You may feel apprehensive about running your first sustainability workshop, so we’ve compiled some of our tips to help you begin. 

It may sound simple, but getting started can be the hardest part, so delivering that first workshop will get momentum moving and make you feel more confident. Take it easy on yourself and ease into your facilitation role by doing some of the following:

• Deliver a workshop to someone you know – your friend, colleague or dog will love to learn how they can take action, so get them involved in a practice session to build your confidence and delivery flow. Ask for honest feedback to help improve your workshop, so you feel ready when you’re in front of your first group of paying attendees.
  
  
• Build into everyday conversations – to warm up your audience, introduce them to the workshop topic by including a teaser during other engagement events. You can break your content into 10-15 minute chunks that you can then use when speaking at other events or hosting your own webinars.
  
  
• Gamify learning – captivate attention and increase engagement by adding in gamified elements to your workshop. Active learning where participants have to solve problems and apply current knowledge is thought to strengthen neural connections and memory retention. So not only will your participants be having fun, they will also have more enriched learning experiences.  Small99 Action Box includes a mini ‘Higher or Lower’ game which does just that!
  
  
• Run a workshop with someone else who is already delivering sessions– co-facilitation is a great place to start if you’re finding it difficult to begin. This way you can put your brains together, talk about different delivery approaches and support one another through the flow during your first session.

A couple of other key things to think about when planning your first workshop:

Location

The default for many facilitators is to deliver workshops in a classroom or office setting, which may seem like the simplest option but isn’t going to create a unique experience for the attendees. Consider hosting your next workshop in an unconventional location that is relevant to your attendees – a local restaurant that focuses on regenerative agriculture, a park with a variety of native trees, or in the factory of a circular product. 

One of our priorities when creating the Small99 Action Box was to ensure workshops could be run anywhere, so you can get creative with the venue!

Content

Traditionally, we’ve found sustainability workshop content to be dry, full of complicating lingo and overwhelming – disengaging people from the get go. People will be more drawn to and engaged in workshops that give them a sense of hope, so don’t bog them down by loading on more uncertainty, keep things simple and digestible. 

Build initial confidence and interest by first testing your audience to a fun challenge, then you can get to the more serious stuff. 

We’ve heard from hundreds of businesses that they want to ensure they meet contract requirements and don’t fall behind. Refine the content of your workshop to provide attendees with exactly what they need without additional confusion. 

So with that, we hope you feel inspired to run your first workshop! We know you’ll surprise yourself with how much you already know, all it takes is a successful first session to get the ball rolling.

The Small99 Team