and relational coordination while making every participant feel included and heard in meetings. You can find a structured set of 33 easy-to-learn group facilitation activities on their website. Liberating Structure methods help make meeting processes more explicit and understandable for everyone since it increases the ownership of solutions by including large groups of people.

If you are just starting out with Liberating Structures, then you can find inspiration in several field stories and case studies that suggest sequences of use for the Liberating Structures suite of methods.

Miroverse

One of the first things many facilitators had to do when moving business online due to the Covid-19 lockdowns was learn how to use virtual whiteboards from colleagues who had started working online much earlier.

Since then, the possibilities of what can be done using a collaborative visual tool for sharing knowledge and collecting ideas online have exploded! The Miroverse is a fully searchable collection of hundreds of templates for sessions you can copy and paste to a new board to kick-start your workshop.

Mural templates

If Mural is your visual whiteboard of choice, you will find many sleek and elegant templates ready to used in the Mural template collection. The database is organized by categories, including icebreakers, ideation template, and many more designed especially for education, to facilitate planning, or with Agile practitioners in mind.

Whether to use Miro, Mural, or yet other whiteboards such as a the more basic, but very intuitive, Google Jamboard, depends on personal taste and, sometimes, client priorities. A skilled facilitator should be able to use all of these interchangeably depending on the specific project. Therefore, it’s certainly worth spending time exploring visual whiteboard libraries for knowledge and inspiration, especially if most of your work is remote.

SessionLab Library of facilitation techniques

SessionLab is an online platform providing a workshop planner application and a public library of facilitation techniques. The library hosts more than 700 interactive workshop activities, both coming from organizations sharing their own content (including some like Hyper Island and Gamestorming which are also featured in this list) and individual meeting practitioners sharing their favorite tools with the community.

A unique feature of this library is that it allows you to easily save and use its activities. If you find an activity you like, you can save it for later in your collection of favourite methods. And if you decide to use SessionLab’s free workshop planner tool, you can easily pull any activity from your personal or the public library to your workshop plans, and your workshop agenda’s timing automatically gets updated.

IAF Methods Database

The IAF Methods Database is a set of facilitation tools and techniques collected and curated by members of the International Association of Facilitators. The purpose of the database is to serve facilitators by gathering and making accessible a breadth of facilitation methodologies and techniques. Part of the library – around 60 facilitation activities – is publicly available to explore, while the full library is accessible to IAF members only.

IDEO Design Kit

Human-Centered Design methods are handly collected and packaged on IDEO’s website, where you will find all you need to prepare to lead expert interviews, guide a group into prototyping, and more. And if you are looking for more tools to support your journey into this family of practices you can check out our article on Online Tools for design and innovation processes.

Hyper Island Toolbox

Hyper Island is a creative business school that also offers consulting services. It approaches learning by focusing on collaboration, creativity, and learning by doing. The Hyper Island Toolbox offers a selection of activities to help you do things more creatively and collaboratively in a team or organization. It features both some popular, well-known workshop activities and facilitation methods created by Hyper Island itself.

We turn to Hyper Island, in particular, for solid team-building methods, engaging and meaningful energizers, activities for educators and the kind of basic, essential tools, such as Start-Stop-Continue feedback, that works well in every situation. A great place for beginners too!

The Hyper Island toolbox hosts more than 100 activities on an extremely user-friendly interface that allows browsing by category, time frame and group size. All methods are illustrated with consistent and relevant visuals, making it easy and visually pleasant to browse.

Service Design Tools

Service Design Tools is a project aspiring to create a bridge between academics and practitioners in the design field. What emerged is a great platform for working on design and innovation strategies.

This rich collection can be navigated based on the stage of the design process (research, ideation, prototyping, implementation, evaluation), on the participants you want to focus on (clients, users, stakeholders) and more. A dedicated space is set aside for Enhanced Tools, that is, frameworks for engaging with high levels of complexity.

7 More Great Toolkits for Group Activities

We highlighted the seven platforms above due to their popularity and ease of use, each of them offering useful filters and search options. Thus, if you want to find an exercise for a specific purpose (e.g. team building) with a given time frame and group size, you can easily filter by these criteria.

However, there are many other gems on the web, too. Hard as it is to pick, here other 7 toolkits we recommend you get familiar with:

Gamestorming

Gamestorming is a set of co-creation tools used by innovators around the world to facilitate meetings in the business world. These innovative activities aim to make meetings a great experience for participants while still delivering on effectiveness, short timeframes and action.

You can find more than 50 Gamestorming activities with detailed step-by-step guides on the official Gamestorming website. And if you like a good old printed version to look over the Gamestorming methods all at once, you might like the Gamestorming book itself, too!

Thiagi Group’s games

Thiagi’s website offers more than 400 free games and exercises with detailed descriptions, facilitation tips, and debriefing questions, ready-to-run for everyone. If you want to filter your search among the games, you might visit the SessionLab library where you can find a significant set of these activities shared with Thiagi’s permission. There you are able to search and filter based on tags, time and group size to find the activity you need.

Design Method Toolkit

The Digital Society School Design Method Toolkit is a well-organized collection of design and research methods that enables you to get started and enrich your design process. You can find more than 50 practical tools with step-by-step guides on how to run design research, ideation, experimentation and creation within short iterations. If you run agile, team-based projects, then you will find useful inspiration in this toolkit.

Design A Better Business Toolbox

Are you already familiar with the Business Model Canvas and the ingenious way it helps structure thinking on developing a business model? This toolbox offers a great collection of templates and canvases in a style similar to the BMC, mostly related to business design, such as the storytelling canvas, customer journey canvas, persona canvas and many more. You can find step-by-step guides on how to use each framework coupled with downloadable templates to use in your workshop.

Untools for Better Thinking

Untools for Better Thinking is a collection of practices designed to look at the world through a different lens. Sometimes it’s complexity theory, sometimes it’s systems innovation: there are only about 20 practices to be mastered here, but each one is rich in insights.

Any one of these tools alone can lead to improved decision-making and form the basis of rich insightful workshop experiences. Bookmark this page if you are working in multistakeholder environments where problems never have a linear solution or if you want more ideas for working in a volatile and ever-changing world.

Project Zero’s Thinking Routines toolbox

This database was designed with classroom teaching in mind. The proposed methods are meant to stimulate discussion, engage students, deepen students’ thinking and help make that thinking visible.

The strategies collected here by the Harvard Graduate School for Education’s Project Zero will therefore serve workshop designers well, particularly if you are working at the intersection of training and facilitation. And if you are a teacher or professor looking for ways to introduce more facilitative approaches into your classroom, this is an excellent place to start!

Facilipedia by Mischief Makers

Facilipedia is a growing, curated shortlist of resources from the playful group of facilitators known as Mischief Makers. It’s a great introduction to facilitation for beginners to browse, as they’ve collected all-time favorites and added careful instructions to get you going. Take a look at their case studies as well for stories of engagement in practice!

4 Treasure chests of Hands-on Activities for Social Change

Workshops can help teams and groups achieve extraordinary results together. And there are many areas of social and environmental work where collective action is ever more important in our challenging world. Here are three toolkits dedicated especially to those brave people around the world who are exploring new strategies and approaches to cultural change.

Changemakers Xchange Resources for Changemakers

Changemakers Xchange is a global community of over 1000 changemakers, many of whom train as facilitators for social innovation. Their collection of resources is an inspiring read if you are preparing to deliver workshops on climate change, activism or inclusion.

Some of the team behind Changemakers Xchange are also in charge of the Recipes for Wellbeing, a lovely collection of activities for taking care of personal and collective wholeness. With practices for a healthier mind, body, heart and soul which can easily be integrated into your workshop flow.

ClimateKIC’s Visual Toolbox for System Innovation

When it comes to gathering diverse groups around a table to talk about serious, system-wide change and how to get there, nothing quite beats a visual canvas everyone can gather around and work with.

The EU organization ClimateKIC (the KIC stands for Knowledge Innovation Community) has a long experience setting up workshops in multi-stakeholder environments such as at the city or district level. Their 170-page free visual toolkit includes 16 canvases that make tough concepts related to system innovation and sustainability accessible and actionable.

Seeds for Change

Seeds for Change is a UK-based cooperative supporting the efforts of campaigners everywhere and has long hosted a collection of activities, tips, games and other resources. A great place to look for materials for workshops on conflict transformation and consensus decision-making.

Greaterthan

You can spend days learning from the incredible amount of resources on decentralised organising and changemaking collected by the Greaterthan collective. The place to go if you are interested in exploring the cutting edge of organisational change.

More Resources from SessionLab

Here at SessionLab we offer a wide array of resources for workshop planning and design. Here are some for you to explore:

Session Templates

When diving deeper into facilitation and workshop design, practitioners soon discover that there is an art to creating sequences of activities that truly make sense, deliver results and create environments conducive to learning. You can find some great examples in what Liberating Structures calls “strings”, logical sequences of different activities that lead participants fluidly in and out an experience.

To see how activities come together to create a coherent event, meeting or workshop, whether it lasts 2 hours or 4 days, head over to our template collection: there you will find curated agendas as delivered in real-life by skilled facilitators all over the world.

Using the SessionLab planner, you can create your next agenda based on any one of these templates, and adapt it to your own needs. The Essential Workshop Structure might be the right place to start if you are planning to lead a small group to solve a problem together.

SessionLab is also a friendly community where you can swap stories and tips with fellow facilitators. Join the conversation!

Keep learning

Choosing the best activity for a workshop is only part of the skill of designing and leading collaborative experiences. In our blog you can find articles on how to plan and design workshops as well as on the skills to develop to become excellent workshop facilitators.

Last but not least, join the newsletter for curated selections of our favorite activities from the library. If you are starting out at facilitation, you might want to join our (free) email course Facilitation is for Everyone! for tips delivered straight to your inbox every week.

We believe these online resources are worth checking out if you are looking for new tools and techniques for your next workshop or meeting. We hope they will save you time and help you find new and effective activities.

Which is your favorite resource for workshop activities?

Let us know in the comments! We also greatly appreciate if you share any further suggestions for free useful workshop resources.

Room setup is the seating arrangement of participants: the placement by which they receive content and interact with one another. It is a critical aspect of every event because the atmosphere the physical space creates will impact the experience in obvious, and subtle, ways.

As an event begins, there’s always an invisible barrier between a speaker and their audience. In fact, there is also a psychological barrier among participants, especially when they do not know each other well.

Thoughtful conference setup can minimize these invisible, social barriers to encourage engagement and participation. Different arrangements enable variety both in learning and involvement whether the purpose is for meetings, in-person or video conferences, trainings and presentations, or workshops and interactive learning events.

In this article, we will discuss different meeting room setups and their efficacy and drawbacks to help you choose which is the right one for your meeting, workshop or conference. We will cover:

Why room layout is important

Deciding where to host an event, conference or workshop is an essential step in its planning and design. Room layout and other conditions determined by the location will determine some of your event choices. Let’s review some of the main reasons why room setup is important for event design:

For practical reasons

• Meeting room setup will determine accessibility. Consider whether your participants require accessible spaces, and how they will reach the space (e.g. steps, elevators). The Youth Disability Advocacy Services has a great infographic you can refer to for more insight on inclusive spaces.
• Location arrangements will determine what activities you can and cannot lead. Moving around in order, for example, to do Impromptu Networking, a favorite Liberating Structures method to start an event, may be impossible in an auditorium.
• Timing of breaks will also change based on the location. If participants need to go around the building, down a flight of stairs and across a corridor to reach a cafeteria or toilette, you cannot expect a quick break to last 5 minutes.

For psychological reasons

• The type of room setup, as we will see in further detail below, will immediately communicate to participants what is expected of them in terms of more or less active participation.
• A surprising room arrangement is a powerful way of shaking people out of consolidated habits and opening their minds to new experiences, ideas and opportunities.
• A room setup that echoes the topics of the day is a guaranteed way of making your day memorable. Hosting a conference on water management by the banks of a river, a future scenarios workshop on a theatre stage or an open space day dedicated to the future of work inside an abandoned factory are all true-life examples of exceptional settings for memorable events.

What is the best room setup for workshops?

In her practical manual The Workshop Book, Pamela Hamilton states: “If the workshop is taking place in the same room where you have other meetings, the room itself will keep people in old thinking habits”.

Workshops typically involve hands-on activities, facilitation techniques, group discussions, simulations, and collaborative exercises, which allow participants to explore, ideate, and participate in achieving their desired outcomes. 

Because of their highly participatory nature, workshops deserve extra attention when organizing seating and setting up the space. If you want to know more about what makes a workshop tick, and how these events are different from meetings and conferences, you can read a full introduction here.

Here are some of the things a workshop leader will pay special attention to when it comes to room setup:

• Will the seating arrangement need to be changed during the session? If yes, avoid using a place where tables are fixed to the ground.
• Will participants need to use laptops, or have note taking/sketching space?
• What type of visuals do you plan to use. Slides? Flipcharts? Video conferencing? Make sure all participants have an unobstructed view of the visuals so that they don’t need to twist and turn to see the visuals.
• Where will participants go for small-group activities? Ideally, it should be possible for everyone to work comfortably without going so far that they can no longer see or hear the facilitators!
• What are the acoustics like in the room? Many conference spaces are not designed to keep in mind the possibility of many participants talking at the same time. This is even more true in case of hybrid workshops, where you expect interaction between online and in-real-life participants. For more on the specific requirements of hybrid events, see our dedicated guide.
• Is it ok to hang posters on the walls? Check that the masking tape you’ll be using doesn’t ruin the plaster, nor your markers leave blue and red splotches on the walls if someone decides to write directly on a poster rather than on the sticky-notes!

Facilitators typically ask for access to a workshop space at least one hour before the start time. What will participants see when they walk into the room?

Overall, you are looking for a clean and welcoming space, with materials ready to use as well as for a surprise effect that will jostle people out of their daily routine (putting chairs in a semi-circle or around working tables is usually all that is needed to achieve this).

As the workshop progresses, don’t forget to keep the space clean of any clutter and re-arrange materials as needed.

Particularly for workshops that last more than one day, it is very satisfying to see walls fill up with posters, canvases, and other artifacts created by participants. This gives everyone a feeling of progress and achievement and can do wonders to anchor learning through visual memory.

What to keep in mind when choosing locations

Next to these considerations that are tightly related to workshop design, there are other logistical matters you’ll need to keep in mind when choosing locations and setting up rooms. Let’s quickly see what to check:

• Do you need to inform people on how to reach the venue? You might want to set up arrows or signs or send participants detailed instructions. If you are hosting a public participation event, for example, can it be reached by public transport?
• Consider where snacks and meals will be served. You might want to dedicate some extra tables to coffee break supplies when a break room is unavailable.
• Check the location of restrooms and water fountains and make sure these are easy to find and access for participants. And while you are at it, make sure recycling bins are available and clearly marked. More ideas for greener events are in this useful list from the European Commission.
• Usually, the number of chairs should match with the number of participants, allowing a few extra chairs in case you have extra participants.
• Power supply and outlets. There should be enough to accommodate charging of laptops and other electronic devices needed for training and exercises, placed accessible but strategically so not to hinder the speakers, trainers and participants. You don’t want people tripping over power cords.
• Internet access. Do you want/need your participants to have internet access? If yes, make sure that the WiFi code is easily visible to everyone upon arriving. And if you need to use the internet during the session for any task, make sure that the bandwidth is enough to accommodate everyone.
• Heating and cooling. The venue must be warm or cool enough. For larger groups, expect that the temperature will rise over time with more people in the room.
• Additional furniture. Aside from tables and chairs, what other furnishing should be added or removed from the room to provide better comfort and utility to both facilitators and participants?
• Lighting. The venue must have enough lighting for speakers and participants to be able to see clearly but without being too bright. Natural lighting is preferable as people tend to get less tired, and attention spans last longer.

As you can tell, there is a lot to keep in mind to plan excellent events! Checklists are a great way to keep track of everything you need for room setup and preparation. In SessionLab’s planner, you can add a checklist to the top of your agenda for the day, and make sure you get those boxes ticked before you start.

An in-depth look into meeting room options

Each seating arrangement fulfills different purposes and matches different types of event style and size. Here are the 10 most popular kinds of seating arrangement setups for different types of events:

Theater or auditorium style seating

Theater-style seating is a classic one: participants are seated in rows of chairs, much like in a theater or cinema, to watch and listen to a speaker or several speakers as well as visual and auditory aids. There’s generally a gap in the middle to allow easy access for central seats and a large stage to accommodate speakers, visuals and auditory aids. This style, thus, is typical for events with a large number of attendees where content is delivered as a lecture.

Pros:

• Theater-style seating allows for a large number of participants.
• Maximum seating capacity of the venue can be achieved.
• Since every chair is facing the stage, the focus is on the speaker.

Cons:

• Since the focus of the audience is directed on the speaker and not on each other, participants are hindered from interacting with one another.
• There are often no provisioned spaces for participants to take notes, bring out their devices and record notes.
• Audience members tend to be too close to each other for comfort, and there’s a tendency for pushing past other people to enter or exit from seats.
• Spaces for aisles are needed to ensure access to seats

This type of seating arrangement is best for conferences, annual board meetings, product launches, lectures and performances. These events call for less interaction and focus more on visuals and listening to speakers and presenters.

U Shape Style

A U-shaped seating arrangement is just what the name describes; a letter U setup of tables and chairs arranged in an open-ended shape with the participants facing inwards. It is a classic boardroom setup that enables members to both face each other and the speaker.

Removing the tables and only having chairs in a u shape style allows for open interaction between the trainers and participants. This version is often used for skills development trainings and workshops.

Pros:

• A u shape setup enables the presenter to closely engage with each participant.
• Participants can interact with one another.
• The open area can be set up as a presentation area or as a focal point.

Cons:

• The seating capacity of the room is not maximized since floor space is not fully utilized.
• A majority of the participants view the front (speaker and visual aids) in a sideway position. This can become uncomfortable as the session progresses.

As described earlier, this type of seating arrangement is ideal for boardroom meetings and video conferences with a limited number of participants, but it is also good for training sessions or interactive workshops if you remove the tables.

If you keep the tables, then this setup allows for note-taking with laptops and other digital devices that aid in writing and learning.

Banquet Style Setup

The banquet style room arrangement is a round table setup with participants facing each other like at a dinner table. This encourages full interaction between people sitting at one table. It is often used for interactive workshops with group discussions and exercises.

Pros:

• Full potential for interaction between participants as they face each other.
• Allows for more members to get to know each other; useful for networking purposes.
• It maximizes the use of the space in the room.

Cons:

• Although it’s easy to interact with other members at the table, it’s not easy to mingle with other participants at other tables.
• It has the tendency to isolate groups and form cliques.

The banquet-style setup is good for formal and informal gatherings such as weddings, galas, sit-down dinners, music and entertainment – parties where there’s no need to constantly focus attention toward a stage/central platform.

It can also be suitable for large group workshops where teams are expected to work together over the course of the event.

Boardroom Setup or Conference Style Seating

Conference or boardroom style has one large table that fits around 7 to 20 people with room for their various equipment such as laptops, mobile devices and video conferencing devices. All participants face the middle to enable discussion and interaction from all directions. The boardroom or conference room style can also be adjusted to include many tables that form a hollow square/rectangle.

Pros:

• Conference room layout allows for direct interaction between participants from any direction
• Table space allows for the use of laptops and other gadgets, paperwork and consumption of food and drinks.

Cons:

• There are spots from where some participants may not be able to view slides or other visual presentations clearly.
• Because participants are able to use their laptops and other devices, they can easily shift their attention away from the meeting.
• The people at the far end of the table may feel isolated. Using circular or even square type conference tables can diminish this isolation.

This type of seating setup is ideal for business meetings, video conferencing, brainstorming and open discussions.

Classroom Style Seating

It is a classic classroom style setup where tables and chairs are arranged in parallel rows facing the front of the room. It is common for lectures and primarily supports interaction between the speaker and the audience and less among meeting participants. Participants sharing a table can do small group exercises or share their work with one another.

Pros:

• Tables or desks are provisioned for taking notes and use of devices.
• It maximizes the space and seating plan with tables/desks.

Cons:

• Line of vision for participants seated near the front corners or back corners is compromised
• Because of the angles of certain seats and tables, several participants may have to twist or turn to have a good view of the speaker or visual aid.
• Interaction and eye contact is unlikely in this setup and group discussions can be difficult.

The classroom style seating is ideal for instructive types of training sessions and workshops where the members need to take notes or use laptops and the flow of discussion is mostly from trainer/speaker to the audience. However, choosing this room setup requires a thoughtful agenda design in order to get participants properly engaged with the content; the room setup itself does not support interactive learning experiences.

Crescent Rounds Seating or Cabaret Style Seating

As the name suggests, members of the audience are seated at a round table but leaving empty space towards the stage or the location of the speaker. Tables are either scattered or strategically placed to maximize engagement as well as line of vision. The setup is conducive to small group exercises or discussions while keeping a focus on centrally displayed information or a speaker.

Pros:

• The half crescent shape creates a focal point towards the stage to instruct and brief group work.
• Because there’s no hindrance to line of sight of the speaker and visuals, participants do not have to move to uncomfortable positions or twist around to see the front.

Cons:

• Table setup encourages chatter within the group that’s irrelevant to the content or event objectives.
• It is not as compact as banquet style seating. More tables are used without maximizing seating.

The cabaret arrangement is useful for training sessions that aim for small group discussions and exercises combined with visual presentations. It is also popularly used for awards and gala nights.

Reception Style Seating

A reception style arrangement is similar to a banquet one but with extra cocktail tables in between group tables. The cocktail or high tables with no chairs are for mingling or networking. They are also good for breakout discussions and collaboration between members of the audience belonging to different groups.

Pros:

• Allows for focused group exercises at the main tables, while the cocktail tables provide convenient opportunities for breakout conversations or engaging with other group/table members.
• A dynamic setup which encourages participation and prevents boredom.

Cons:

• Room space may not be fully utilized compared to more traditional training setups.
• Not all members of the audience might appreciate a dynamic setup.

It is best applied to dynamic and creative training sessions with collaborative exercises. The reception style is also great for team building events.

Chevron Setup

The chevron or V-shaped setup is actually similar to a classroom arrangement but tables and chairs are angled for better line of vision and engagement between participants themselves as well as with the speaker.

Pros:

• It basically mimics the classroom setup but with improved view from outer ends to give participants better line of vision.
• Tables give members the space to take notes and user their devices.
• It can maximize seating capacity and is good for large groups.
• It allows for small group exercises for people sitting at the same table.

Cons:

• Participants are not facing each other and some will be behind others; this does not encourage active listening, and can still hinder line of vision in this way.

Similarly to the classroom setup, the chevron shape is suitable for training sessions and workshops where instructions and individual work dominate.

Fishbowl format

The fishbowl setup is used for dialogue type events. Four to five chairs are arranged in an inner circle – the fishbowl – while the remaining chairs are arranged in concentric circles around the middle area.

Speakers take the inner seats and start discussing the topic introduced by the moderator. In an open fishbowl, one seat is left free, and anyone from the outer circles can join the conversation. At the same time, then, another member from the fishbowl must give up his place in the inner circle.

This style is often used for forums or large group discussions where participants can openly discuss topics covered with the speakers or experts. It enables the whole group, or all members, to actively participate and be involved with the content, i.e. ask questions, make suggestions or give their own conclusions.

Pros:

• Encourages participation in larger groups.
• Speakers are put at a position of equal distinction with participants, meaning they are among the group instead of at the head of the room or on a stage.

Cons:

• This setup may be a problem for shy and introverted members of the audience who are afraid to participate. It may be harder to get their opinions or know what they think.
• It is hard to divide the large group into smaller sets for more intimate discussions of the topics.
• No tables or room for taking notes or using laptops.

Fishbowl is best for forums, conferences and large group meetings where there is a high expectation of participation.

Cluster setup or team table seating

Team tables, or clusters, is a similar setup to the banquet style but it is more for informal type of events. You can choose between cocktail style or high top tables and seating. The tables and chairs depend on the volume of people at the event. A sit-down table setup is for training in groups with a lot of group discussions and exercises, such as in team building, yet with an informal vibe and tendency for mingling or changing places.

Pros:

• An informal setup is always good for building rapport among participating members.
• People can move around and still be comfortable in the training or event.
• Tables can be arranged to maximize lines of sight.

Cons:

• Depending on the size of the room or the arrangement of the tables, line of vision can still be hindered.

Clusters are used for training with a lot of group discussions or exercises. It is best for team building and networking events where there’s still room to mingle and move around.

What is the best room setup for your conference, event or meeting?

The room design for your event should be determined by the goals you want to achieve and the number of participants you have. See some examples below:

• Have a large audience? Consider one of the room arrangements that can effectively be scaled up, even to hundreds of participants. For example: Auditorium, Banquet, Crescent or Reception
• Want to facilitate networking? Reception or rotating banquet tables can be a useful room design.
• Need participants to actively work together during the event? Choose a setup that fosters teamwork: U-Shape, Banquet
• Want to combine effective content delivery and participants working on their own devices? Classroom or Chevron can be a great fit.
• Do you have a group of 5-10 people that need to make a decision about a project? Choose a setup that supports open communication, such as U-Shape, Boardroom or Hollow Square.
• Are you planning for an interactive soft skills development training session? You may choose a u-shape without tables that allows you to present information and facilitate group conversation, then allow the group to break up into smaller circles by rearranging the chairs.

Knowing the answer for these two factors – interactivity and group size – will help you pick from these room setups:

If you have a longer, more complex event that spans over multiple days or if the session has different tracks, you should be prepared to arrange the room differently for different segments/days, if necessary.

How to get your meeting room style properly implemented

So, you have designed the meeting, you have a plan, and you have figured out which room arrangements will get you through your session. This means you are done with the planning work!

What can you do to ensure that your plan will be properly put into practice? Here are some tips to follow to have your planned room arrangement set up for you:

• Communicate in advance with the venue:
  • Most of the time, the venue will take care of the complete set up of your desired room arrangements and other related logistics requirements. In order to minimise the chance of miscommunication, it is best if you can show examples of what you want. (For instance, show what a u-shape seating looks like and clearly specify whether you want or don’t want tables in front of the seats.)
  • If you ask for different room arrangements over the course of your meeting, make sure to communicate this in terms of your agenda timing. If you need different room setups, you may want to ask for multiple rooms so you can flexibly move from one room to another.
• Show up early at the venue
  • Even with the best communication from your side and a great venue, the initial setup you will find at the venue might need adjustments. Make sure you have time to do this before participants start to arrive.
• Make sure seats are close enough to you
  • Don’t place participants too far away from yourself (the speaker/trainer/facilitator).
• Remove unnecessary seats
• Check if visuals (presentation screen, flipcharts) can be seen by all participants.
• Consider how your own position can influence participation:
  • If you like to move around while you speak, do a check from different seats to see which spots in the room might be blind to some. Make sure everyone can see you at all times.
• Design your visuals with the room constraints in mind:
  • Don’t use fonts that are small and hard to read
    Mind that, if you have multiple rows, not everyone might be able to see the bottoms of your slides.
• Lastly, have a checklist of equipment and materials you need, so you don’t forget to bring any of the tools and props you might need during your session.

Despite all the best planning though, in real life sometimes things escape control completely. The location manager loses the keys at the last minute (this is a real story). Communication before the event is insufficient. Your train is late. So before we close this review of room setups, let’s see what happens when all the planning goes out the window.

Facilitating in weird locations: what can you do?

A delightful conversation recently took place in SessionLab’s Community space around the question: What is the strangest place you have facilitated in? From churches to parking lots, outdoor gardens to heavily guarded intelligence facilities, it seems that any place large enough to accommodate a group can ultimately work out for facilitation.

Reading those stories, two top tips emerge to help you face the situation with poise and style in case you are asked to work in a less-than-ideal location yourself:

• Acknowledge what is going on and get participants on your side. Facilitators are often encouraged to model vulnerability and honesty in their stance, and finding yourself in a weird location is a great opportunity to do just that. Don’t pretend the space is ideal if it is not: explain what is going on and ask for participants’ support in making it work.
• Deploy extra creativity and make the best of it. If columns block the view in the middle of the room, turn the columns into symbols of an important value or topic for the day. If the doors are locked and you have to work outside, take it as an opportunity for an outdoor practice or impromptu interviews with passers-by. Weird locations are a great playground for improvisation.
• But make sure participants are comfortable. If the location makes it impossible for people to sit, see, or hear, they are not going to have the focus they need to work well together. Call for a break and renegotiate options with your client, including moving the workshop to a later date!

Now over to you…

We hope you have found useful tips above on how to design a room setup for your next event.

What is your number one tip for getting room arrangements right? And what is the strangest place you have facilitated in?

Let us know about your experience in the comments or join the conversation in our friendly Community space.

When we work together at our best, we can achieve a lot more than anything we might attempt alone. Working with others is not always easy: teamwork is fraught with risks and pitfalls, but skilled facilitation can help navigate them with confidence. With the right approach, facilitation can be a workplace superpower. 

Whatever your position, career path, or life story, you probably have some experience in facilitation skills, although you might not think of it this way.

Chairing a committee, getting the neighbors together to clean a park, playing music with your friends, organizing a wedding celebration, observing a group of kids play and suggesting something they might want to do next: there are many unexpected corners where you might be already practicing facilitation skills. 

When we start to recognize and meaningfully improve these key facilitation skills, that’s when we can begin to achieve real change in how we work together with others.

In this article, we will look at what facilitation skills are, including practical abilities (such as timekeeping during meetings), life competencies (such as communication skills), and components of the facilitation mindset (such as trust, and neutrality). Read on to explore what facilitation skills are, how they could be useful in your life and work, and ideas on how to practice them further. 

Why are facilitation skills important? 

Facilitation skills are invaluable in many situations, such as:

• managing team meetings;
• improving participation and engagement at events and conferences;
• increasing clarity in group processes, getting everyone on the same page;
• including a diversity of opinions and stakeholders;
• evaluating choices, creating action plans as a group;
• ultimately, supporting the group in making actual, effective progress toward its goals.

Facilitation skills are about being great at collaboration. There is very little we can actually achieve on our own: facilitation skills help make teamwork more effective, break communication barriers, and ultimately help us realize more ambitious goals. An effective facilitator can help encourage participation and involve everyone in the process – by learning and developing these skills, you too can empower the group to reach a successful outcome.

Without facilitation skills, energy, resources and momentum can easily get lost and wasted. This might happen through unresolved conflicts, or because of confusion over next steps, or low motivation. For anyone working with groups, facilitation skills are useful, but for leaders, they’re practically a necessity. 

When are facilitation skills used (and by whom)? 

There is an ongoing debate in the facilitation community around whether facilitation is a profession or a set of skills that can be put to use in any context. The answer, ultimately, is both. Myriam Hadnes, the host of the Workshops Work podcast, put it well in this interview with Sarah Norton and Steve Ray from the Australian Groupwork Centre: if people know how to cook, does this mean they no longer need chefs and restaurants? It’s actually the opposite: the more cooking skills we have, the more likely we are to fully enjoy a chef’s craft.

Viewing facilitation as a craft is a helpful framework. If facilitation is a craft, anyone can learn it. At the same time, people who devote their whole career to facilitation will achieve higher levels of mastery.

In practice, this means imagining a future in which most people know how to apply facilitation skills to their work, as well as when to call in someone more experienced when need be.

To learn more about what professional facilitators do and what you should know before hiring one, you can check out our blog article on What is a Facilitator and What do They Do. 

In practice, facilitation skills are most often used when designing and then leading groups through a collaborative process such as a workshop.

SessionLab makes it easy to build a complete agenda in minutes. Start by dragging and dropping blocks, add your timings and adjust with ease to create a minute-perfect session.

What are facilitation skills?

Facilitation skills are a set of competencies and soft skills that enable professionals to design and facilitate group processes effectively.

The version of facilitation most of us are familiar with includes using activities, tools, and methods in a workshop setting. Experienced professional facilitators develop an extensive toolkit of proven-to-work processes, activities, and templates for this purpose.

Facilitation is also about all the backstage work of preparing and designing meetings, events, and activities, shaping agendas that will provide the structure for the entire group to move along and achieve its desired goals. 

At the same time, there is more to facilitation than meets the eye. Below the surface lie life competencies and skills related to communication, time management, conflict resolution, project management, listening, and more. An effective facilitator can do much more than facilitate meetings and solve problems! Facilitation skills are the sum of all these competencies.

In the next paragraphs, we will go through some of the essential facilitation skills, through the lens of the “head, hearts, and hands” framework. 

Having defined facilitation as a practical craft, we’ll start with the hands: what are the practical facilitation skills you need to master when working with a group?

Then we will look at what could also be called life competencies, the “head” of facilitation: what do you need to know? This is the realm of frameworks that will help you understand the concepts behind group dynamics. 

Last but certainly not least is the “heart” of facilitation: the facilitative mindset, which is really key to getting great results when working with your groups. 

Here is a list of what we’ll be looking at. You probably have some of these skills already: which are you strong in? Which would you like to further develop?

Practical facilitation skills

The best way to learn and improve your facilitation skills is to practice, practice, practice. Meetings and events are the most logical place to start. Consider how your meetings are already going. What works well? What needs improvement? 

We have collected below the most important practical skills that a facilitator needs, divided into two parts of the facilitation process. What would the ideal state of your meetings and events look like? These are the facilitation skills that can help you get there!

• Designing the group process
• Guiding the group through the process 

Let’s review which skills are required for a facilitator to perform effectively in each step of the process.

Facilitation skills for preparing a meeting

The general rule of thumb says that preparing a group process/group facilitation usually takes twice as much as the actual net meeting time where the facilitation takes place.

At the design stage, we define the needs and outcomes of the process and create a structured agenda of activities. Foresight is certainly part of the facilitation mindset! To learn more about workshop design, here is an article that goes through the process step-by-step. 

Now let’s see what specific skills you will need for the planning process and to help design anything from a training session to a workshop like an expert facilitator.

Asking powerful questions

Any meeting or workshop needs to have a clearly defined goal, and as a facilitator, you need to be clear about the objectives. Ask questions to understand the underlying motivation behind a meeting and develop a consensus with the client about their goals. What outcomes do they hope to achieve? Why is the meeting being called? Who should be there? What will define success?

You might go further by creating a needs assessment to understand what the different stakeholders of an event might want in order to come up with a solution that meets your client’s needs. A hallmark of effective facilitation is clarity and purpose. 

Process design

When you know the outcomes you want to achieve, it is time to find the right process for that. But what does it mean to “find the right process’?

• As a facilitator, you are helping the group think together. So, finding the right workshop or meeting process is about finding the structure that will help groups to think and work together effectively. This may be an open discussion, or a structured one, where you as the facilitator use different techniques to help participants to exchange viewpoints, analyze issues, generate ideas and make decisions.
• A common structure for group facilitation discussions is to apply Divergent and Convergent Thinking: First, you enable the group to broaden their horizons and generate new ideas or solutions. Then you help them narrow down the set of options they have created to make a final decision.
• Finding the right process also includes considerations around what will keep participants active and engaged. Group engagement is something the facilitator should be conscious of throughout the workshop. Often times you will elect to use specific facilitation techniques to keep your session interactive and keep participation high. You might set ground rules that make it easy for group work to take place effectively or use activities expressly for encouraging participation.
• Keep in mind the desired outcomes so you can design a suitable process. A workshop facilitator must pay particular attention to this in order to ensure the entire workshop can help even small groups move towards a productive outcome.
• If you (and the group) have multiple desired outcomes, make sure that you have a clear process to reach each of them. This can be where your group facilitation skills can be tested if you haven’t carefully constructed a process for your workshop or meeting. Remember that a facilitator needs to prioritize and have realistic expectations of the group. Be critical in this stage of the design process so that your facilitation does not suffer from being overwhelmed during the meeting or workshop.

Agenda planning

Congratulations, you have a process! Next, you need to make sure that your process works with the reality of time constraints, logistics, group dynamics, and the attention levels of people joining you (which are also different whether online or in person!). 

Proper planning is one of your most important facilitation skills. Your facilitation practice will benefit from nailing this stage and learning from it for future workshops and meetings.

There are several factors to consider when planning a workshop agenda:

• Time constraints: A session has a start time and an end time, and participants usually expect you to respect the end time.
• Breaks: If your session spans longer than 90-120 minutes, you should likely include some breaks in your session, for instance, coffee breaks or a lunch break.
• The number of participants: Group discussions have a natural limit and this must be taken into account for anyone involved in group facilitation. Above a certain group size, it gets difficult to have a discussion where everyone is involved. If your group is bigger than a certain size (this will vary by type of exercise or discussion), you will probably need to split your participants into multiple groups and run some exercises and discussions in parallel. Naturally, this takes an increased amount of time and will benefit from co-facilitation. If you have bigger groups, consider clarifying:
  • If you want breakout sessions to run parallel tracks in your session
  • How different sub-groups will report back to the whole group
• Break the ice: Are participants familiar with each other or not? This, and the nature of your sessions, determines how much effort will be needed to break the ice and allow people to get to know each other. Knowing who is in the room and meeting at a personal level are necessary steps to build enough safety and trust for a productive session. 
• Interaction mix: There are different types of interaction, ranging from one-to-many forms of presentations to individual work, small group and large group discussions. A healthy balance of different interaction types throughout your session will help participants to stay engaged by catering to their different ways of learning and being. Make space for different ways of thinking and a mix of contributions by varying the pace and style of activities. 
• How will the room and environment support active participation? Plan proper room and seating arrangements and remove barriers in the room. It’s easy to make assumptions or forget, but the room, physical environment, and workshop set-up can make effective facilitation easy or more difficult. Plan ahead and be aware of the logistics for any meeting or workshop you are leading as a facilitator.
• Is virtual facilitation a consideration? How will you cater for an online audience and design for online tools?
• How will one topic of the meeting flow into another one?
• Closing and wrapping-up: How should the sessions be properly ended?

Facilitation skills for running a meeting

After proper preparation, the most exciting part of a facilitator’s work is actually running and managing the session and guiding people through the process. Let’s see what facilitation skills a facilitator needs here.

Create an inclusive environment

Participation from all group members is essential for a well-facilitated meeting. One of the most important things you can do as a facilitator is to co-create an atmosphere that encourages participation. This comes partially from your session design: include ice-breakers and get-to-know games to help people open up and start speaking.

Another part is ensuring that the room’s setting supports active contributions from people. Meaning, make sure everyone can see each other and removing barriers from the room (this is even more important in hybrid meetings, where part of the group is in the room and others join online). Group facilitation is hard if the group can’t hear one another!

Inclusion is also modeled in how you behave towards the group. A skilled facilitator will validate different opinions, ask curious questions, and look for ways to include quieter people in the discussion (e.g. by inviting written contributions, paired conversations, activities where speaking in turns, going in circles, and so on). A diversity welcome is a great way to start a session aiming for inclusion! 

Communicate clear guidelines and instructions

While you designed the agenda for your session, you probably clearly envisioned how group members will act during the facilitation activities you planned. Now that you are in the room with the group, you also need to clearly explain what you are asking from them. Effective facilitation is predicated on clarity. Here are a few practical tips to help:

• Explain why certain activities are useful.
• Set ground rules for participation and communication.
• Clearly and sequentially explain the steps participants will take.
• Be clear about time constraints.
• If possible, show an example of the type of output you are asking participants to create.
• Show instructions in a visual form for all participants to see (e.g. pre-write instructions on a flipchart paper or on a slide.)

Skills to moderate conversations

There are a number of basic techniques and simple verbal tools that a facilitator should be able to use confidently at meetings in order to facilitate discussions, engage participants and make sure everyone is involved.

This is the aspect of facilitation that includes moderation or “directing traffic” skills and these can have a massive impact on a team’s performance during a session.

• Probing: Probing is used to determine the mood or general opinion of the group about a certain topic or point in the discussion. Just asking for a “thumbs up-thumbs down” survey can be enough to get an impression of the general opinion of the group.
• Paraphrasing: Paraphrasing means to express the same content that was just stated before but in your own words in order to check that both you and the others have the same understanding.
• Redirecting questions or comments: Redirecting a question to the group helps get participants more involved in the discussion. In addition, it also encourages group reflection.
• Bridging and referring back: This helps the group follow the discussion and to connect ideas by recalling earlier discussions or ideas.
• Shifting perspective: If the group gets stuck at some point in the discussion, try to shift the perspective and look at the problem from a different angle.
• Summarizing: Repetition promotes understanding, and summarizing what has been discussed so far will help participants build upon the conclusions they have already made.
• Giving positive reinforcement: It’s important to encourage people, especially those who are less assertive, to state their opinions. Therefore, when someone brings up a good point, say so, thus showing his/her participation is appreciated, and later on he/she will feel confident enough again to bring up another idea. Don’t forget that body language also has a part to play here!
• Including quieter participants: Encourage less talkative members to contribute to the discussion. Ask directly for their opinions and ask if they have any questions. At the same time, keep in mind that people do have different learning and thinking styles and may not feel comfortable if they are ‘encouraged’ too much. A facilitator needs to be alert to the needs of different participants and help everyone move forward together.

Conflict management

The ability to handle and diffuse tension is a skill that sets expert facilitators apart from others. Group facilitation is often exciting and productive, though differences of opinion can form in workshops or meetings you might be facilitating. A good facilitator isn’t someone who actively avoids such differences but embraces them, and uses a combination of critical thinking, active listening and other skills to help a group navigate such differences. 

Remember, the group has a goal, and individual differences will need to be handled to achieve that. Given the time and scope of the session, not every interpersonal difference can or should be resolved; however, it is important that you know the right techniques and group processes for diffusing tension. Sometimes this might mean breaking up the work into smaller groups, taking a break, shifting perspectives or changing the scenery, etc.

Handling challenging situations

Dealing with conflict-stacked situations is among the biggest challenges to effective facilitation. Often, there are underlying conflicts behind disagreements taking place in a conversation, even in small meetings. The facilitator role often means being attuned to this possibility and responding appropriately.

You might also encounter participants who express challenging behaviors. People have reasons for behaving as they do, and if you don’t make an effort to understand their stance, they might keep playing hardball in the session. Balancing attention to individual needs and to the whole group can get tricky!

At certain times, you may be better off trying to speak to that person in private to discover what drives them, and at minimum, give feedback to help them understand how their behavior affects the group. Interpersonal communication is again an important part of effective facilitation and ensuring you have these facilitation skills can make your job in a workshop much easier.

Consensus-building skills

Different points of view naturally emerge in a discussion. It is the job of the facilitator to help the team find common ground among different opinions, simultaneously helping the group arrive at a decision that is accepted by everyone. Consensus, in this context, does not mean that everyone must agree with the final decision but that everyone gets an opportunity to share their opinion with the group, and that people are aware of the reasons why a particular decision was made.

In other words, this is called creating a transparent process. For instance, if you choose to use simple dot-voting as the technique to come up with a set of the most preferred ideas after an idea generation activity, then everybody should be made aware of why only those most popular ideas will be considered further. In that way, everyone understands the process that leads to a final decision. (Setting ground rules at the outset is a great way to make this clear to everyone in the room!)

Time management

Meetings have time limits. This is especially true in effective and productive organizational cultures. A carefully crafted agenda must take into account how much time can be allocated for each activity during a session. 

Part of the facilitator’s role is to guide the group in timely conversations and decisions and stay focused throughout. It is important that you are aware of the passing time during a meeting and that you let participants know when time is running short for an activity. In general, effective facilitation assumes efficient timekeeping, with only well-grounded exceptions for going overtime in discussions. 

If you are facilitating a meeting, participants will assume the timekeeping role is 100% up to you. But you can also decide to share the burden of facilitation with the group, for example by assigning another person to be the timekeeper. 

Record outcomes

Recording key takeaways of a conversation is essential for keeping group progress on track and avoiding circling back to the same topics. As a competent facilitator, you should make sure to capture and highlight the key messages – whether that is via visual recording (i.e. arranging post-it notes, sketches, etc. made by participants), or written records (i.e. writing up conclusions).

You may also ask a participant to assist with minute-taking or have a dedicated visual practitioner to capture outcomes. All the insights recorded will provide a useful baseline for action-setting and follow-up.

Facilitation skills as life competencies 

Life competencies are clusters of related skills and abilities that enable a person to act effectively in a real-life situation. They are more complex than the practicalities of managing a meeting or a group of people, but the good news is they can be picked up and practiced in all sorts of situations.

Here are some of the higher-level skills practiced by facilitators:

• Active listening
• Project management skills
• Communication
• Group dynamics and group management
• Sensing the energy level in the room (and adapting to it)

Active listening

A basic condition for an effective conversation is that people feel they are being heard and listened to. Active listening is one of your best group facilitation skills and it is often the foundation for a productive discussion.

Practice your active listening skills as a facilitator, and encourage all participants to do the same. Also, basic verbal tools, such as paraphrasing, referring back and summarising help a lot to show the group that their thoughts are being heard. A facilitator understands that being an active listener also means using positive feedback to encourage quiet people to get directly involved in the session. If you were to work on improving just one facilitation skill, this is a great place to start.

Project management skills

There are numerous minor tasks and to-dos on the logistic side of preparing a workshop. In some cases, you may get a helping hand from the client’s side, and someone will help you to have everything arranged as you have designed and requested. In other cases, you might need to do this alone step-by-step, checking that everything is going fine with the logistics and pulling the right strings when something is needed. Whether you run a dedicated planning session for your workshop or communicate with clients and participants over email, staying organized is an important job you can’t afford to miss. 

Getting the room properly set up for a meeting is important. So is having catering arranged in order to ensure food and drinks are available during breaks, and having the right workshop equipment at hand. This can be easy to overlook, but ensuring you get this right is part of facilitation best practices. Missing a vital piece of equipment can be frustrating or stressful and make group facilitation more difficult.

Communication

In most cases, it is necessary to inform the client about the process that you are planning, and, in general, to maintain steady communication to make sure that all preparations go smoothly. The best facilitators are in contact with their clients throughout the process and may even get in contact with some of the participants. Good communication at all levels is absolutely integral for a good facilitator and anyone involved in group facilitation.

Most of the time your client will have a natural interest in knowing the process and agenda for your meeting. They will have a number of people attending the workshop – meetings and workshops can be particularly expensive if you consider the time value of the people present – and they want to be assured that the group will be in good hands. Therefore, it is important to keep your clients updated throughout the design process for their peace of mind. This also offers a chance to get further insights about the goals and the group, helping you to come up with the right session design.

Setting up an effective workshop will require meetings with a hosting team: here you can find a ready-made template to help you steer those conversations and make sure you have everything you need!

Group dynamics and group management

Any group of people has its own dynamics dependent on the specific interrelations between its members. As a facilitator, you want to create a participative atmosphere where everyone is involved. Paying attention to the dynamics of the group and how individuals participate is important to any group facilitation scenario.

Being familiar with some group dynamics frameworks, such as the 5 stages of team development as defined by Bruce Tuckman, can help you name what is going on in the room and suggest the type of activities that will most help the group move productively through the various stages, from forming to performing and beyond. 

You will need practice to master the skills of picking up on the atmosphere, measuring the emotional temperature, and helping the group achieve its potential. 

Sensing the energy level in the room (and adapting to it)

Some activities require more attention from participants, some require less, but no individual will maintain the same level of attention and energy during a full-day workshop. And that’s alright. As a facilitator, you should have a good eye for spotting when the group’s attention level as a whole is getting critically low.

You can make sure to design sessions with varying group activities to keep people engaged, and give regular breaks every 90-120 minutes at least. If you sense motivation dipping, try some energizer activities to instill energy in the room. Other times, what is actually needed is more akin to a moment of grounding, focusing, or quiet personal reflection.

Outdoor activities, including sending participants for a brisk walk, can do wonders, and so can a well-thought-out use of music in a workshop (including online!). An excellent facilitator develops a sense of what the group needs and has a suite of team building activities they can employ at a moment’s notice too. 

Facilitation as a mindset – the heart of facilitation  

At its core, facilitation is about holding a group process as participants navigate deep and shallow waters, turbulence and calm. Methods, tools and frameworks will in and of themselves help improve your events and meetings. But reaching breakthroughs and achieving higher potential takes more than that.

A highly skilled facilitator embodies certain qualities in their posture and body language, in the tone of their voice and the micro-expressions of their faces. They bring calm, clarity and purpose to a room. Yet, even such subtle facilitation skills can be practiced. In the next part we will look at some elements of the facilitation mindset (the “heart” of facilitation) and tips on how to practice them.

Curiosity

Curiosity is a core element of a facilitation mindset. If there is a lot of chatter in the room, or a heavy silence, or someone presenting a challenging behavior, a facilitator’s knee-jerk reaction should be to be curious about it. What is happening? What is this telling me about the group in this moment? 

Practice curiosity during meetings by imagining any disturbance or difficulty as a messenger bringing you an important bit of information about the group. Are we in need of a break? Is there an unspoken issue to be brought into the light? If you notice something of this sort, you do not need to take upon yourself the whole responsibility of solving the problem. Naming what you think might be happening and “throwing it back” to the room as a question for the group is a very typical thing for an effective facilitator to do. 

Trust

Facilitation is about believing the group has the tools and skills needed to solve its own problems. Trusting the group can be difficult, especially if you are also an expert in the content, or perhaps a manager, and feel you might have some answers yourself. If that is actually the case, there is nothing wrong with providing ideas and opinions, but you should make sure you are well aware of when you are “wearing the facilitator’s hat”, so to speak, and where you are putting it down to take on another role.

A good facilitation game to practice trust is the Human Knot. In this fun exercise, participants literally tie themselves up in knots; besides giving instructions, your only role as facilitator is to believe that the group can do it (they will) and tell them so. When we hear someone believes in us and our own ideas, we can achieve incredible things!

Practicing trust has a lot to do with practicing listening skills. If you catch yourself thinking something along the lines of “This group is hopeless, they will never solve this!” step back, observe, look for what is working well in the group, and take notice of what happens. Be prepared to be surprised! 

Flexibility

Facilitation is a dance of improvisation and structure. You have a set agenda and activities you want to go through, and it’s important to make sure you reach your objectives. At the same time, you are working with living, breathing human beings: what actually happens when we gather is always a bit unpredictable. Facilitation skills include being able to sense what is going on, ask the group questions, and change course based on what is happening at the moment. This is part of why so many facilitators have some training in improv theatre!

Planning a good process for an event will help you immensely. Being prepared means you will confidently be able to handle unforeseen situations and adjust the pre-planned process more easily as necessary. Usually, activities and discussions end up taking more time than initially planned: the group might need more breaks; new agenda items may pop up; and so on.

As a facilitator, being able to adapt on the fly is an essential skill, and it is also necessary to communicate and confirm the potential changes to the agenda with the group. At the end of the day, as a facilitator, you are helping a group achieve the common and agreed-upon objectives they want. So, if there are any changes in the desired outcomes, they should be agreed upon by the group. Co-facilitation is immensely helpful with improvising and adapting. Having an extra person as a sounding board allows you to check in with one another, see if you have noticed similar patterns and needs, and ideate changes together. 

Neutrality

Neutrality is at the core of facilitation yet, at the same time, it is one of its trickiest principles. The idea here is that the facilitation should stay neutral on content while being an expert on process. It’s not about your ideas, it’s about supporting the group in achieving what they want.

However, there are situations when a facilitator does have a natural interest in the content. After all, one cannot bring an external neutral facilitator for every single meeting in the world. If for any reason you are not content-neutral as a facilitator, you should be clear about this with the group from the beginning. Try to make it explicit when you are wearing your ‘facilitator hat’ and when you are using your ‘participant/content-expert hat’.

Another way to look at the idea of neutrality is to remember that it doesn’t mean “not having a position” but rather having the very special position of “allowing and enabling all positions”, or being “multi–party”. Practice this by getting involved in processes and sectors which you know very little about!

Self-awareness

Group processes are human and messy (even when you know the frameworks and are proficient in group dynamics!). People, including the facilitators, get triggered. Misunderstandings arise. Someone hijacks the meeting for their own purposes. Clients get nervous. The projector stops working. Shit happens.

Being aware of our own responses is key to keeping our cool in such situations and, thereby, staying helpful to the group. Self-awareness also means creating your own set of principles, values and skills that are important to your own facilitation practice.

Practice self-awareness by reflecting and debriefing after any facilitation experience. The effective facilitator is one who is always learning. You can do it on your own, preparing your own template of reflection questions (what went well? What would I do differently next time?), asking for feedback from participants and getting peer feedback or mentoring from other facilitators.

How to improve facilitation skills

The best way to get better at facilitation is to practice, practice, practice! Over hundreds of hours of meeting facilitation, you will encounter a myriad of different situations in group dynamics: heated debates, opinionated participants, challenging power plays, as well as happy teams, effective meetings, increased opportunities for collaboration, and creative breakthroughs. The broader your facilitation toolbox is, the more skilled you will be in applying the right processes to guide each unique group’s thinking.

There are a few ways you can accelerate your learning in the realm of facilitation and to go from being a good facilitator to a great facilitator:

• Participate in facilitated spaces. Finding opportunities to watch other facilitators on the job is a great way to learn and to understand what type of methods and styles are right for you. Take part in workshops, even if the topic is not very familiar to you, to see how others work. The International Association of Facilitators has a calendar of live and online events you can attend. 
• Join a community. Facilitation communities are on the rise. From our own SessionLab community to experimental spaces like NeverDoneBefore, facilitation communities were quoted by facilitators as one of the best places to stay updated and learn new skills, based on the State of Facilitation report. You can also get together with a few interested people around you to form a peer group and support one another in your learning. 
• Co-facilitate with experienced facilitators: On-the-job learning from seasoned veterans is probably the most effective way to level up your skills. Strive to design facilitation processes together with other facilitators, and you will encounter different perspectives on how to design an effective group process. Co-facilitate discussions, and you will gain first-hand experience in observing how different strategies work to manage conversations. 
• Explore new tools and techniques: Keeping an open mind and staying ahead of the curve is important. Find time to learn and experiment with new tools and techniques to stay up-to-date. Read books, watch videos and share best practices with colleagues. SessionLab’s library of tools and facilitation newsletter are great ways to start! 
• Get trained (and potentially certified): You may consider attending a general facilitation training, or get trained in specific facilitation frameworks or facilitation skills. The State of Facilitation 2023 report revealed a surprising multitude of options to get trained on specific methodologies, as well as clarifying that there is no single pathway to becoming a facilitator. Facilitators come from all sorts of backgrounds and walks of life! Whether you are a beginner or professional facilitator, facilitation training can help you grow and refine your practice. 

At the end of the day, facilitation is more of a craft than a science. The more you do it, the more sophisticated your skills will become! Reflecting and debriefing on what you noticed others do in their facilitation practice, as well as on your own skill development, is essential to improving your skills. In many ways, the best facilitation training is being on the job as a facilitator.

Facilitation resources

Now that you have more clarity about what facilitation skills are, let us look through three useful pathways to delve deeper into facilitation resources:

1. The International Association of Facilitators has developed a competency framework and a code of ethics to support facilitators and clients. These revolve around 6 core competencies, in which you will recognize facilitation skills in action:
   – Creating Collaborative Client Relationships; Plan Appropriate Group Processes; Create and Sustain a Participatory Environment; Guide Group to Appropriate and Useful Outcomes; Build and Maintain Professional Knowledge and Model a Positive Professional Attitude as a Process Facilitator. Reading through the framework is an enlightening way to understand what facilitators do in practice and what skills they apply.
   
2. Read through the State of Facilitation in 2023 report for insights on what facilitators do to stay current, ideas on what communities to join, tips on favored podcasts and books, and an overview of what the profession looks like today. 

3. Here at SessionLab we have created two email courses, Facilitation is for Everyone! and Overcoming Facilitation Challenges, which you can sign up to (for free) to receive inspiration and facilitation stories straight in your inbox. Read more on all the resources we’ve put together to start your facilitation journey here! 

Over to you

Are any important facilitation skills missing from the list above? Do you have questions about something not covered in this post? Join the conversation in the comments or in SessionLab’s friendly community space! 

Fortunately, there are plenty of online tools to make your life easier when you need to facilitate a meeting and lead workshops. In this post, we’ll share our favorite online tools you can use to make your job as a facilitator easier.

In fact, there are plenty of free online workshop tools and meeting facilitation software you can use to become more productive when in the process of preparing or following up on a facilitated session.

We collected the most useful tools we have encountered while talking to SessionLab users: facilitators, corporate trainers, and service designers as well as our own personal experiences. Many of these tools also include a fully functional free version available without time limitation so you can incorporate them into your workflow easily! 

We grouped the tools according to the tasks they are primarily used for so you can find precisely what you need. The primary use case we considered was to support a digital facilitation process while running workshops. Most of these tools are equally useful when you need to prepare for other online sessions or work with virtual teams.

Let’s jump in!

• Meeting and agenda planning: SessionLab, Google Sheets
• Online whiteboards: Miro, Mural, Stormboard, FigJam
• Virtual facilitation platforms: Stormz, Butter, Thing.Online, Toasty.ai, Klaxoon
• Virtual space tools: Spatial, Gather, Welo
• Engagement tools: Mentimeter, Slido, Kahoot
• Video conferencing: Zoom, Whereby, Skype, Google Meet, Big Marker
• Survey tools: Google Forms, Typeform, SurveyMonkey
• File storage and document sharing: DropBox, Google Drive, OneDrive, Box
• Online communication tools: Slack, MS Teams, Discord, Chanty
• Online Learning Platforms: Padlet, LearnWorlds, Nearpod, Teachable
• Task management: Trello, Todoist, Asana, Notion
• Note-taking apps: Evernote, OneNote, Google Drive & Docs
• Online design tools: Canva, Figma, Invision

In 2022 SessionLab ran a survey of over 1100 facilitators from all over the world. A whole section was dedicated to tools, and you can now read the results in the State of Facilitation Report. What tools do facilitators use for design, delivery, and evaluation of sessions?

Based on these results, online tools coexist alongside pen, paper and sticky notes for session design, while whiteboards and videoconferencing software have become essential for session delivery. Go to the report to learn more! Is your favorite tool not on the list? Let us know in the comments or start a discussion in our Community!

Meeting and agenda planning

If you are planning to facilitate a group session that spans more than a couple of hours and you have different workshop activities, theory blocks, team building games and energizer activities, then you likely need to have some sort of agenda to plan the sequence of these activities.

A simple pen and paper might just do the trick for you, but what if you’re working together with some other people on the agenda or simply need to share it with your client? If you want to avoid having dozens of different versions of Excel or Word files, then an online agenda builder might come in handy!

SessionLab

SessionLab is an online workshop planner tool for anyone who designs and facilitates workshops and meetings. It provides a drag and drop interface that is designed for the flexible and iterative process of building up a workshop or meeting agenda – making your process design work a real flow experience. 

When it comes to running your workshop, stay on time with Time Tracker and adjust your agenda on the fly. You can collaborate in real-time, create a personal library of reusable assets and create quality printouts to share with your clients.

If you’re looking for new inspiration, you can find more than 1000 workshop activities in a public library of facilitation methods and a set of expert-designed complete workshop templates too. And yes, we’re blowing our own horn, but mainly because we’re facilitators too and we love using it!

Google Sheets

Google Sheets is a worthwhile online alternative to Microsoft Excel. So if you are a hardcore spreadsheets fan loving to tinker with rows and columns to turn them into workshop timetables then Google Sheets offers you most of the features you need for creating and sharing session agendas.

Real-time commenting and revision tracking is highly useful for collaborative work and integration with Google Drive cloud storage allows you to easily find content in your sessions in your Drive.

Online whiteboard tools

Online whiteboards offer an endless flexible space where you can collaborate and share ideas. You can create an online canvas and use that as a simple whiteboard for jotting down ideas, or as an infinite board for building a project with a remote team. They allow the creation of mockups and schemes, you can quickly add stickers, write down ideas and leave feedback.

Complex problem-solving can be made easier by using a visual platform to brainstorm and collaborate. Online whiteboards are not only useful for preparing your workshop with a remote team, but also for online meeting facilitation. They can also help to replicate the feeling of working together in person. Here are our favorites!

Miro

Miro is one of the most popular online whiteboards on the market. It offers a flexible suite of features and templates that make it easy to start collaborating remotely.

We particularly love Miro’s large collection of integrations and apps – there are so many ways to do something exciting for your virtual workshop with Miro. It also scales well with large numbers of participants and it’s easy to invite people to the board in the middle of a session. Miro includes a free version that offers up to 3 boards for your team. 

Miro and Mural were mentioned in the State of Facilitation in 2023 report as the top two most-used whiteboards, so you’re in good company if you choose either of these for your next online session!

Mural

Mural is a versatile online whiteboard tool for remote team meetings. It is particularly strong as a tool for teams, allowing you to create different rooms for your board with differentiated access rights. It offers a wide range of workshop and meeting templates, including planning, design, issue analysis and idea generation board templates.

We’ve found Mural one of the best solutions for creating visually pleasing whiteboards and it’s been used by many conference organizers as a result. Mural’s free plan includes 3 murals with unlimited members.

Stormboard

Stormboard focuses on helping facilitators with idea generation, organization, and prioritization. You can add different types of notes, combine them together, comment in threads, and vote on ideas using colored dots.

Stormboard also has a strong reporting functionality that allows you to instantly turn your online sticky notes into structured meeting reports. Great when working with external clients. For a more guided approach to virtual meetings, Stormboard is a worthy option of online whiteboard. The free version offers 5 boards with a maximum 5 collaborators for each.

FigJam

Figma is a great design tool for visual collaboration. FigJam is an online whiteboard that is especially useful for teams wanting to ideate around their Figma designs and collect all their online collaborations in one ecosystem.

FigJam is simple and intuitive to use and we love that we can access our designs easily. You can even add widgets such as a code editor and donut for team building! FigJam features a free version with 3 FigJam files and unlimited collaborators. 

Virtual facilitation platforms 

While Zoom still dominates as a video conferencing tool, what about when you’re facilitating workshops that require more bespoke features? Or how about if you’d prefer to host your agenda, engagement tools and video software in one place? 

These virtual facilitation platforms are designed to be a single spot for all your facilitation needs. They can be great if you’re not already wedded to a video platform or prefer having all your tools in one spot. 

Stormz

Stormz is an app for professional facilitators. It enables you to design and facilitate digital and live workshops in one platform. 

You can use Stormz to ask your participants to give their input on questions you generate in the app, generate ideas and make collective decisions directly from their laptop, tablet or mobile phone. It’s a great way to create engagement and visualize responses during a session. 

Stormz also offers a unique on-site solution to manage large group workshops involving hundreds of participants by using their portable Stormz Box device which provides secure and reliable local network infrastructure for collaborative workshops at any venue.

Butter 

Butter is a new video conferencing tool dedicated to online meeting facilitation that is packed full of features. With in-built polls, icebreakers, a queue to enable equal participation, and time tracking, Butter is an effective alternative to Zoom for facilitators.

Butter has a free plan for up to 100 participants running 60-minute group sessions. It’s certainly worth looking at if you’re looking for a more robust facilitation toolbox in your video conferencing software.

Thing.Online

Thing.online is a virtual facilitation platform that aims to recreate the feel of a live workshop online. With features like spatial discussions, breakout tables and integrations, Thing.Online aims to provide a single space for facilitating complex online events.

We like that Thing.online makes moving between presentations and individual discussions easy while keeping all your materials available and easy for participants to access. Running a virtual conference with a mix of keynote speakers and workshops? Thing.online might be the tool for you. 

Toasty.ai

Combining interactivity and video conferencing, Toasty.ai seeks to make meetings more engaging and interactive. In the left sidebar, you’ll find features like icebreakers, polls and whiteboard integrations you can add to your virtual meeting in a cinch. The integrated polling made for a simple participant experience, and Toasty features a heap of host tools to make running meetings easy too. 

Toasty.ai’s pricing is based on the number of agendas and participants in your sessions. Get started for free with 3 agendas and 20 participants and move up to premium plans as your scope expands.

Klaxoon

Designed for those wanting to run more engaging online meetings and workshops, Klaxoon aims to be the one tool you need for online delivery. With a suite of features including a virtual collaboration space, polls, engagement apps, and more, Klaxoon can empower and uplift your online meetings. 

The free version of Klaxoon includes a one-shot template with up to 15 participants, though you can also try the full version of Klaxoon with a 30-day trial.

Virtual space tools

Virtual space tools are great for creating an online alternative to a physical event or office space. With these tools, you can create virtual events and conferences that recreate that sense of navigating a festival ground or moving from keynote speeches to breakout rooms. You might even create a virtual office where people can gather, work and have chance interactions.

Virtual spaces such as those below can help create a sense of wonder and excitement in participants, though note that they do often require more set-up and overhead that a simple virtual meeting. For the right use case, they can be more than worth this time investment and can add something special to your team’s online interactions.

Spatial Chat

Spatial Chat is a wonderful combination of video conferencing and virtual space designed to help remote teams work together. We used Spatial to host many of our Christmas events. Being able to move around the space and sit next to the virtual fire or arrange into teams for a quiz certainly elevated our experience! 

Spatial Chat is free to start with teams of 5, though if you want to record meetings and have more than 3 rooms, you’ll want to look at some of their premium plans. It’s a great way to make digital facilitation more organic and engaging.

Gather 

For teams looking for a virtual space that encourages playfulness, Gather might be the best shout. By including avatars that you move through a virtual space, Gather feels like an old-school videogame! It brings a sense of fun and embodiment to remote working, while also featuring heaps of tools to boost productivity.

We loved the customization features of Gather, and for teams that are looking for something different in a virtual space, it’s worth playing with! Fully virtual teams looking for ways to connect and have fun outside of Zoom energizers will find lot’s to love here.

Welo

Conference and virtual events looking for a festival atmosphere should check out Welo. With a bird-eye-view style that emulates maps or isometric games, Welo is great for creating large-scale events and conferences online. Welo has a whole suite of features for virtual events and team building, but we especially love how easy it is to explore. 

Our experiences in Welo have been memorable, such as attending NeverDoneBefore festival for facilitators. We love what’s possible in this platform and the potential wow factor a virtual conference organizer can achieve here! Welo is free to try and integrates with Zoom, too! 

Engagement tools

Engagement tools are a suite of tools that allow you to quickly poll participants, run quizzes, visualize responses and even run simple games inside your meetings and events. This kind of workshop engagement tool can be key to creating memorable experiences. For virtual team building sessions and remote teams, this can be the missing ingredient to truly engage and delight participants. 

For facilitators, such tools can also be useful to get feedback or facilitate group discussions in a way that makes sense for an online session. Quickly getting a read on how a group of 100 participants is feeling can be so helpful for determining the next stage of your workshop!

Mentimeter

Mentimeter allows you to create questions (such as multiple choice questions) in their web application and participants can answer them from their mobile devices. The great thing is that you can instantly visualize everyone’s opinion and display the results in real-time to the group. It helps your participants to feel engaged, which is especially important for a large group workshop. 

Mentimeter works really well on mobile devices with a streamlined user experience and the free version allows you to create two polls and five quiz questions per presentation.

Slido

Slido also offers participant polling functionality and a mobile app for your participants. The free version allows you to have 3 polls per event. Similarly to Mentimeter, it also supports Q&A, so your meeting participants can post their questions at any time via the mobile application.

Slido has a heap of integrations including Google Slides and Microsoft Teams. We also loved the analytics suite: polling large groups and visualizing outputs in a word cloud was also a neat engagement feature that can help elevate your sessions. 

Kahoot

Kahoot is an online platform for creating and sharing learning games with large audiences. It has a suite of features that make it great for classrooms, board meetings and workshops alike.

You can even create self-paced assignments for asynchronous engagement: great for hyping up a group before or between sessions. By using prizes and rewards, Kahoot’s engagement tool is a great way to gamify your virtual sessions.  

Video conferencing tools

In a world of remote work and digital facilitation, video conferencing tools have become near mandatory. Many of us spend our working days inside virtual meetings and video chats, so choosing the right video tool is important!

Whether you’re looking for a simple drop-in solution or something more robust for your next webinar, these video conferencing tools are some of the best. Each aims to make it easier to connect and work together online. You can expect to see screen-sharing options, participant management tools and useful integrations with other software too! 

Zoom

Zoom provides exceptionally reliable quality, minimizing audio or video latency issues that you usually encounter with most video conferencing applications. It has a wide variety of features available both for individual and business needs including the scheduling of calls, a dial-in phone number and recording audio and video calls even on the free service plan. The only downside is the 40-minute call limit.

One of the benefits of using Zoom for digital facilitation is audience familiarity. Most people working remotely are now familiar with the tool and you rarely need to explain how to use it. It’s become the industry standard for good reason – it just works! With integrations, you can also use many of your favorite tools inside your meeting, making it a robust and simple option for your virtual sessions. 

Whereby

Whereby comes in to help when all other tools fail: you just open a video conferencing room, send the link to your guests and they can join without having to install any application or create an account. (Only a browser extension is needed to be added).

Whereby is a lightweight video chat tool with fewer features than Zoom but offers unprecedented ease of use. The free plan offers group video conferencing and screen sharing up to 4 people with one fixed meeting room. There’s no need to create different meeting links each time, the same link will work for your team to meet anytime. We enjoyed using Whereby for quick meetings and to chat about something that email or Slack couldn’t cover. 

Skype

Skype was among the first players in peer-to-peer video conferencing and as it has been widely adopted now it’s often a straightforward option for calling contacts who have Skype accounts.

As the market has expanded, Skype has grown to include screen sharing, group video conferencing, and file sharing too. Though it lacks some of the more collaborative elements of other tools, it’s pretty good for a free option! For peer-to-peer communication with businesses and clients who prefer phone calls, Skype still has a place in your video and audio toolbox.

Big Marker

If you’re hosting online workshops and conferences with large numbers of people and need to handle ticketing and recordings, Big Marker might be the tool for you. It’s especially useful for those running webinars and who want to create a content hub of past sessions.

Breakout groups for workshops might not be as intuitive as Zoom, but it’s easy to run conference-style sessions with speakers, Q&As and presentations. Creating a repository of recordings on your channel is a great feature that can be a massive boon if you’re running an ongoing series or training course. 

Google Meet

Google’s popular messaging app offers an easy-to-use video conferencing tool that works really well even if you need to talk with people both in and outside your organization. Having a native integration with Google Calendar and Gmail means this tool gets a lot of use here at SessionLab!

Additionally, Google Meet offers many standard features such as breakout rooms, attendance tracking, and live streaming. While it may not be as robust as some of the other tools on this list, it is easy to use and requires little setup.

Online survey tools for needs assessment or evaluation

If you ask for feedback from participants and you want to go beyond using ‘happy sheets’, paper forms filled out right after the workshop on the spot, then you may decide to create an online survey after the session. 

Alternatively, you might want to conduct a needs assessment survey while preparing your session. You can choose from a wide range of online survey tools that can do the job for you, ranging in complexity and use case. Here are some of our favorite tools for data collection and surveys. 

Google Forms

Google Forms allow you to create unlimited surveys with 6 types of questions and skip logic that can guide your participants through your survey depending on their answers.

The service has seamless integration with Google’s other apps including Gmail, Google Sheets and Drive, allowing you to take advantage of file storage and simple results sharing too. Google Forms also has a great advantage: unlike most of the competition that has usage limits in their free versions, Google Forms is absolutely free.

Typeform

Typeform has made filling out forms engaging and interactive. The forms look fresh and modern, promising that users are more likely to enjoy the survey experience and complete it. It also offers some great insights on response rates and question drop-offs to help you improve your surveys and polls.

Typeform offers three surveys with a maximum of 10 questions and 100 responses in the free version while the paid version adds extra features, such as advanced question types and conditional logic.

Survey Monkey

Having been around since 1999, SurveyMonkey is one of the longest-running online survey services in the world. SurveyMonkey does the basics and does them well, providing a reliable alternative that has heaps of integrations with other tools. In the free survey version, however, you will be limited to 10 questions, 40 respondents per survey and no possibility to export your data.

Cloud storage and document sharing with your co-workers

For most projects you take part in, sooner or later you will have an endless amount of documents: meeting memos, PowerPoint decks, a batch of documents you receive from your client and dozens of spreadsheets with session agendas, registration forms… and the list can be continued.

Online file storage and sharing solutions allow you to store all your files in the cloud and access them whether you are on your desktop, phone or tablet. What’s more, you can easily share the documents with your colleagues and work on them simultaneously: a must for any data collection process and effective project management too.

Dropbox

Dropbox is a pioneer in this market with their reliable and easy-to-use syncing and file-sharing system. The free option offers 2GB of storage, although the full-text search that helps you find any piece of information within your document is only available in the paid version. The service is very easy to set up and rightfully praised for its clean design.

Google Drive

Google Drive, offering 15GB free storage, this has the added benefit of a built-in office suite where you can edit documents, spreadsheets, and presentations even if you created the document in another program. Working together real-time on shared Google documents is a great feature and, similar to Dropbox, you can easily invite collaborators to any document or folder.

As with some of the other tools on this list, it’s worth noting that many people are fluent in Google Drive and have a linked Gmail account. Even if you prefer Notion or One Drive, having a Google Drive for working with clients in that ecosystem is helpful. 

OneDrive

OneDrive offers 5GB of free storage, a seamless integration to Windows, therefore it works especially well if you have a Windows PC, tablet and phone, and need to get to your files from any device with minimum effort. if you use Microsoft Teams or Office 365, chances are this is already part of your tech stack. As with Google Drive, it pays for digital facilitators working with different clients to have some familiarity with this tool.

Box

As with many online tools, some of your clients might be sensitive about having data about their business stored in the cloud. For this reason, it’s useful to consider Box, which has more sophisticated collaboration and privacy control options for business and enterprise users.

Collaborating across devices and ecosystems with peace of mind and advanced security features makes Box a worthwhile alternative to some of the basic file storage options above.

Online communication tools

Successful workshops and meetings are built on effective communication and this is even more true in online settings. While many meetings can be done over free video chat software, finding online communication tools that work asynchronously or allow groups to work together over longer periods have their place in your toolbox too.

When working with clients, co-facilitators or internal teams, you’ll often be working collaboratively and asynchronously. Email often isn’t conducive to these kinds of back-and-forth conversations and so the online communication tools below have a chance to shine!

Slack

If you work as a team online, chances are you have tried Slack. Slack is designed to make working with others easy and is full of features that help groups and teams connect, chat, and share in a virtual space. The free version of Slack has everything you need to communicate better online with your co-facilitators, clients, and workshop participants: a workspace, channels, 1:1 calls, 5GB of file storage, and up to ten integrations.

As an asynchronous tool, it’s wonderful for using with hybrid events or longer sessions that span multiple days. Ensuring groups can stay connected and ask questions in the right place can help ensure everyone is on the same page, even across time zones. 

Microsoft Teams

Coming as part of Microsoft’s Office 365 suite of tools, Microsoft Teams is group chat software designed to help teams collaborate across text chat, video and audio calls, and more.

By tightly integrating with familiar tools like Excel and Word, Microsoft Teams can help a team integrate their workflow and communication channels with ease! The free version offers storage of 2 GB/user and 10 GB of shared storage, 1:1 and group meetings and much more!

Discord

Immensely popular with gamers, streamers, and developers, Discord features a heap of features and is free and easy to use, making it a great alternative to other online communication tools. Discord’s free version features screen sharing, voice chat, and no member or message limits.

For longer training courses and learning communities, Discord can prove to be a great tool that can be an ongoing source of communication and information usable for everyone in the group.

Chanty

A business messenger tool, Chanty is a great alternative to Slack and other messaging apps. With competitive pricing, a fully-featured free version, and built-in task management, Chanty can be your online communication tool of choice. Chanty’s free version allows ten team members to collaborate and communicate online, and it features unlimited chat history, voice messages and audio calls, and more.

Online Learning platforms 

Delivering online courses, workshops, and training sessions can be made easier by using a dedicated learning platform. These tools are designed for hosting classes, sharing materials, setting tasks, and for presenting more complex sessions or courses over a longer period of time. 

We’d especially recommend such a system if you’re setting up an ongoing development or training program internally or for a client. Centralizing learning resources and keeping records can be what makes or breaks such a program!

Padlet 

Padlet is an online learning platform that can work for everyone from virtual teachers to facilitators, managers, and course leaders too! Padlet is flexible enough to be used to publish course materials online, collaborate with others, or to deliver online sessions. Especially for those involved in online teaching, it’s well worth exploring!

Padlet’s free version includes 3 boards, which is plenty to start collaborating or for delivering an online course or workshop!

LearnWorlds

For large-scale training programs and development processes, LearnWorlds is a great learning platform. You can build comprehensive in-house programs or courses you can deliver to clients again and again. LearnWorlds has a free trial, but it is one of the more expensive learning management solutions on this list. 

If you’re an agency or in-house training provider looking for a platform for hosting your courses, this could be what you’re looking for. If you’re running shorter workshops or courses and want something that requires less set-up, one of the other tools on this list might be more suitable. 

Nearpod

Nearpod is an online teaching platform primarily designed for teachers and facilitators involved in e-learning and virtual course delivery. Nearpod features a library of learning methods and formative assessments to help make online learning interactive and a suite of features to enable virtual teaching. 

Nearpod has a free version that allows 100MB of storage, 40 students per session, and 20+ formative assessments too. Absolutely check it out if you’re a teacher or a facilitator regularly working with students. 

Teachable

Teachable is a platform for creating and selling online courses. While it’s often used by content creators wanting to monetize their knowledge, facilitators and trainers can make use of the easy-to-use platform to create courses to support digital faciliation too!

Teachable is very simple to use out of the gate. While it lacks some of the customization features of the other tools here, Teachable is great for putting together a course at speed. If you’re switching to an asynchronous model and need a learning management system in a snap, it’s a great choice. 

Task management and collaboration tools

Do you have an endless to-do-list while managing multiple facilitation assignments? Arranging client meetings, working on designs and aligning with co-facilitators: the list can feel endless when you need to juggle multiple sessions and manage projects.

There are a vast amount of task management software tools available on the market. Some are part of complex project management suites, while others are dedicated only to keeping your tasks in order. You can find our favorite ones below.

Trello

Trello offers a flexible and visual way to organize anything with anyone. Trello is organized in boards inspired by Kanban methodology. You can add lists to the board and cards to the lists. Each card can have individual checklists, uploaded documents or pictures, and discussion in the form of comments.

Trello is an effective project management tool for any complex task, though it’s especially useful when collaborating with a team. It’s often favoured by lean teams using Scrum and other agile practices.

Todoist

Todoist is more specialized towards personal organization in their free plan: you can compile tasks and subtasks into simple lists which is practical to use for a specific workshop.

One of the handy features is that it tracks progress over time and gives you insight into your personal productivity trends. The app monitors how many tasks you’re completing and gives karma points as rewards for accomplishing them.

Todoist allows you to switch between Kanban and simple to-do lists, and it can be used to itemize recurring tasks too. When trying to balance bigger projects with business-as-usual tasks, Todoist is a great shout for the solo facilitator. 

Asana

If you have a bigger project you may want to use more specialized project management software to help your team collaborate without getting flooded by emails. Asana is an intuitive task-management system that works best for teams seeking real-time interaction and its basic version is free for up to 15 users.

As with the other tools in this section, Asana has an easy-to-use mobile version that allows syncing over devices. Where they differ is in the specialization: Asana, for example, is great for working on complex tasks with many stakeholders and contributors. Check it out if this is what you and your client are after!

Notion

Notion is a sophisticated workspace app with a sleek design. It offers a highly flexible interface for doing everything from managing work, creating to-do lists, and organizing your tasks into tables, kanban boards, and calendar views. Many organizations use Notion as their internal documentation and collaboration center too! This flexibility is great if you like to tinker and tweak settings to create a perfect workspace to fit your needs.

For virtual teams, Notion becomes much more powerful and can be used to collaborate and organize work, much in the same way as Google or Microsoft’s suite of tools. We use Notion at SessionLab and we love it!

Note-taking apps and organizing information

Noting down various bits of information during a session design process is crucial: when talking with clients, jotting down some personal follow-up steps, saving useful links, and so on. Having your trusted notebook with you is essential to register all the information you need in one place, but organizing, finding, and sharing your notes is easier when using digital tools.

Doing this online has never been easier. There are plenty of apps that allow you to write down thoughts, sync them across devices and share them with your colleagues. Below you can find the most popular options with somewhat different strengths.

Evernote

Evernote lets you easily capture, organize, and find content from the Web. You can highlight text on the web, take screenshots, write your own notes, etc. The notes can be tagged, shared, and formatted (to some extent) and you can even assign tasks to them. We like that Evernote also has some robust presentation features, and supports visual note-taking – it’s a blast using it on a tablet!

Microsoft OneNote

Microsoft OneNote has a similar set of features to Evernote but the approach in organizing your notes is different. OneNote supports a more defined structure, as you can have several levels of notebooks, pages, and subpages. It also provides richer formatting options, which are especially useful when doing creative work as it allows you to start typing anywhere on the page.

Google Docs

We mentioned Google Drive combined with Google Docs earlier as a full-stack alternative for cloud storage and document management. Using Google Docs for collaborative note-taking in combination with a well-structured Drive and be a great way to simplify note-taking. It also has the benefit of offline doc support, easy collaboration and synchronization to multiple devices.

Google Docs isn’t expressly designed for note-taking, but when running virtual sessions, we’ve found it to be a reliable and simple way to take notes.

A key bit of advice for any facilitator taking notes: whatever software you choose, you actually need to remember to use it! These tools really become useful when all your notes are in the same place and you can use powerful search and sharing features to share insights with your clients. 

For taking quick notes during a meeting, you can actually use SessionLab’s simple notes feature. This is useful for keeping track of what changed during a live workshop, or leaving instructions for a co-facilitator. 

Online design tools

When running sprints or design workshops, being able to collaboratively work on visual assets for product and marketing initiatives can often mean the difference between a productive or unproductive session. 

Whether you’re brainstorming, prototyping or aligning on final designs, these collaborative design tools can be hugely beneficial to your sessions. It can be especially useful to work with something asynchronously before a meeting, leaving comments and suggestions that a designer might iterate on before a sign-off session.

Canva

For facilitators wanting to create visual assets for their online workshops or participants working together on new materials during a workshop, Canva is a great tool that makes creating beautiful designs easy. Canva really shines when it comes to ease of use and the fact it enables less design-savvy individuals and teams to create something attractive quickly and easily.

Canva’s free version includes real-time collaboration, 5GB of cloud storage, and hundreds of thousands of free images and graphics to help you create great designs!

Figma

Figma is a great design tool that works to help designers and collaborators create and test prototypes together. Like Invision, Figma lives in the cloud, and so designs and prototypes are updated and ready for everyone who needs them instantly. With some unique and interesting features like the Arc tool and Vector Networks, Figma is well worth checking out for any folks involved in virtual design workshops.

Figma has a free plan that offers unlimited viewers, 2 editors and 3 projects and is great if you need to work together on visual assets as a part of a small team.

Invision

Invision is a design tool that is well suited to remote teams wishing to work on product or feature prototypes collaboratively online. It features a whole suite of features to support every part of the design process – freehand mode is great for commenting and ideating on a design, while Studio is awesome for creating and showing off prototypes with animations and interactions.

Invision’s free plan is suitable for individuals and small teams and supports up to 3 active users working on up to 3 documents and unlimited freehands.

What’s next?

Tools are only part of the solution and while they can make your work easier, the quality of your sessions will come from a thoughtfully designed workshop. Check out our post on how to design a workshop for help designing an effective session.

Need help with digital facilitation? Check out our guide for facilitating a meeting to get tips on engaging your participants!

All these online tools are worth checking out, and hopefully, they will save you time and make your facilitation-related work go even more smoothly.

Which is your favorite online tool from the list?

Let us know in the comments, and also if you missed something on the list!

And getting everyone on your team to row in the same direction is essential to achieve your goals.

However, creating strategy alignment across a company, and within teams is not trivial.

At SessionLab, we had our round of struggles with quarterly planning and goal setting as our company was scaling from a founder-driven, few people operations to a more structured and process-driven organization.

In this article I will share the insights we learned from designing and facilitating our quarterly goals setting and alignment process. After a couple of quarters of iterations, we’re happy with a format that seems to work and scale well, starting from 5 to 50 team members.

Quarterly planning and goal setting – What & Why

Each year we organize and facilitate an annual goal setting an alignment process to set our focus areas for the upcoming year. This clarifies the big goals to orient our team.

But next to that, we execute in a quarterly basis, so there is an alignment process in the beginning of each quarter to define our company’s focus (where annual goals give a strong direction) and more specifically set priorities for each of our teams

Why quarterly? – It is a natural phenomenon that individuals and teams gradually get off track and lose focus roughly every 90 days. At the beginning of a quarter, we’re all clear on what is important, and what to de-prioritise. But as weeks go on, new information comes, exciting new opportunities appear and alignment decays. Every 90 days, it’s good to bring the team together and make sure we are all focused to work on the things that matter to us.

So in each quarter our company aligns, first on company level priorities, and then each team (Product, Marketing, Customer Growth, Operations) on their own priorities. And since we are an entirely remote team spread across Europe, these alignment sessions are a huge part in making sure that our teams work in sync with each other.

EOS, OKRs – a brief overview of planning frameworks

Since the beginning of 2022, we’re following the guidelines of the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) as a framework to run our company. 

The reason we chose this framework was that – other than being recommended by several other bootstrapped SaaS founders – is it is a comprehensive enough toolkit to run and scale a company. It not only gives a process on how to set goals, but also gives specific recipes on how to design and manage our organization and how to run specific meetings.

Speaking of the goal setting process itself, there are several other frameworks that are very similar. Probably the most widely known is the system of Objectives & Key Results (OKRs).

OKRs also give a method on how to set Objectives and Key Results for teams and individuals. And EOS has a very similar concept: the priorities that a team or individual sets are called Rocks (similar to Objectives), and each Rock should be phrased clearly (just as Key Results), so that at the end of the quarter, there is no ambiguity whether it was done or not.

Why are the main priorities called Rocks? This is based on the following metaphor:

“Imagine an empty cylinder, in which you can add four types of materials: rocks, gravel, sand and water. The cylinder represents the time (capacity) your team has. Rocks represent your big priorities, gravel represents your day-to-day responsibilities, sand represents interruptions, and water is everything else that comes up and you have to deal with.

If you start filling in the cylinder first with water, and then sand, and then gravel, then you will have limited space left for rocks. But if you first put the rocks in, and then fill the rest with the gravel, sand and water, then you managed to make space for your big priorities.

The takeaway is to first work on the biggest priorities. And the rest falls in place. (This is true not just for quarterly planning, but a useful tactics for making progress every day, too)

In my personal opinion, it doesn’t matter much whether you call your main priorities Rocks, Objectives, Goals or simply Priorities. As long as everyone on your team understands what you want to achieve, and there is a clear way to measure whether you achieve it or not by the end of your planned period.

For the sake of consistency, I will keep referring to these big priorities as Rocks in this article.

Rocks & Metrics

Although the book recommends setting Rocks that are clearly measurable, so far we found it more practical to phrase the Rocks in a way that they clearly communicate the direction of action to take. And for each Rock, we define a Target Metric, which is the specific target we want to achieve.

Preconditions: What is needed before kicking off a quarterly planning workshop?

The specific workshop process you will see below is ideally preceded by a couple of steps:

1) Clarity on annual goals 

Company level annual goals were set by the leadership team and are clearly communicated across the organization.

The Entrepreneurial Operating System contains a practical guide on how to run the annual goal setting for the company by its leadership team. 

2) Set company-level Rocks for the quarter

The process for setting priorities on a company level (i.e. the overarching big goals that are the most important for the company) is very similar to the team/department specific goal setting process outlined below.

It is an activity we do with the leadership team as the first step in our quarterly planning process, and its output is usually 5 to 7 main priorities (Company-level Rocks) that are the most important for our team to focus on during the upcoming quarter.

These company level Rocks are then presented to the full team, together with a Recap of the previous quarter, a couple of days before starting the following workshop. 

3) Bring the team on the same page 

A precondition for effective goal setting for any team is that members have a shared understanding of how the business overall and also their respective unit is performing.

Therefore, before we kick off our series of team-specific quarterly goal setting workshops, we present the following pieces to the whole team:

• Recap of how the last quarter went:
  • Everybody shares the final results of the Rocks they were responsible for
  • An overview of the main business KPIs
• A coherent narrative on how we are doing and what are the main challenges for the business.
• Recap of our annual goals
• The company-level Rocks set for the quarter

Overall, this is quite some information to present to the team, combined with giving space for questions and discussions.

So far we have done this during an extended all-hands meeting (with several interactive elements sprinkled throughout – energisers, a quiz on business KPIs, breaks). 

However, in the spirit of embracing asynchronous communication for our fully remote team, we’re planning to do it more asynchronously next time: All the presentations can be simply recorded and then shared with the team, so everyone can watch it at a convenient time. In this case, we would just schedule time for discussions at one of our all-hands meetings, and/or run the Q&A on our internal communication tool – Slack in our case.

The outcomes we want to achieve are that all members of the company are:

• Have access to most important facts & figures about the past quarter’s performance
• Understand what we achieved, see a narrative around it, so it’s a cohesive story pointing to your main business needs
• Be aware of what are the company-level main goals for the next quarter, so people can already think about what team-level and individual goals and actions would help to move things forward.

After all these preparations, we are at the right place to kick-off a planning workshop for each department / team of the company.

Quarterly goal setting workshop agenda

The goal of this workshop is to align team members on what should be the priorities they collectively focus on in the coming period. There are a few important considerations here:

• Each team should set no more than seven Rocks. Go beyond that, and there is an exponentially increasing likelihood of the team’s attention getting scattered, and several Rocks not getting achieved. Less is more when it comes to focus.
• Company Rocks should be supported by Department Rocks. The reason Company Rocks are set first is that they are the most important goals for the whole organization in the quarter. They should take absolute priority over other initiatives. Usually it results in several Department Rocks being in direct connection with these Company Rocks. And usually there is space for a few other initiatives, too.
• Get everyone involved and heard. The goal setting workshop detailed below is by design a participatory process, where every team member gets the opportunity to share their opinion on what matters and what to work on. The best way to get a team working together in the same direction is if everyone feels an ownership of the decision about the Department Rocks.
• Align about what to work on, and what not to work on. The result of the decision making process is that everyone on the team understands why to prioritize certain initiatives in the upcoming quarter, and just as importantly, see why some other – potentially reasonable – initiatives would not be prioritized in order to stay focused. Related discussions will also help the team to understand what may get on the agenda in the further future, and what are the bottlenecks to resolve before being able to dedicate focus for a specific initiative.

This can be achieved with a 1.5 – 3 hours long process, depending on the size of your team. (Get the detailed workshop agenda here or by clicking on the image below)

Credits for Gino Wickman and his team for the core process of this workshop laid out in their book: Traction: Get a Grip On Your Business, which we adjusted into a more generic quarterly alignment process that works across our company in different teams.

1. Workshop Introduction & Kick-off

As a facilitator, you welcome people joining the call (or live meeting), and explain the purpose of the session.

It is a good idea to run a check-in round, so everyone is getting the chance to speak at the beginning. To combine social check-in with already getting into the subject, I tend to ask people two briefly share about two things:

• How are you feeling today?
• Expectations: What do you expect from today’s workshop? -> this allows anyone to air potential questions or observations

A transparent process usually helps people to understand how to contribute at the different stages of the session, so I briefly walk them through the agenda: First we collect ideas -> present and discuss those -> cluster and narrow down -> indicative voting -> Dept. head picks Rocks -> detailing them -> polling appetite to contribute.

Speaking of the agenda, it’s also useful to add a note about breaks: Since this is a quite involved activity for the whole team, plan at least a short break in the middle, and encourage everyone to speak up they need it sooner, need more break, or if they feel their energy level is getting lower.

Finally, before we kick off with the first activity, quickly recap and make sure that everyone’s role is clear. It is a good opportunity to show the Accountability (Org) chart of the organization to put into perspective, what is the scope we are dealing with in this workshop:

• Outline the organizational responsibilities of the team
• Clarify who is here wearing what hat. For most team members this will be clear: they are contributors in their respective departments. But this is especially important if anyone is acting in multiple roles, for instance if the Facilitator is also a Team member/contributor.

2. List everything that must get done in the quarter

We start by giving the opportunity for everyone to list all the things they think we should do in the upcoming quarter. One idea per one post-it note.

These items can include high-level objectives, and also specific tasks – and anywhere in between. Don’t worry too much about the granularity of the input here, this will be clustered later on. If anyone gives very specific ideas on what to do, it’s a useful point to help everyone understand what concrete actions might happen under the Rocks that will be set later..

Around 15 minutes is usually enough for everyone to list the things they find important. In a live workshop setting, start by giving 12 minutes to the team to silently brainstorm individually. And at the end, ask if anyone needs a couple of minutes more to finish, and extend if needed.

Tip: This can be done as a preparation task before the workshop starts. It saves 15 minutes from your live agenda, and allows people to work at their own pace at a time when they feel most productive to think about strategy and goals.

Depending on the size of your team, it usually results in having 15-70 items listed on your whiteboard.

3. Present the ideas

Everyone gets the opportunity here to present the items they noted down to do in this quarter. Depending on the number of items you see on the whiteboard, you may want to timebox this exercise. But roughly 5 minutes per person should be enough.

Tip: Start from the least experienced team member towards the more experienced team members, finishing with the leader of the team. 

This allows more space and attention for fresher team members to express their thoughts without any pressure to conform with ideas mentioned by more experienced team members.

Finally the leader of the department comes last, so she is able to refer back to items suggested by other team members and connect them together – effectively starting the clustering of the next phase.

When people present their items, encourage them to start clustering by putting their own notes next to already posted similar ones.

As a facilitator, you can help this by asking participants to simply read and explain their own notes, while it is you as the facilitator who moves them to the right area of the whiteboard where already presented ideas are stored – and gradually getting clustered.

After the round of presentation is done, consider if it is time for a break. If you have more than five participants, and you’ve done the brainstorming in live, then you’re likely beyond the one-hour mark at this point, with generally low attention level after ~30 mins of presenting idea

4. Cluster ideas

Usually a rudimentary level of grouping starts to emerge as team members present their own ideas. But most likely, there is still work to be done in order to weed out duplications.

The goal is to get to a state on the whiteboard that allows every team member to vote on initiatives, without splitting their votes between overlapping items.

A simple way to do this is to group related items together, and leave the most descriptive post-it note on the top of the list.

Tip: arrange the distinct items including titles for groups/clusters in one row, so then everyone will only vote on the items in the top row.

After clustering initiatives, the cluster titles are arranged in the top line and color coded, to make voting easier

Alternatively, you can also indicate with a different color, which are the ‘heading’ items for each cluster. Either way, what you want to achieve here is that there is a clear and distinct list of initiatives that people can vote on in the next step.

This clustering is most often led by the head of the department, while anyone else is encouraged to help and make suggestions on how to merge related items.

The accompanying discussions give a good opportunity to explain and clarify the potential connections between different initiatives.

5. Indicative voting

It is time to allow everyone to weigh on what they think the most important priorities are and prepare the floor for decision making. The simplest way to do this is with an indicative dot-voting.

Each team member gets a certain number of votes to cast on the initiatives they find most important, usually between 4 to 7 votes per person, depending on the number of vote-eligible initiatives on the board.

Some virtual whiteboard tools have built-in voting functionality, and in an in-person setup just give sticky voting dots to participants. 

Importantly, remind participants about which items can be voted upon – this should be visually clear by this point on the board.

Tip: You can decide whether to allow people to cast multiple votes on the same item. (If something is an absolutely essential thing to do, this is a way to express it.)

This is an indicative voting, because the voting result itself does not automatically determine which items will be elevated into a Rock status, i.e. a priority for the quarter, but it gives an indication of the overall preferences of the team.

This responsibility is set aside for the leader of the team to decide on the final rocks, considering the voting results, and the potential dependencies and synergies between different projects, as well as resources available.

6. Define Rocks and Target Metrics

Sensible EOS recommendation: max 7 Rocks for a team.

After seeing the indicative priorities for the full team, the team leader proceeds with picking up those initiatives that will become a Rock (priority) for the team.

If needed, you may give a few minutes of thinking time to the team leader, but often this will be clear by the time you start with this segment of the workshop.

Despite the rule of maximum 7 Rocks, I advise to only take the 3-4 most important items at first. By the time these get clarified, the team will have a much better idea of how much bandwidth they have left for less important initiatives.

So the mission here is for each of these Rock to:

Align what they really mean – i.e. what is the likely scope. Some initiatives may have up to dozen ideas listed under them in the previous phases, and getting clarify of what you actually want to achieve is important.

Therefore, we want to define two things:

• The Title of the Rock, which should be a short and clear description to show the focus of the work.
• Metrics -> what is the state you want to achieve. This is typically a measurable thing, or the completion of a checklist

By trying to clarify the metric, there is often a good discussion that uncovers what are the things we want, and what we do not want to achieve here.

Importantly, aligning on all executional details is not the purpose here. If you pick the right metrics, that will help the team – and in particular, the owner of the Rock – to devise the plan how to achieve it.

After the team has clarified the first 3-4 Rocks, it’s time to take a breath. As a facilitator, recap the current priorities (Rocks) the team agreed on, and let this sink in a bit.

Tip: As a facilitator, at this point it is useful to take a conservative and resource-aware perspective. The team will usually be enthusiastic about adding a lot of ambitious goals, but too many focus areas often leads to nothing getting enough attention.

After recapping the so-far-agreed Rocks, call again for the team lead to identify what further initiatives should make it into a Rock. As the team progresses through the obvious items, increase the level of scrutiny applied to wanting to take on new items.

From here on, it can get to be quite an iterative process. The team may reveal that there are synergies between certain initiatives and therefore it makes sense to do them together. Or they may understand that there are dependencies or resource constraints, and they have to remove something they already picked.

It is also okay if the specific targets for the key metrics are set as a follow-up after the session, in case it requires looking up certain data. The main thing is that the team is clear on what they want to achieve.

Celebrate after the list of Rocks is ready!

7. Poll interest to contribute

One of the important outcomes of this workshop is to get the team aligned on the priorities, while the other is to allow effectively kick off the work for the upcoming quarter.

This implies that we have clarity on who owns which initiative and how to sequence the work over the next period. For this, it’s important to see which team members would contribute to which Rock.

Team members can simply express what is their level of interest to contribute, or to potentially own a Rock.

There is a simple way to do this: Everybody is assigned a colorful voting dot (a simple round shaped post-it note on the board). Ask people to write their name on it, and create as many copies of that as they will need. Then everybody looks at the Rocks set for the quarter, and places the dots under those ones that they are interested in contributing to.

The more interested they are in working on that Rock, the higher they should put their dot. This way team members can easily express if they want to be very involved in doing something, or just want to take a smaller part, or not be part of that initiative at all.

Wrap this up by a round of verbal recap: everybody gets a half a minute to recap their choice. 

The end result is that everyone can see, who wants to contribute to a specific initiative, and it also makes it easier for the team leader to decide on how to distribute the ownership of Rocks within the team.

Usually, we prefer not to hand out / assign the ownership of the Rocks right away, but give the opportunity of review for the team leader to think through what would be the ideal distribution, and check questionable items with each team member, before publicly assigning responsibilities to them.

(There are several considerations here, such as individual skills, other ongoing work responsibilities, personal development goals)

So this tends to get clarified within a day or two, so by the time we share about our quarterly Rocks on the next company all-hands meetings, everyone is able to present their own Rock.

8. Closing and Feedback

After the Rocks are set and everyone has picked their interests, it is time to close the session. 

It is a great practice to ask feedback after each workshop, and it’s especially important to do it for such an important one that sets a teams direction for an entire quarter.

There are different ways to do it, starting from low-effort and instant methods such as the One-Breath-Feedback or a simple meeting closing round, ranging to setting up a dedicated reflection board where people answer multiple questions about what they liked and what they missed in the process.

Lastly, this is a workshop that is meant to align the team to reach for the save goals in the next three months, so it’s important to get people leaving the room energized.

Consider adding a simple energiser or ritual at the end. In our case, we closed the session with audio-sharing We Will Rock You from Queen – as we have just set a group of Rocks for the upcoming quarter!

Would you like to run this session with your own team?

Get the ready-to-use agenda below:

Do you have any feedback on this process? Have you tried it with your team?

Let us know in the comments below!