John (00:08): Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Leanne Hughes. She is a consultant, speaker and facilitator maximizing team potential by creating influential contagious work experiences that scale across teams, functions, and regions. We're going to talk about her book, the Two Hour Workshop Blueprint, how business owners can Design Workshops, fast, deliver strong and without stress. So welcome to the show,

Leanne (00:39): Amazing to be here, John. Absolutely love your work and really think about how to create word of mouth in workshops as well. So look forward to diving into that.

John (00:47): Awesome. So the first question I have to ask is why two hours? Is there something magical about that amount of time or did you have a publisher that said we have to be specific?

Leanne (00:57): I think it's definitely about specific, and I think the fact that it is two hours is very intriguing. And I think for most, there's facilitators and trainers and then there's normal people like you and I who are hey, tapped on the shoulder. People want to hear expertise, and I think with two hours, if you can do a two hour workshop, you can do a two day workshop, you can do a one hour workshop because it's enough time for you to open it, to run a few activities and to reflect out. So I thought it was a sweet spot.

John (01:22): Let's talk a little bit about the differences you started to mention there. I mean, I do presentations, I do webinars. How is a workshop different than your standard stand up and open up a conference

Leanne (01:32): And actually I think conferences are actually shifting now because of the pandemic and the amount of content available. I think now it's more about, I guess having a horizontal relationship with the people in your audience versus a vertical one. So vertical, you're the expert. You're talking at someone, it's like a broadcast, it's like a YouTube. You're going on a YouTube live. Whereas a workshop is all about that interaction and getting people to connect to the content in the context that they're in. And it's more of a conversation, and I actually think it's scarier doing workshops because it's unpredictable. You don't have that control. Whereas a keynote is, I move to the stage, I do this, I deliver that. And I think there's absolute forums for both of them and they work really nicely together. But workshops are really about how do we land this for someone and help them make progress where they're at.

John (02:19): Would you say it's a different skillset? I mean, not everybody who can stand up and inspire a crowd can also lead a workshop. I mean, would you say that, I'm sure that there are people that can do both quite well, but would you say it's a different skillset?

Leanne (02:32): Absolutely. Absolutely. It's a different skillset. And I think when I've got a podcast called First Time Facilitator, but I was leading that, I was a keynote speaker, you should have seen my agenda, John. It was 9 0 1 mentioned this story, 9 0 3. It was so specific and precise and it wasn't leaving any space for connection and anything else. And I think now as a more seasoned facilitator, I'm lazier, I'm less controlled, but it takes time on your feet and experience and going through some of the bad experiences to get comfortable with that.

John (03:03): And I know myself for doing this for years. You talked about a workshop can be scarier. I find that it's sometimes scary when you just get a crowd that maybe didn't want to be there. They're there for the wrong reasons, they're not very particip, but when you get one that's really into it, I think they're a lot more fun.

Leanne (03:21): Absolutely. And I think there's something I talk about in the book as the Spark framework, and it's all about the setup as well, and it's very different if you're working with an organization. I was talking to a friend about this yesterday. A client will hire you, but the people in that room haven't necessarily volunteered. They've been voluntold to go there, and so you're up against it. Whereas John, you work with business owners that would just screened to be at one of your workshops. So it's on fire the moment you're in the room.

John (03:46): Yeah, I'm envisioning accountants getting CEU credits, scary room. They don't want to be there and they don't really want to hear about marketing anyway. Yeah, but

Leanne (03:56): It's interesting.

John (03:56): Sorry to all my accountant listeners for that one.

Leanne (03:59): Well, let's not stop with accountants. Let's talk about lawyers as well. Honestly, it's really bizarre, but everyone's like, what's the best workshop you've ever been to? And it was run by, it was the code of conduct workshop at my old when I was working internally. It was like, we go in, we're thinking, this is going to be terrible. We're going to talk with us for three hours. It was the best experience ever talking through case studies, hypotheticals. And I guess John for me was after that experience, I was like, if you could make code of conduct interesting, you can make anything interesting. So that was cool.

John (04:29): Let's talk about who needs to do a workshop. I'm sure that there are people out there thinking, well, I'm a trainer or I'm a coach, and so workshops have to be part of my suite. But there's probably a whole lot of businesses that never really thought about a workshop as a product or maybe even as a lead generation tactic. Talk a little bit about how can we be more expansive in thinking who should do workshops?

Leanne (04:53): Yeah, I think it's really, I mean, I always sort of rely on my content strategy to drive what I end up doing for workshops. So I might put out a LinkedIn post around something and people, I wonder how they're asking questions. How do you do that? I think the second you have a how question is like, Hey, maybe this could be a workshop. And often as we take for granted the knowledge in our own mind and think everyone else knows this, but the second you've been sought out to, how do you do this faster? What systems are you using? There's an opportunity, I think, to really dive in for the workshop experience. So a keynote, I think a speech is more about building awareness around a topic. I think a workshop is, I'm aware I want it. How do I do this?

John (05:32): Well, to that point, I mean, I think a lot of marketers think workshop and they think, oh, this is a way to top of funnel, maybe create some awareness. Maybe it's a low ticket thing that's going to lead to my high ticket thing. But where I see them terribly underutilized is we should be doing workshops for our clients. I mean, teaching them how to get more, how to do something more because we've already got that relationship and now we just really cement it. We

Leanne (05:57): Absolutely. Yeah, and I think because my business is, my main product is workshops, and it's an interesting ecosystem once you have a workshop in that, because then you can expand to advisory retainer work, come in for a speech one-on-one coaching the utility of a workshop as the centerpiece is super valuable.

John (06:20): So you have structured the book as acts of a play. So talk a little bit, I mean, do you see that as kind of the structure of a workshop too, as acts of a play?

Leanne (06:30): Sometimes they can be non-linear, and I'm designing a workshop tomorrow where I don't know where it's going to go. We're working through a process, so I've basically a series of post-IT cards and activities ready to go when we need to, which is very different to what I

John (06:41): Was Choose your own ending kind of thing.

Leanne (06:44): And yeah, choose your own adventure. I love that. But I think the reason I read the book is for people that I haven't done workshops before and kind of need a structure and a format because I dunno how long it takes you, John, but when I was first starting out to design a two hour workshop would take me weeks. It was ridiculous. I was on Google searching for the perfect activity, and then after creating so many over the years, I'm like, actually, this is, what am I actually doing here? And let's play it back to make it faster. No one has that bandwidth to spend that much time. And I think there's a false assumption, the more time you spend on it, the better it will be. It's totally false.

John (07:21): Yeah. More time you spend delivering it, the better it'll be probably right where you really learn, right?

Leanne (07:28): A hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah.

John (07:29): We could talk about the various components of it, but I know one of the things early on, you talked about it used to take you a lot of time. I usually pack too much in them is what I did because I was like, oh, we've got two hours. How can I fill 120 minutes and I'll put more stuff in it? And what it ended up doing was making it less effective. So let's talk. Maybe that's a good lead into the setup.

Leanne (07:51): Yeah, I think everyone in the world uses the GPS analogy, but what I like the most about the GPS analogy is that, and I didn't know that this is how it worked, but you set your destination first. What the GPS does is actually cuts out the map. It doesn't give you the whole map, it cuts it out. That's the effectiveness of it. And I think especially with two hours and with any type of expert in a certain context, it's not about the information. I mean, we can Google things as YouTube for everything. It's more about for these people at this moment in time, what are the most useful thing and how can I cut out 90% of the stuff that actually doesn't matter? Because I think often we equate more content to more value, but we end up overwhelming them. They don't get a result. And as a result, they may not then book us back. But it's hard. I think it's kind of related to self-worth as well. My worth is in the content.

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(09:42): That's activecampaign.com/ducttape. Now, this offer is limited to new active campaign customers only. So what are you waiting for? Fuel your growth, boost revenue and save precious time by upgrading to ActiveCampaign today. Yeah, I mean, I distinctly remember doing some three hour workshops for a manufacturer for their distributors, and the first time I delivered it, about 30 minutes in, I was like, they're overwhelmed. They're done. I mean, you could see it on their faces and I mean, it's really a hard lesson to learn because I think that's probably one of the rookie mistakes people make is they're like, I've got all this time. I have to shove stuff in. So if somebody says, okay, I have an inkling that this is a good topic, what's next? What do I do next? I mean, how do I get to the right amount of content?

Leanne (10:32): Yeah, the right amount. That's a really interesting question. But I think going back to the rule, there's that rule in comedy like the rule of threes where you sort of set up one, two, and three. I mean, the number three is everywhere. And I think it's a good number, particularly for a two hour workshop is I just think if someone's leaving this workshop, what do I want to tell a friend and how I make that stick? And usually it's like, okay, it's three things or it's wrapped up in one framework, like a Venn diagram or something like that. Three key themes. They can say, Hey, I went to this workshop, here are the three key things we talked about. And that's it. Because I think the second you've and I talk about frameworks in the book, it's kind of like an advanced thing, but it's really about just gift wrapping information. You want to make it easy to remember, easy to recall, easy to share with other people. And I think so just meeting them, but also John, I think having conversations and some of the time where workshops for me didn't land is where I wasn't connecting with people beforehand. And I've made assumptions around where they're at in their business

John (11:32): Just because I'm going to piggyback off of that. I was going to ask that a little later on, but how do you build, you walk into a room sometimes it's the first time you've seen anybody the way it worked. How do you build rapport, get them engaged right away without maybe feeling cheesy?

Leanne (11:48): Yeah, that's fun. Well, I think I was originally very cheesy and I was kind of going over the top and being a bit ridiculous

John (11:54): Or cheeky I should say, to be with your audience. That's a more Australian term, right?

Leanne (12:00): Yeah, it's very Australian. We can't beat that out of ourselves. I think we're just a cheeky country, but set up phase, I think we often, we think, and this is a Pri Parker thing, and her book, the Art of Gathering, she says, the event doesn't start when it starts beforehand. And I think even the language you used around what are you going to call the event can really set an expectation. Often I will send, it's not the first time I've communicated with the group, so I'll ask either directly, I'll send a video out to the people that have participating, just setting expectations, raising their level of certainty in terms of what to expect, the type of experience or the client will forward that on. And what I love about doing sometimes a pre-survey, it's kind of like a mini listening tour. You're hearing the language, and then what I like to do is something called the playback approach.

(12:46): So they're in there, this is particularly useful if they're kind hostages in the workshop, what are we doing here? You go, Hey, here's what you said. And you just play back their language and they can't disagree with that. So automatically you are lowering the objections in the room and getting people to feel a bit more comfortable. But also John, I'm chronically early. I'll be there an hour before, an hour and a half, so that when people walk in 20 minutes beforehand, I'm not fluffing around and fiddling around with slides. I'm like, I'm there. I'm connecting. Just not so busy.

John (13:18): I'm the same way, only because every room, the technology is different and I always want to make sure that stuff is going to work. So talk about a little bit about size of audience, if that dictates what you can and can't do. I know I speak to groups of 10 and I can hold their hands, whereas I speak to group of a hundred and it's a whole different dynamic, isn't it?

Leanne (13:39): Yeah. I've actually recently run a webinar on that actual, how do you host a large group? It is very different in terms of dynamics and also the level of instruction. So with smaller groups, I feel kind of weird having a group of four people and bringing in a PowerPoint and making it a bit of a performance. I'd feel extremely weird. I want to say even in the dynamics, you could just remove all the tables and sit around just with chairs and have flip charts and keep it conversational. Once you're on over a hundred, 130 people, what I like to do is create, have roles at tables, so create mini facilitators and give roles out timekeepers. So you're allocating responsibility, but you have to be much more precise with your instructions with bigger groups, much more deliberate with your use of language, which is tough. I like just riffing and at the smaller group level, but you'll be very precise the bigger it gets.

John (14:30): Do you get into, so you have a section in the book you call Power Up. So I guess I'll just let you explain that aspect. We talked a little bit about setup. So what is Power Up?

Leanne (14:40): Yeah, I think there's two elements to power up. So one is the personal power up. I think the most important thing is how are you feeling? What's your energy as you enter that room? Because particularly on virtual Mark, Foden body language expert, he said, we can't read virtual body language. The best predictor of how anyone else will show up is how we lead our own energy. So we've got to be a beacon for that. But power up is also those first five or 10 minutes because that's where you set the tone of engagement. And often where workshops can fail is it starts very predictably. And I sort of joke, let's create an unpredictable experience that will predictably work. It's welcome, housekeeping, it's just here's the content. Whereas I like to think, okay, how can we do the opposite of that? So do I start at the back of the room? Do we just start with an activity, just setting the tone that you want throughout the two hours that you're there?

John (15:29): Yeah. The one I always hate, and there's still lots of people tell you to do this, so please feel free to tell me I'm wrong, but the one where they put the whole agenda out there and then they've spent 20 minutes going, here's what we're going to do today. To me that's like death, but maybe I'm wrong.

Leanne (15:43): It's death. I mean, that could have been an email beforehand and it's like, just get into it. I talk about the seven habits of Highly Effective Workshop hosts, and again, I'm working on this. One is it's brevity. It's like often I've been in, I don't know, John, you've been in sessions where you hear things explain and we get it. It's like, let's move, let's move on. Yeah, agenda is one of them.

John (16:05): And maybe you're going to say it depends, but how about the use of metaphor in workshops to really drive home lessons? Do you think that's something we ought to all strive to bring into our style?

Leanne (16:18): I think not only in workshops, I think in life, honestly, in our conversations with clients, the second I'm trying to explain a concept, if I can bring in a metaphor and people are like, they get it immediately. You're in, you can see. Yeah, I mean metaphor is really powerful. It's something I've been working with Alan Weiss, million Dollar consultant, and he just basically talks in metaphors the whole time and like, oh, I'd love to get to that stage. But even as I was writing the book, it's like, what is the metaphor for the deep dive approach? Just really trying to connect in,

John (16:47): Talk about activities. Obviously workshop implies we're going to work, so talk about how important they are, maybe how to do them well, I mean, just anything you want to talk about, give us advice on activities and how to make them great.

Leanne (17:02): Yeah, you're right. Something I write at there is that it's a workshop, not a do this later shop, and that was my biggest pet peeves, like, oh, we've got this content, but you're have to go back into and play calendar Tetris and no one ever does it afterwards. So you've got that time and space, let's do the work. And probably the biggest comment I've had about that is, oh, Leanne, it's not content, it's activities. It's like, yes, let's actually get implementing and things like that. And I think when it comes to activities, and what was taking me so long with designing workshops was I was trying to think of what's a cool activity I can use for this scenario? And it's like, actually just use the scenario that people are working with. If they need to free up time, let's get them with their laptops. Let's open up their calendar. Let's see, and see how priorities are coming to life through the calendar in the session itself. Again, I like to weave in a bit of contrast. So with activities, it's think about, like you said before, group size, an individual reflection, maybe it's a conversation, then it's doing the thing, seeing how that worked out, reflecting on it as part of that, the chunk of your workshop is about 75 minutes is dedicated to that

John (18:08): To people actually working right,

Leanne (18:11): To implementing, to doing the thing. Yeah, exactly.

John (18:14): So what's your next workshop?

Leanne (18:18): Alright, a two day workshop. Yeah, and it isn't a training.

John (18:22): We're not going to be able to publicize that one because by the time people are listening to this, it will have occurred. So I guess maybe we'll just go right into invite people to where they might connect with you and obviously find the book, but also you offer a lot more than just the book with your trainings and workshops. So I'll let you just invite people to connect.

Leanne (18:41): Wonderful. Yeah, thanks John. Yeah, so you can see all my portfolio [email protected]. I'm very active on LinkedIn. I've got a podcast called First time Facilitator, back catalog of over 200 episodes talking about facilitation work. And of course, yeah, the book, grab it. There's lots of templates and downloadables as part of that. And email me, let me know what workshop you're running and how you're going and how you've used it. There's no bigger delight than hearing the impact of that book.

John (19:06): Awesome. Well, I appreciate you stopping by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, and hopefully we'll run into you on these days out there on the road.