Facilitating workshops can be a great way to collaborate on design challenges and
to establish a roadmap or strategy as a team.
In order to drive maximum impact, it’s important to involve stakeholders throughout the process.
That said, there are certain considerations to keep in mind while facilitating
with stakeholders in the room.
Stakeholders, for better or worse, can have a lot of influence over a conversation.
Consider using the following techniques to help maximize the contributions of others on the team.
First, identify which stakeholders will be attending, and make the role and
desired level of involvement abundantly clear.
Depending on their management styles or chemistry with the team, some workshops may
run differently than others.
[Facilitator] Okay, so, as for stakeholders, we have Leslie and Amir
from business transformation… Are there any others?
[Coworker] Well… Marge from accounting also RSVP’d as attending.
*dramatic music*
[Facilitator] Oh no…
[Therese] If the stakeholders have buy-in and understand that the goal of the workshop
is to maximize output from attendees, then the main focus is to make it clear what
their role is in the workshop.
For example, Leslie and Amir might be bought in, but will need to be reminded who the facilitator is,
and that they will be attending as participants, and not as leaders of that workshop.
If a stakeholder, like Marge in this example, has a dominating personality--
that is, has a tendency of talking over others, or may inadvertently divert or halt discussions--
consider how much of their input will actually be needed.
In some cases, having them attend as spectators during a playback or sync meeting as opposed
to having them participate could be a good solution.
But, what is needed?
Their approval only?
Or, do they also have knowledge that the rest of the team needs in order to make an informed decision?
In either case, make everyone’s roles clear, and indicate how much they can, or should participate,
and why.
To avoid stepping on any toes, you can say something like:
[Facilitator] So, we know you really want to attend as a participant,
but we also want to respect your time.
We know you’re busy, and want to present you a more formalized, refined product rather
than having you pore over the rough drafts.
Also, we find that many participants feel more compelled to generate ideas when their
bosses aren’t in the room.
So, we are having all the department heads attend the final sync meeting instead.
How does that sound?
[Marge] Okay.
Works for me.
[Therese] It’s easy for things to get heated when people start talking about the products
they’re currently working on.
[Facilitator] Does anyone want to share the ideas they came up with?
[Jane] Um... I came up with an droid delivery service that works via Bluetooth.
[Marge] *annoyed sigh* No… are you kidding?
We can’t do that... we have so much we have to launch by next month.
That reminds me…
Alex, did you send Tabitha the notes from our focus group yesterday?
[Therese] In order to foster an environment of collaboration, you’ll want to establish
some ground rules before starting your workshop, to avoid situations like this.
Here are a few I like to use to help keep conversations going:
First, strictly enforce a generative phase, and an evaluation phase, and make it clear
that the words “no” or “yes but” shout not be uttered during the generative phase.
It’s nearly impossible to generate ideas at the same time as evaluating them.
Next, you want to clearly establish the scope of the workshop early, so that conversations
don’t get derailed by other competing topics.
And if those topics do come up, use a parking lot or dedicated standing document for any
tangential or related questions or ideas that could warrant their own meeting.
That way you can keep the conversations on track.
[Facilitator] Marge, thank you, but hold that thought.
Remember what we said earlier about evaluating ideas.
And just as a reminder to everyone, the scope of this workshop is not meant for this month,
but for our roadmap for an MVP.
So Jane, please keep going - tell me more about this idea and we'll see what we can
incorporate in this MVP.
Finally, you’ll want to ensure there are multiple ways to contribute.
Some people, whether they're stakeholders or not, talk more than others and may sway
a solution one way versus another.
I like to incorporate “dot” voting, which incorporates stickers and my favorite sound...
*cricket noises* Silence.
Dot voting ensures that every person has a say whether they like talking in a group or not.
You can incorporate dot voting at any point in a workshop, any time the group has to reach
a decision from a number of different options.
The most important thing to tell your workshop participants is that voting is silent,
done independently, and when possible, anonymously.
Facilitating with stakeholders can be a painstaking process fraught with politics and tension.
But it doesn’t have to be.
It can be a great way to get buy-in and to demonstrate to these stakeholders
the power of UX workshops.
To learn more, check out our article on conducting UX workshops and exercises, or read about
our full-day course on Facilitating UX Workshops.