Mastering Workshops: The Two-Hour Blueprint for Maximum Impact

0:08Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct tape marketing podcast. This is John Jantz. My guest today is Leanne Hughes. She is a consultant, speaker, and facilitator, maximizing team potential by creating influential, contagious work experiences that scale across teams, functions, and regions. We're going to talk about her book, The Two-Hour Workshop Blueprint, How Business Owners Can Design Workshops Fast, Deliver Strong, and Without Stress. So, Leanne, welcome to the show. So amazing to be here, John. Absolutely love your work and really think about how to, yeah, create word of mouth in workshops as well.

0:45So look forward to diving into that. Awesome. So the first question I have to ask is why two hours? Is there something magical about that amount of time? Or did you have a publisher that said we have to be specific here? I think it's definitely about specific. And I think the fact that it is two hours is very intriguing. And I think the most, like there's facilitators and trainers, and then there's normal people like you and I who are, hey, you get tapped on the shoulder. So people want to hear expertise. And I think with two hours, if you can do a two-hour workshop, you can do a two-day workshop.

1:13You can do a one-hour workshop because it's enough time for you to open it, to run a few activities and to reflect out. So I thought it was a sweet spot. Let's talk a little bit about the differences you started to mention there. I mean, I do presentations. I do webinars. How is a workshop different than your kind of standard stand-up-and-open-up-a-conference? Yeah. Yeah. And actually, I think conferences are actually shifting now because of the pandemic and the amount of content available. I think now it's more about, I guess, having a horizontal relationship with the people in your audience versus a vertical one.

1:45So vertical, you're the expert, you're talking kind of at someone. It's like a broadcast. It's like a YouTube, you know, you're going like on a YouTube live. Whereas a workshop is all about that interaction and getting people to connect to the content in the context that they're in. And it's more of a conversation. And I actually think it's scarier doing workshops because it's unpredictable. You don't have that control. Whereas a keynote is I move to the stage, I do this, I deliver that. And I think there's absolute forums for both of them and they work really nicely together. But workshops are really about how do we land this for someone and help them make progress where they're at.

2:19Would you say it's a different skill set? I mean, not everybody who can stand up and inspire a crowd can also lead a workshop. I mean, would you say that? I'm sure that there are people that can do both quite well, but would you say it's a different skillset? Absolutely, absolutely. It's a different skillset. And I think when I've got a podcast called First Time Facilitator, but I was leading that like I was a keynote speaker, you should have seen my agenda, John. Like it was 901, mentioned this story, 903. It was so specific and precise and it wasn't leaving any space for connection and anything else.

2:50And I think now as a sort of more seasoned facilitator, I'm lazier, I'm less controlled, but it takes kind of time on your feet. and experience and going through some of the bad experiences to get comfortable with that. Yeah. And I know, you know, myself for doing this for years, you know, you talked about a workshop can be scarier. You know, I find that it's sometimes scary when you just get a crowd that maybe didn't want to be there. They're there for the wrong reasons. They're not very participatory. But when you get one that's really into it, I think they're a lot more fun. Absolutely. And I think there's something I talk about in the book is the SPARK framework, and it's all about the setup as well.

3:26And it's very different. If you're working with an organization, I was talking to a friend about this yesterday, a client will hire you, but the people in that room haven't necessarily volunteered. Like they've been voluntold to go there. And so you're up against it. Whereas, you know, John, you work with business owners that would just scream to be one of your workshops. So, you know, it's on fire the moment you're in the room. Yeah, I'm envisioning accountants getting CEU credits. Scary room. They don't want to be there and they don't really want to hear about marketing anyway. So yeah, but it's interesting.

3:56Sorry to all my accountant listeners for that one. Well, let's not stop with accountants. Let's talk about lawyers as well. Honestly, it's really bizarre, but everyone's like, what's the best workshop you've ever been to? And it was run by, it was the code of conduct workshop at my old, when I was working internally. It was like, we go in thinking this is going to be terrible. We're going to talk to us for three hours. It was the best experience ever talking through case studies, hypotheticals. And I guess, John, for me, it was after that experience. I was like, if you could make code of conduct interesting, you can do, you can make anything interesting.

4:28So that was cool. Let's talk about who needs to do a workshop. I'm sure that there are people out there thinking, well, I'm, you know, I'm a trainer or I'm a coach. And so workshops are, you know, have to be part of my suite. But there's probably a whole lot of businesses that never really thought about a workshop as a product or maybe even as a lead generation tactic. Talk a little bit about kind of how can we be more expansive in thinking who should do workshops? Yeah, I think it's really, I mean, I sort of rely on my content strategy to drive my, what I end up doing for workshops. So I might put out a LinkedIn post around something and people like, I wonder how, you know, they're asking questions like, how do you do that?

5:04I think the second you have a how question is like, hey, maybe this could be a workshop. And often, you know, as you know, we take for granted the knowledge in our own mind. I think everyone else knows this. But the second you've kind of been sought out to, you know, how do you do this faster? What systems are you using? There's an opportunity, I think, to really dive in for the workshop experience. So a keynote, I think a speech is more about building awareness around a topic. I think a workshop is I'm aware. I want it. How do I do this? Yeah. Well, to that point, I mean, I think like a lot of marketers think workshop and they think, oh, this is a way to, you know, top of funnel, maybe create some awareness.

5:40Maybe it's a low ticket, you know, thing that's going to lead to my high ticket thing. But you know where I see them terribly underutilized is we should be doing workshops for our clients. I mean, teaching them how to get more, how to do something more because, you know, we've already got that relationship and now we just really cement it, don't we? Absolutely. Yeah. And I think, I mean, because my business is sort of my main product is workshops, right? But, and it's an interesting ecosystem once you have a workshop in that, because it's, then you can expand to advisory, retainer work, you know, come in for a speech, one-on-one coaching, like the utility of a workshop as like, as the centerpiece is super, super valuable.

6:18Yeah. Yeah. So, so you have structured the book as like acts of a play. So talk a little bit. I mean, do you see that as kind of the structure of a workshop too, as like acts of a play? Sometimes they can be non-linear and I'm designing a workshop tomorrow where I don't know where it's going to go. We're working through a process. So I basically have a series of post-it cards and activities ready to go when we need to, which is very different to what I was. Choose your own ending kind of thing. Yeah. And yeah, choose your own adventure. I love that. And then the, but I think the reason I wrote the book is for people that haven't done workshops before and kind of need a structure and a format because I, I don't know how long it takes you, John, but you know, when I was first starting out to design a two hour workshop would take me weeks.

6:58It was ridiculous. So I was like on Google searching for the perfect activity. And then, you know, after creating so many over the years, I'm like, actually, this is, let's re-engineer. What am I actually doing here? And let's like play it back to make it faster. Because I just, no one has that bandwidth to spend that much time. And I think the more, there's a false assumption, the more time you spend on it, the better it will be. It's totally false. Yeah. More time you spend delivering it, the better it will be probably. Right. Because that's what you really learned. Right. A hundred percent.

7:28Yeah. So we could talk about the various components of it, but I know one of the things early on you talked about used to take you a lot of time. I usually pack too much in them is what I did because I was like, oh, we've got two hours. How can I fill 120 minutes? I'll put more stuff in it. And what it ended up doing was making it less effective. So let's talk, maybe that's a good lead into the setup. yeah and i think i mean everyone use everyone in the world uses the gps analogy but what i like the most about the gps analogy is that and i didn't know that this is how it worked but you set your destination first what the gps does is actually cuts out the map it doesn't give you the whole map it cuts it out that's the effectiveness of it and i think with especially with two hours and with any type of expert in a certain context it's not about the information i mean like we can google things as youtube everything it's more about for these people at this moment in time what are the most useful thing and how can I cut out 90 % of the stuff that actually doesn't matter?

8:25Because I think often, yeah, we equate more content to more value, but we end up overwhelming them. They don't get a result. And as a result, they may not then book us back, but it's hard. It's, I think it's kind of related to self-worth as well. Like my worth is in the content. It's my pleasure to welcome a new sponsor to the podcast, our friends at ActiveCampaign. ActiveCampaign helps small teams power big businesses with a must-have platform for intelligent marketing automation. We've been using ActiveCampaign for years here at Duct Tape Marketing to power our subscription forms, email newsletters, and sales funnel drip campaigns.

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9:42That's activecampaign.com slash duct tape. Now this offer is limited to new ActiveCampaign customers only. So what are you waiting for? Fuel your growth, boost revenue, and save precious time by upgrading to ActiveCampaign today. Yeah, I mean, I distinctly remember doing some three-hour workshops for a manufacturer, for their distributors. And the first time I delivered it about 30 minutes in, I was like, they're overwhelmed. They're done. I mean, you could see it on their faces. And I mean, it's really a hard lesson to learn because I think that's probably one of the rookie mistakes people make is they're like, I've got all this time.

10:19I have to like shove stuff in. So how do you, like, if somebody says, okay, here's, I have an inkling that this is a good topic. You know, what's next? What do I do next? I mean, how do I get to the right amount of content? Yeah. The right amount. That's a really interesting question but i think you know going back to like the rule like there's a that rule in comedy like the rule of threes where you sort of set up one two and three i mean the number three is everywhere and i think it's a good number particularly for a two-hour workshop is i just think if someone's leaving this workshop what do i want them to tell a friend and how i make that stick and usually it's like okay it's three things or it's wrapped up in one framework like a venn diagram or something like that three key themes they can say hey i went to this workshop here the three key things we talked about.

11:04Yeah. And that's it. Because I think the second you've, and I talk about frameworks in the book, it's kind of like an advanced thing, but it's really about just gift wrapping information. You want to make it easy to remember, easy to recall, easy to share with other people. And I think so just meeting them, but also John, I think having conversations and some of the time where workshops for me didn't land is where I wasn't connecting with people beforehand. And I'd made assumptions around where they're at, you know, in their business. Okay. Okay, just because I'm going to piggyback off of that, I was going to ask that a little later on, but how do you build, like you walk into a room, sometimes it's the first time you've seen anybody because that's the way it worked.

11:41How do you build rapport, kind of get them engaged right away without kind of maybe feeling cheesy? Yeah, that's fun. Well, I think I was originally very cheesy and I was, you know, like kind of going over the top and being a bit ridiculous. Or cheeky, I should say, to be with your audience, right? That's a more Australian term, right? Yeah, it's very Australian. We can't get that. We can't beat that out of ourselves. I think we're just a cheeky country, but the set up phase, I think we often, we think, and this is a Priya Parker thing in her book, The Art of Gathering. She says, you know, the event doesn't start when it starts beforehand.

12:13And I think even the language you used around, what are you going to call the event can really set an expectation. Often I will send, you know, it's not the first time I've communicated with the group. So I'll ask either directly, I'll send a video out to the people that are participating, just setting expectations, raising their level of certainty in terms of what to expect, the type of experience, or the client will forward that on. And what I love about doing sometimes a pre-survey, it's kind of like a mini listening tour. You're hearing the language. And then what I like to do is something called the playback approach.

12:45So they're in there. This is particularly useful if they're kind of hostages in the workshop, like, what are we doing here? You go, hey, here's what you said. And you just play back their language. And they can't disagree with that. So automatically you're kind of lowering the objections in the room and getting people to feel a bit more comfortable. But also, John, I'm chronically early. Like I'll be there like an hour before, an hour and a half, so that when people walk in 20 minutes beforehand, I'm not fluffing around and, you know, fiddling around with slides. I'm like, I'm there, I'm connecting, just, you know, not so busy.

13:17Yeah, I'm the same way only because, you know, every room, the technology is different. And I always want to make sure that stuff is going to work. So talk about a little bit about size of audience, if that dictates kind of what you can and can't do. I know I'd speak to groups of 10 and I can hold their hands, you know, whereas I speak to group of a hundred and it's a whole different dynamic, isn't it? Yeah. I've actually recently run a webinar on that actual, like, how do you host a large group session? It is very different in terms of dynamics and also the level of instruction. So smaller groups, you know, I'd feel kind of weird having a group of four people and bringing in a PowerPoint and, you know, making it a bit of a performance, I feel extremely weird.

13:56Like I want to say, you know, even in the dynamics, you could just remove all the tables and sit around just with chairs and have flip charts and keep it conversational. Once you're on, you know, over like 100, 130 people, what I like to do is create, have roles at tables. So create like mini facilitators and give roles out, timekeepers. So you're kind of allocating responsibility, but you have to be much more precise with your instructions, with bigger groups, much more deliberate with your use of language. which is tough because I like just, yeah, riffing at the smaller group level, but you'll be very precise the bigger it gets.

14:30Do you get into, so you have a section in the book you call power-up. So I guess I'll just let you explain that aspect. We talked a little bit about setup. So what is power-up? Yeah, I think that's two elements to power-up. So one is the personal power-up. I think the most important thing is like, how are you feeling? What's your energy like as you enter that room? Because particularly on virtual, Mark Bowden, body language expert, he said we can't read virtual body language. best predictor of how anyone else will show up is how we lead our own energy you know people so we've got to be a beacon for that but power up is also those first five or ten minutes because that's where you set the tone of engagement and often where workshops can fail is it starts very predictably and i you know i sort of joke let's create an unpredictable experience that will predictably work you know it's welcome housekeeping in you know it's just here's the content whereas i like to think okay how can we do the opposite of that so do i start at the back of the room Do we just start with an activity?

15:24Like just setting the tone that you want throughout the two hours that you're there. Yeah. The one I always hate, and there's still lots of people tell you to do this, so please feel free to tell me I'm wrong. But the one where they put the whole agenda out there. It's like, and then they spend 20 minutes going, here's what we're going to do today. To me, that's like death. But maybe I'm wrong. It's death. I mean, that could have been in an email beforehand. And it's like, just get into it. Like just, yeah. And I look, one of my, I talk about the seven habits of highly effective workshop hosts.

15:52And again, I'm working on this one is it's brevity. It's like often I've been in, I don't know, John, you've been in sessions where you hear things explained and I'm like, we get it. It's like, let's move on. Let's move on. Yeah. Agenda is one of them. So, and maybe you're going to say it depends, but how about the use of metaphor in, in workshops to really, you know, drive home lessons? Do you think that's something we ought to all strive to bring into our style? I think not only in workshops, I think in life, honestly, in our conversations with clients, like the second I'm trying to explain a concept, if I can bring in a metaphor and people, they get it immediately, like you're in.

16:29You can even, you can see, yeah. I mean, metaphor is really powerful. It's something I've been working with Alan Weiss, million dollar consultant, and he just basically talks in metaphors the whole time. And like, oh, I'd love to get to that stage. But even as I was writing the book, it's like, what is the metaphor for the GP? the deep dive approach, like just really trying to connect in. Talk about activities. Obviously workshop implies we're going to work, right? So talk about how important they are, maybe how to do them well. I mean, just anything you want to talk about, give us advice on activities and how to make them great.

17:02Yeah, you're right. Something I write it there is that it's a workshop, not a do this later shop. And that was like my biggest pet peeve is like, oh, I got this content, but you're going to have to go back into and play calendar Tetris and no one ever does it afterwards. So you've got that time and space. Let's do the work. And probably the biggest comment I've had about that is like, oh, Leanne, it's not content, it's activities. It's like, yes, let's actually get implementing and things like that. And I think when it comes to activities and what was taking me so long with designing workshops was I was trying to think of what's a cool activity I can use for this scenario.

17:32And it's like actually just use the scenario that people are working with. Like if they need to free up time, let's get them with their laptops. Let's open up their calendar. Let's see and see how priorities are coming to life through the calendar, like in the session itself. I like a bit of, I mean, again, I like to weave in a bit of contrast. So with activities, it's think about, like you said before, group size, an individual reflection. Maybe it's a conversation. Then it's doing the thing, seeing how that worked out, reflecting on it as part of that. That's the chunk of your workshop is, you know, about 75 minutes is dedicated to that.

18:08To people actually working, right? Yeah. To implementing, to doing the thing. Yeah, exactly. So what's your next workshop? All right. A two-day workshop. Yeah. We're not going to be able to publicize that one because we, by the time people are listening to this, it will have occurred. So I guess maybe we'll just go right into, invite people to where they might connect with you and obviously find the book, but also you offer a lot more than just the book with your trainings and workshops. So I'll let you just kind of invite people to connect. Wonderful. Yeah. Thanks, John. Yeah. So you can see all my sort of portfolio work is at leannehughes.com.

18:46I'm very active on LinkedIn. I've got a podcast called First Time Facilitator, back catalog of over 200 episodes talking about facilitation work. And of course, yeah, the book, grab it. There's like lots of templates and downloadables as part of that. And email me, let me know what workshop you're running and how you're going and how you've used it. There's no bigger delight than hearing the impact of that book. Awesome. Well, I appreciate you stopping by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, and hopefully we'll run into you one of these days out there on the road.