There are four workshop documents each facilitator must provide or ensure:
- Pre-Read
- Annotated Agenda
- Slide Deck
- Output Notes (Deliverables)
Workshop Documents — Pre-Read
Your participants need to show up at your workshop prepared and ready to contribute. Do not assume they will. Lead them. Provide them with a compelling pre-read. First of all, the pre-read should include at least the components shown below. If your pre-read is a large document, provide a personalized cover letter asking each subject matter expert to focus on topics and pages that you have highlighted. Consequently, your courtesy encourages them the obligation to take time to read their parts.
One of Four Workshop Documents: Participants’ Package, (Pre-read)
Workshop Purpose, Scope, Deliverables, and Simple Agenda
EVERY meeting, even a fifty-minute session, needs to have an articulate purpose, boundaries (i.e., scope), and either well-codified outputs or a generally described outcome document. The deliverables (or output/ outcome) describe what DONE looks like when the session ends. A description of the deliverables describes ‘DONE’ and what the group delivers during the meeting. The agenda, hopefully structured (NOT simply a ‘discussion’; a term closely related to ‘percussion’ and ‘concussion’), shows the group how it is going to get to the deliverable or the end of the session.
Questions to be Addressed
Since you want your participants to show up prepared, help them. Agree in advance (optimally through private interviews) on what questions ought to be raised during their session and have them prepare responses before the meeting begins. Confirm with them the validity of the questions and obtain their feedback about questions they may wish to add, deemed important, and perhaps missing from your original list of questions. Consider the most important reason for meetings—building consensual answers to questions important to the group.
Mission, Value, and Vision
When arguments arise, active listening should be used first to avoid people, who unknowingly, may be in violent agreement with each other. When active listening fails, sometimes due to the stubbornness of participants, an appeal must be made to WHY the meeting is being held. Because no one wants more meetings. They only want results that accelerate projects and activities that occur after the meeting. To reconcile arguments, be prepared to appeal to the objectives of the project/ product, program, business unit, or enterprise that your meeting supports.
Glossary of Terms
You cannot afford to allow arguments about the meaning of terms you use and build into your preparatory efforts. For example, some consider Goals as fuzzy statements and Objectives are SMART. To others, the opposite is true. For some people, Mission is why they show up and Vision is where they are going. To others, it is the opposite. Standardize your operational definitions, share them, and enforce consistent use and interpretation.
Space for Participants’ Note-taking
As a kind gesture, provide some extra space for them to take notes. It will be appreciated.
Workshop Documents — Your Personal, Annotated Agenda
Your detailed methods should be built as if you were there visualizing every step in advance. Include breakout teams, team names and members, and CEOs (i.e., Chief Easel Operators), but most importantly, detail how you will analyze their input (i.e., the second activity of Brainstorming). Our typical annotated agenda runs 20 pages long, even for a three-hour session.
Workshop Documents — Slide Deck
Provide the participants copies of the slides you use, and do not forget to include operational definitions. You don’t need our help here since this is what you do best; i.e., create decks.
Workshop Documents — Output Notes
Your effort to create a solid pre-read, annotated agenda, and slide deck makes meeting notes a snap. Simply drop in the content developed during the meeting alongside the content provided by your pre-read, annotated agenda, and slides. As a result, you are ready to call it good. Congratulations on completing your four essential meeting documents.
NOTE: Which of these four meeting documents can you afford to skip? None of them of course, unless you avoid death by PowerPoint and spare them the deck by referring to content you already provided in the pre-read.
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Don’t ruin your career by hosting bad meetings. Sign up for a workshop or send this to someone who should. MGRUSH workshops focus on meeting design and practice. Each person practices tools, methods, and activities every day during the week. Therefore, while some call this immersion, we call it the road to building high-value facilitation skills.
Our workshops also provide a superb way to earn up to 40 SEUs from the Scrum Alliance, 40 CDUs from IIBA, 40 Continuous Learning Points (CLPs) based on Federal Acquisition Certification Continuous Professional Learning Requirements using Training and Education activities, 40 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from SAVE International, as well as 4.0 CEUs for other professions. (See workshop and Reference Manual descriptions for details.)
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Terrence Metz, president of MG RUSH Facilitation Training, was just 22-years-old and working as a Sales Engineer at Honeywell when he recognized a widespread problem—most meetings were ineffective and poorly led, wasting both time and company resources. However, he also observed meetings that worked. What set them apart? A well-prepared leader who structured the session to ensure participants contributed meaningfully and achieved clear outcomes.
Throughout his career, Metz, who earned an MBA from Kellogg (Northwestern University) experienced and also trained in various facilitation techniques. In 2004, he purchased MG RUSH where he shifted his focus toward improving established meeting designs and building a curriculum that would teach others how to lead, facilitate, and structure meetings that drive results. His expertise in training world-class facilitators led to the 2020 publication of Meetings That Get Results: A Guide to Building Better Meetings, a comprehensive resource on effectively building consensus.
Grounded in the principle that “nobody is smarter than everybody,” the book details the why, what, and how of building consensus when making decisions, planning, and solving problems. Along with a Participant’s Guide and supplemental workshops, it supports learning from foundational awareness to professional certification.
Metz’s first book, Change or Die: A Business Process Improvement Manual, tackled the challenges of process optimization. His upcoming book, Catalyst: Facilitating Innovation, focuses on meetings and workshops that don’t simply end when time runs out but conclude with actionable next steps and clear assignments—ensuring progress beyond discussions and ideas.
