Co-learning workshop
I want to start my free workshop giveaway with a simple exercise that helps highlight the team’s expertise and build their confidence in presenting and sharing knowledge. It also has the added benefit of up-skilling the team when there is little to no training budget.
Unfortunately when times are tough the training budget can be one of the first things to go but the team's desire to learn new skills isn't going anywhere. How do you continue to support the team with their learning journey with little to no budget?
One way I've gotten around this problem in the past is by running the following workshop. It's such a lovely way to validate your team's expertise and generate a training schedule. It also allows your team to identify internal strengths and design and facilitate their training/workshop sessions.
I have included a link to a Miro board example at the bottom of this article.
Outcome
A clear understanding of the strengths and skills within the team, The outcomes can then inform a schedule for "brown bag" or "Lunch and learn" sessions.
When I ran this workshop with the TalkTalk UX Design team, it left everyone feeling warm, fuzzy and full of confidence. You don't normally get the chance to hear how others see you and compliment others on their expertise. Sometimes when you've been practising something for so long, it becomes second nature and it's easy to forget that it's a skill that others would find valuable to learn.
Prep
The amount of time needed for this will depend on how many people you have in your team. I’d roughly plan for 10 minutes per person. Write up your agenda and block out everyone’s diary with enough notice so they can move meetings around.
It’s very simple to prep for this workshop, create a shared space that everyone can work in, be it an online whiteboard tool, a shared PowerPoint, or physical sticky notes on a wall.
Kick-off
It is important to check in with the team at the start so that you can understand how everybody is feeling and if there might be any external factors to consider while facilitating. This can be as simple as just going around the room and asking how they’re feeling today.
Facilitation
Give everyone an overview of the agenda and then ask everyone to add post-it notes to the board. These post-its should be things that each team member would like to learn from someone else.
Is someone particularly good at running workshops?
Is someone really efficient with their workflow?
Is someone particularly good at Stakeholder management?
These are just a few examples of what the team could have identified about their colleagues.
Once everyone has finished adding their Post-it notes to the board, it’s time to start going around the room one by one.
In this example I’ve mocked up, Jane has been highlighted as being a great journey mapper, visual thinker and critical thinker. These might not be things she had realised about herself. Ask each team member to explain their reasons why they added the post it’s. This might feel a bit awkward at first but I promise everyone will feel their confidence boosted by the end.
Wrap up.
Once everyone has shared their thought it’s time to dot vote. Each person votes for the one thing they’d like to learn more about from their colleagues. Each winning post-it then goes into an agenda for sharing their knowledge with the team. Each team member is responsible for organising their session and its format. There’s also the potential of branding these sessions as a Brown bag series and opening them up for wider team members to come. This will help build your team’s reputation as knowledge sharers and facilitators.
Don’t forget to check out to see how everyone feels at the session’s end. Hopefully, everyone is feeling energised and buzzing from all the compliments they’ve received.
I have created a simple Miro board to walk you through this workshop, if you use it and find it useful. Please feel free to add comments directly onto the board or send me feedback directly via my Contact page.