Facilitating Your First CliftonStrengths® Workshop (4 of 4)

If nothing changes, nothing changes. 

This is Part 4 of a series for people planning or facilitating their first CliftonStrengths® workshop. Part 1 covered the prep, Part 2 covered opening the room and why I model vulnerability before I ask anyone else to, and Part 3 covered running the day itself. This one is about the fifteen minutes almost nobody plans, and the Monday that follows them.

My old company used to take an annual team building trip. Big Bear one year, Catalina Island another. I still have fond memories of Sailor's Delight ice cream and Descanso Beach Club.

I definitely grew stronger friendships. That part was real.

But on Monday, nothing about how we actually worked together was any different. Same meetings, same friction, same assumptions about each other.

Nobody at the company would have called that trip a failure, because the trip did exactly what a trip does. In this case, it really was a Team Bonding trip with a little bit of Team Building. Team Building creates connection, and connection is worth having. You need Connection to start Building.

A CliftonStrengths® workshop is a great thing to do for Team Building. A strengths session hands people an enormous amount of insight in a single day. Insight feels like progress. That's where Team Building comes up short. Monday arrives with an inbox and a status meeting, and insight without a handle is a nice memory of a day you liked.

That memory is the reason I now spend more time planning the last fifteen minutes of a workshop than the first fifteen.

What you are actually trying to produce

Most first-time facilitators design for the room. The energy, the aha moment, the guy who checks email for two hours and then says the thing that stops everybody. All of that is worth designing for. But the room is not where the change happens.

Monday is. And Monday is hostile to anything you did not make ridiculously easy.

So be clear with yourself about what the close is FOR. The goal is not a good feeling on the way out. The goal is an action plan: something specific each person is going to do that changes their behavior the following week, and someone who is expecting them to do it.

That second half is the part that gets skipped. Accountability is one of the most powerful drivers of behavior we have, and a room full of private good intentions has none of it.

Compare two closes.

"What is one thing you are going to do differently this week?" asks for reflection. Reflection is great, and it is addressed to nobody in particular, which means nobody in particular is waiting for it. I still use this all the time. 

"Write one sentence about one of your themes. Pick one person you will say it to. Pick the day." produces the same ten minutes of work and a completely different Monday, because now someone is expecting it.

The three things I want in their hands

**A sentence, not a document.** One sentence, handwritten, in their own words, about one of their own themes. The one I model is mine: "My Competition® means I will turn almost anything into a scoreboard, so tell me when that is not helping."

That is nine seconds long, specific enough to be useful, and honest enough to cost me something. It is also the shape of a conversation rather than a deliverable. Documents have a natural home, which is a drawer.

This is the same move I made years ago with my own team, when I first walked them through the Helps vs Hinders idea and gave them explicit permission to tell me when my top themes were hindering me or my ability to lead. That permission is what turns a theme name into something a team can actually use.

**A name, not a team.** One person they will say the sentence to. One person is focused. A team is a shotgun. It's easier to miss. Now it's a real thing they have to do with a real human they will see on Monday.

**A date, chosen in the room.** "This week" means never. "Monday, before standup" means Monday. It takes about forty seconds of workshop time and it is the difference between a commitment and a feeling.

The manager goes first

This is the one that decides everything, and it happens before the workshop rather than during the close.

If the person who runs the meeting does not use the language on Monday morning, some people will try it once, feel a little weird, and quietly stop. Not everyone. But enough that the whole thing fades within a month, and the postmortem will blame the workshop.

So I talk to the manager in advance, I tell them exactly what I am going to ask of them, and I get their yes in front of the team at the close. It costs the manager very little and it changes what everyone else believes is safe on Monday.

If you take one thing from this article, take this one. It is the highest leverage conversation in the entire engagement and it happens on a call before the workshop is even built.

When the room runs long anyway

Here is where I will be honest with you. I do not always get this done in the room.

Most of the time my workshops feel compressed, and the reason is a good one: so many people want to engage and discuss after I have demonstrated vulnerability first. That is not a scheduling failure. That is the opening working exactly as designed, and I would rather have that problem than a quiet room and a tidy timeline.

The answer is not to rush a bad action plan into the last four minutes. It is to move it.

My most recent workshop was with AbbVie, and we have a meeting on the calendar to walk through their action plans together. Same outcome. Different week.

This is the same thing we tell participants about their own talent themes. My Achiever® helps me work hard. Your Belief® or Responsibility® might look the same from the outside. Different routes, same destination, and neither one is doing it wrong.

Facilitation works that way too. The end goal is changed behavior that centers on Strengths, and there is more than one road to it. What you cannot do is skip the destination.

Close strong

A strong close is not a louder close. It is the close that reaches furthest into the following week, because that is where you will really see bigger returns on what the workshop cost you.

Sentence, name, date, and a manager who goes first. Or a date on the calendar to build the action plan properly when the room gives you a better problem to have.

They always run long. Plan the close first anyway.

Get the checklist

Those three things plus the manager conversation are section 4 of my first workshop facilitator checklist. Printable version here: https://www.reubenpoon.com/facilitatorguide1sttimestrengths

More in this series

Part 1: Facilitating Your First CliftonStrengths® Workshop: The Prep

Part 2: Opening the Room

Part 3: During the Workshop

Part 4: What Should Participants Do the Monday After a CliftonStrengths® Workshop? (this article)

If you are planning a workshop

I facilitate CliftonStrengths®, team development, and first-time manager workshops. If your team has one coming up this year, connect with me on LinkedIn and tell me what you are planning.

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