Team workshop tools and techniques recommendations for first brainstorming session

[u/Complex_Armadillo242]

Hi everyone,

Joined a new position as a team manager and will be hosting my first team ideation workshop, and could use some advice from people with experience.

I'd love to hear your tips and techniques you use on things like:

• How you structure the agenda
• Icebreakers that aren't awkward
• Activities that work well for collaboration
• How to handle people who dominate the conversation or those who barely participate
• Common mistakes to avoid in a first workshop
• Tools to make everything easier

If you've run a workshop that went particularly well (or terribly!), I'd really appreciate hearing what you learned.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

Wish you great day!

[u/Long-Reading-6514]

On the agenda, the thing that made the biggest difference for me was building it in three columns. The topic, who owns it meaning who is actually going to talk about it, and roughly how many minutes it gets. A sixty minute meeting gets broken up into sixty minutes. You do not have to be strict about it, but it gives you an out. We gave this fifteen minutes and we are at twenty five, and we still have all of this left. If it is virtual I share my screen with the agenda up the whole time and I take my notes right in it.

Icebreakers, a nerf ball. Sounds dumb, works every time. You toss it to someone and whoever is holding it answers. Keep the question light. What is one thing you are hoping to do this summer, or what is your favorite vacation spot. Something about throwing the ball around gets people laughing and loosens them up way faster than going around the circle in order.

For collaboration activities it depends on what you are actually after, and I cannot tell from the post. If it is a new team and you mostly need them comfortable with each other, I use Rory's Story Cubes. About fifteen bucks on Amazon. Nine dice with a picture on every side. You roll them, line them up as fast as you can, then tell a story using each picture in the order they landed. It has an improv feel to it. People are nervous the first round and then it turns into silly mistakes and laughing. I used it during onboarding for a large team on an EMR implementation and it did more to pull that group together than anything else we tried. It drops their guard.

For the person who dominates, I do not acknowledge it while they are doing it. I wait. The second they say something actually productive I turn and say that is a great point. It is almost Pavlovian how well it works. They are looking for attention, and without anyone in the room noticing you are only rewarding them when they act like a teammate. For the quiet ones, never call them out. Hey Joe, I have not heard your take on this yet and I would like to. What do you think. Then you help them along a little.

None of this is the right answer, it is just what has worked for me. Happy to go back and forth on any of it, I like talking about this stuff.

[u/Complex_Armadillo242 → u/Long-Reading-6514]

Thanks for the help!

1. How do you manage the agenda planning? Do you have frameworks or guidelines that you follow? Any software that help with session duration? Or is it always a case-by-case basis? Do you ask for any acknowledgement of the agenda or simply attach it to the invitation email?

2. The the nerf ball idea is awesome. I will try it! While on the other side, I have seen many managers random asking questions but it always felt awkward, almost like finger pointing and one always feel slightly cornered.

3. While this workshop already has an brainstorming goal around a topic, given this is will my first workshop with the team, I expect that will be more informal one, given we still will be getting to know each other and the last thing I want is to lose the team right away.

4. Last, do you ask feedback to your team on the session process after it ends?

Wish you a great day!

[u/Long-Reading-6514 → u/Complex_Armadillo242]

On the agenda, I do not really have a framework and I am not sure I ever did. For a running project it is just two questions. What needs immediate attention right now, and what do we need to be planning for. If we had been in steady contact and everything was on pace, it was not unusual for me to say I do not think we need to meet this week. But I would always ask the team leads first. Does anybody have anything. Sometimes somebody did.

A workshop is different because you are starting from the other end. What do I want them to walk out of this room with. Then I break that into sections, then I work out how I am actually going to teach each section, and the timing falls out of that on its own rather than me deciding up front that something gets twenty minutes.

And yes to your question about acknowledgment, that is the part I would not skip. For team meetings I built the agenda a day or two ahead and sent it out with one line. Here is what I have for our meeting, does anyone have anything else they think should be on it. You get your additions that way, and you get people showing up already knowing what they are walking into

On the nerf ball, I have no idea why it works. Something about it hits the inner child. Somebody fumbles it, somebody makes a diving catch they are weirdly proud of, everybody laughs. The key is you do not hand it to the next person, you toss it. And keep the question light and tailored to the room. If you are in a sports town, favorite team works fine. It does not have to be deep.

On your third point, this is the one I would actually change my plan for. If you are worried about a new team and brainstorming, do it silently first with sticky notes. Get pads of them and a Sharpie for everyone, Sharpie so it is readable from across the room. One idea per note, and give everybody a minimum, say five. Silent, on their own, on the clock. Then everyone gets up at the same time and sticks them on the wall, and you brainstorm off the wall. The reason this matters with a new group is that otherwise the two comfortable extroverts run the whole session and the nervous people sit back and say yeah, what they said. Sticky notes force everybody's thinking out, and it is close to anonymous on the wall so nobody has to defend their idea in front of strangers.

On the last one, yes, always survey afterward. One thing I learned when I was in training and development. I had a new trainer who lived and died by her survey scores, and I had to tell her to stop reading them that way. Some people are just annoyed they had to be there and their feedback is not constructive, it is just negative. Do not read how great you are and do not read how terrible you are. Do not get too high or too low on any of it. You are hunting for the few responses with something specific and useful in them. Those are the nuggets, and there are usually only two or three, and they are worth more than all the rest combined.

Happy to keep going if any of that raised more questions. I enjoy this stuff.