How to Creatively Facilitate a Workshop of 80 persons in a room

A few months ago, I was invited to speak and conduct a creative presentation skills workshop for the volunteers from one of the ministries.  The session took place on a Saturday morning at Singapore Botanical Gardens.  

One major challenge that I would be facing would be that for a workshop of such nature, a classroom size of 15-20 is a good fit, so participants can have ample time to practise.   However, for this workshop at the Botanic Gardens, there would be about 70-80 participants in all.

After speaking with the organiser, having a small class is inevitable, given that the event was an annual affair and had to be done on a Saturday morning where the volunteers could come and gather. Furthermore, there would also be a speech by the Minister, which means grouping the volunteers into different time slots would be logistically challenged.

I deliberated on the challenge for awhile.  Tapping on the ‘deconstruction’ model of my creativity-thinking process, here was my facilitation process for the day:

- The participants were divided into small groups of 6-8 person
- There would be 1 ‘captain’ in the team to oversee the ‘discipline’ of the team members so that they would be focusing on the content
- More intra-group activities (to link to the topics) were introduced (more than my usual workshop games) so all participants could take part
- One of the important segments to have was that there would be intra-group presentations: where each participant would be presenting to their group members.  That would provide a ‘safe zone’ especially for first timers to practise their speeches - speaking to groups of 6-8 instead of speaking to all 70-80 people!   
- We then ended our session with some volunteers coming forward share on their speeches using the techniques that they have learnt; before Minister Desmond Lee took the stage and addressed the participants.

All in all, it was a wonderful session.  As for me, this was something new too.  I could put that on my records and implement it for my next session, should a similar situation arise.  The organiser had put together a wonderful videoclip on the event.  Such memorable experience.

View here:  https://www.facebook.com/desmondtslee/videos/2370806286263633/

How about you?  How did you manage to creatively overcome some issues at work or at your recent presentation?  Would love to hear from you on how did you do it.

Towards your continued success,

Hazriq Idrus
www.thespeakingfactory.com
www.hazriq.com