How to Be a Facilitator: Finishing, Concluding, Ending, Stopping (4)

In an earlier post I made reference to the way I finish up a fairly long training workshop series: "don't just list the topics that were covered - take advantage of the opportunity to reinforce key aspects of what has been learnt".

I have been taking this approach with a leadership program called the Emerging Leadership Program at CQUniversity. We generally have lunch with a prominent leader to conclude the program, and during lunch I run a PowerPoint loop which has key slides from each topic (see the graphic at the top of this post) and photos of the participants at work. The photos are taken from the more 'active' activities that the participants undertake. Also, when I ask questions like 'What is leadership?', I write the participants' answers on the whiteboard, and then photograph them to include in the PowerPoint slides.

Some slides from one of these 'highlights reels' is included above.

PowerPoint Concert Review

Stellar, who participates in the trainingzone group 'PowerPoint Users' shared details (below) of a similar approach which she calls 'a PowerPoint Concert Review':

"This works best for slides that are not full of words or content heavy - but then best practise would suggest that applies to all slides.

Make a copy of your slides from your presentation or workshop (around 20-30 slides is probably a max - that would represent 2-3 days slides for me)

Annotate each slide as if you were talking people through the sessions e.g.
'You arrived yesterday and started discussing ....'
'then we moved on to ....'

Include some reflective questions that will help people think about content e.g. 'what did you think about these 3 features of... '

Each slide needs some a message at the top - make the message look a bit different to any other writing on your slides so it stands out.

Automate all the slides so they automatically move on after a fixed time - I find about 8-9 seconds is about right.

Then add an additional slide at the beginning inviting people to sit back, relax and enjoy the show - leave this one controlled by a mouse click so you can move it on when you are ready. And another at the end asking them to reflect on what they have learned/ understood/ want to know more about - depends on your purpose.

You can either record a piece of music to run with the Powerpoint or I find it easier to just switch on a CD - usually more reliable than fancy AV equipment

Use a piece of reflective music - no words - 60 beats per minute has been found to be most effective.

Sit back and watch everyone go back in time to the beginning of your session - I've had really powerful responses from people, including tears and rounds of applause. Almost everyone is amazed at how much they've covered.

Reviewing is one of the key features of helping people to learn or absorb information and this is a great way to do it particularly if you're short of time. I did it in 5 minutes at the end of a very full 'Communicating to Influence' workshop the other day. That just gave everyone time to reflect before filling in their action plans."

(Thank-you for permission to use this content Stellar.)

...Geoff
www.performancepeople.com.au