Why Your Best Ideas Often Make a Workshop Worse

Posted by

Mirna Šmidt

For trainers and facilitators who want one habit that sharpens every design choice they make.

If there is one single question that makes the ultimate difference to how well the workshop is done, it is this one:

What am I actually trying to achieve here?

It is a question I ask myself, over and over, while designing (and also when delivering) any workshop. It is also the first, most important step I train all the new trainers on Train the Trainer to do.

Sounds obvious… and almost easy. Surely, all trainers put the goal in the spotlight, right?

Wroooong… it is the single thing that I see time and time again gets lost the fastest once trainers get deep in designing & content.

Here is how it usually happens:

You start with a topic. You get excited about it. You find a great activity, a good story, a clever exercise. You start adding more. More depth, more nuance, more of the content you personally find fascinating.

And somewhere in that process, without noticing, you drift.

The workshop is no longer built around what you want people to walk away with. It is built around what you find interesting to deliver.

It’s a slippery trap, and I never met a trainer who didn’t slip into it.

And the clear, practical learning goal is what pulls you back out of it.

The one question that keeps a workshop focused

Every activity, every slide, every discussion, every story you tell, can be checked against one question:

Does this serve the goal? Does it support the most important thing that they should walk away with?

If yes, keep it. If not, however good, engaging, interesting it is, it does not belong in this workshop.

That is it. That is the whole test.

While it sounds almost too simple to matter, this goal orientation is one of the habits that, practised consistently, changes your workshops more than almost any other skill that a trainer or facilitator needs.

Why this is harder than it sounds

If it were just a question of starting with a goal, everyone would already be doing it.

So why does the goal keep slipping, even for experienced trainers?

A few reasons I see often:

You fall in love with your own content. The topic itself is interesting. You want to share everything you know about it. But “everything I know” and “what serves the goal” are two different lists, and they only sometimes overlap.
A great activity is seductive on its own terms. An exercise can be genuinely brilliant, energising, memorable, and give some valuable insights, and still be the wrong exercise for this workshop, because it serves a different goal than the one you are actually working toward.
The goal is set once, at the start, and then goes quiet. You define it in the planning phase, and then you move into content mode, and the goal stops being an active presence in the room. It becomes something you wrote down rather than something you are still checking against.

What it looks like when you truly keep the goal in mind

Keep that goal as your compass, and every other design choice gets sharper.

This is what it looks like in the room, in real time:

The questions. When a participant asks something that seems off-topic, checking it against the goal tells you instantly: is this relevant and should I spend time on it, or is it a distraction pulling the room in the wrong direction?
The discussions. When participants get pulled into a discussion that feels relevant to them and ask you to give them more time for that discussion, the goal becomes your metric for checking whether it is also relevant to the workshop, not just interesting in the moment.
The timing. When participants ask for more time on an activity, weigh it against the goal (and the rest of your planned agenda) to see if this is the highest-relevance use of the time you have left, or whether it should stay in its time box so there is room for what is coming later.
The crossroads. When you find yourself facing two or three possible directions of how to continue the workshop or a conversation, a clear goal helps you make the decision fast. It is your compass pointing you toward the one that actually gets you there.
Helping participants make the best choices. When you ask participants which direction they would prefer (which is great practice, as it’s giving them real ownership), you can hand them the same compass. Ask them to weigh not just what is more interesting, but what is more relevant to the goal.

Let’s put it in practice: Take a moment to review your current design, mercilessly

Grab one of your recent workshop designs. Take a moment to review it, mercilessly, against your goal.

For every activity, every moment, every emotion, every piece of content, ask: how is this serving the goal?

Be relentless about asking this question, and you will build a truly powerful workshop.

Moment to reflect

Think about your last workshop. Was there a moment you got pulled toward content because it was interesting to you, rather than useful to them?

What is one place in your current design where you could ask “does this serve the goal” and possibly get an honest “no”?

Take it further: Train this as a habit, not a one-off insight

Reading about the learning goal is one thing. Building the instinct to check every choice against it, in the middle of designing, under time pressure, while you are excited about your own content, is another.

That is exactly the kind of instinct Train the Trainer is built to train. You do not just learn the principle. You keep delivering, over and over, with feedback throughout, until checking your choices against the goal becomes second nature rather than something you have to remember to do.

It is actually one of the things past participants report as one of the most significant side effects of the course: it changes how they approach not just their training, but their life. A little more intentional, a little more goal-oriented, with that compass not just as an idea, but as a true habit.
Signups for the next Train the Trainer group are open – check the course page for details on the upcoming dates and locations.

Curious but not sure it is the right fit? Get in touch (here) and we can plan a short call to explore it together.

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Community: The best way to keep growing

Topics like this are more than just learning a skill – they are lifelong habits that we as trainers & facilitators need to keep coming back to. And one of the best ways to keep on growing is by exchanging tools, ideas and feedback with a small community of peers, engaging in rich and meaningful conversations every month.

That is what Trainers Conversations is here for!

It is a place where we will also call you out on your bullshit and missouts, such as when you lose the goal out of sight… in the gentlest way possible 😀

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And if you would like more practical ideas like these arriving in your inbox, the Trainers Toolbox weekly newsletter is where they go first.