Need help with new and engaging design ideas
Question: I’d like help with new and engaging design ideas.
A common trap is to overuse the telling and teaching styles: giving information, whether it’s statistics or data about the organization and the clients you serve, or the leadership case & why we all should be doing more about diversity, equity & inclusion. While this information is useful, people will not remember most of it AND they may resent having to sit through another boring workshop.
I believe we need to be much more experiential & engaging in trainings. Start by doing a thorough needs assessment to find out what participant want to learn, what are the dilemmas in the organization, and what skills people want. You can ask them for the types of situations they needs skills to handle better either with colleagues or customers.
You can ask them what they already do to successfully to create inclusion as well as what issues of diversity that they want to know more about. Also ask them how they like to learn, how they learn best.
This type of pre-work may get them more willing and interested in attending.
And their input will give you many ideas for activities that get them engaged, such as: role playing ways to respond to difficult situations, case studies to analyze how to engage, common microaggressions that occur in the organization and how to interrupt them. In the course we will review 50+ experiential activities that can spice up workshops, including: stations activities, fish bowls, simulations, etc.