Less is More: Why Overfacilitating Kills Workshop Success

🩺 Anatomy of 2 different workshops I (co) hosted last week in Berlin for Elia Group:

Workshop 1
* 9 people
* Ambitious output and agenda

Workshop 2
* 25 people
* Light output and relaxed agenda

One might think that we got more from the first workshop.
What happened in reality:

Workshop 1
→ To meet the ambitions, we reduced breaks
→ We rushed into some parts to get closer to the expectations
→ General feedback : "We did a lot but disappointed we couldn't do everything we wanted"

Workshop 2
→ We could extend some parts to deepdive into some specific questions that we didn't foresee
→ We could extend a break from 10 minutes to 25 minutes so people could spend more time catching up with each other
→ General feedback : "The vibe was more relaxed and we didn't feel like running after time the whole day"

Main learning: Less is more. Overfacilitating is a facilitation mistake. I know it doesn't highlight much about the actual output - as the workshops were quite different it's hard to compare. But people's takeaway and perception is as important, as it will shape the mindset they will join next similar sessions. Sven Dill thanks again for this smooth experience 😄