Workshop roles & responsibilities
Just as workshop planning lays the foundation for successful collaboration, assigning clear roles and responsibilities among your team members provides a people foundation. Clear roles and responsibilities lets you work together as a team to ensure great collaboration with your workshop participants.
Five workshop responsibilities
To achieve the good, collaborative environments that workshops provide, each role must play their part. There are five responsibilities each role can be accountable for.
Five workshop roles
Facilitators
The facilitator frames the conversation, guides activities, follows rabbit holes, and brings everyone back on track. The Facilitator owns the clock and runs the workshop. The facilitator is a full-time job. Other than the collector, the facilitator is the only other role your workshop must fill.
Co-facilitators
If the facilitator is like the figurehead who can't leave the front of the room, the co-facilitator is the special forces that can go anywhere and do anything. Need more stickies? Does a group need help? The co-facilitator keeps the machine running.
Collectors
The Collector's only job is to document workshop outputs. Like the Facilitator, collecting is a full-time job. This means that for any workshop, you will need at least two people: one to facilitate and a second to collect.
Participants
Participants are almost always limited to people outside your specific project team, stakeholders from other groups, and clients. Participants ask questions, answer questions, and participate in activities.
Listeners
Listeners are everyone else. Usually listeners come from the broader project team. Listeners are not facilitators, collectors, or participants. The listeners job is to be quiet and listen. Although all workshop participants are expected to ask and answer questions, listeners are encouraged to hold back and only interject when necessary.
How many facilitators do you need?
At a minimum, any workshop needs two people: one to act as a facilitator and another to act as a collector. Obviously, one facilitator can't manage a room of 30 participants. So, when do you need to add additional co-facilitators?
Want to facilitate wonderful workshops and masterful meetings?
Learn how to build trust, so participants jump into activities and how to lead collaboration, so you everyone participates. In Work the Room, Austin shares his 15 years of experience facilitating design thinking, innovation, and strategy workshops.
Visit the book website to learn more.