Designing Design Workshops VI: Debriefing Content & Emotions
Simple exercises to end workshops meaningfully
If you could end a learning program in any way you want, how would you do it?
I wasn’t asked this question quite so directly, but that was the challenge of my long-time client in the social justice sector. The general context was this: my client’s Academy team was about to launch their inaugural training program on standards and norms for crime prevention for nearly 40 criminal justice professionals around SEAsia, recruiting across department, experience levels, and ranks. The program started out with online pre-sessions online, before gathering everyone in Bangkok for expert panels, workshops and field visits. On the last day, the organizers allocated 3 hours for reflection end the program on a good note.
“Good”, as I later discussed with the team, came down to two objectives aimed at two different audience:
- The audience should have a takeaway from the session, in terms of lessons learned and some kind of personal action plan
- The Academy team should know how to improve the program for next year
Given these two objectives, I set about designing a “workshop” of reflections (I put it in air quotes because this event in particular leans heavily on facilitation, and so little on teaching tools).
I did question how best to think about ending a program. Reflection is usually about looking back, and remembering what’s worth taking away from an experience. But the client’s objectives also requires that the participants attempt to look into the future based on what they learned.
After the workshop ended, I had my own moment of epiphany. It was quite clear that, regardless of which direction in time we faced, there are two sides to the outcome: what content did the participant learn and how did they feel about the program.
This article is about the debriefing exercises that I used in this workshop, and what I learnt from the experience.
First, let’s think
Given 3 hours, I decided to divide the workshop into two halves with a break in-between (a standard practice, I presume). For the first half, I asked the participants to recall in detail the program’s sessions with two provoking questions: What do you remember from each session? What might you suggest we do differently?
I requested that there is a whiteboard or a wall space set up around the room, with pictures of the speakers and /or the activities underneath the name of each session. Then, we gave out post-its in two different colors: blue for lessons learned and orange for feedback for participants to individually post their thoughts around the room. I had intended for small teams of participants to gather and discuss around each board, before rotating around the room every 5 minutes.
The team of facilitators and I got to walk around the room reading out pieces of insights, commenting on whether the insights are specific enough, and how we could make them more so. The clearer the insights, the more we hope the participants can remember them after they leave and the more the team can take note of what lessons stood out (essentially drawing a heat map of learning). We allowed the participants to take a gallery walk around the room too.
Not surprisingly, perhaps, the caliber of attention, intention, and attentiveness from the participants meant that not even 15 minutes into the session, everyone was basically writing Google reviews.
At the end of this session, we asked participants to volunteer to publicly share their thoughts — the good and the feedback — so that others can hear the voices of their peers.
Sharing is caring, and in a workshop setting, I have always found that allowing participants to vocalize their thoughts always imbue the moment with authenticity. Here, we heard people expressing gratitude for the program, wishing for similar projects in their home countries, paying compliments to their peers. And the feelings begin to emerge.
Second, let’s feel.
After taking a break, I set up a series of exercises for the second half of the workshop to connect their learnings to their future selves. Luckily, the participants had already discussed an audacious goal from the previous day, a change they hoped to see. I asked the participants to re-write this down as a possible 5-year goal.
Based on this goal, we asked them to think of activities that need to happen to achieve that goal. Backcasting, essentially, in arbitrary increments of time: what needs to happen 3 years, 1 year, 6 months, 1 month, 1 week, tomorrow to get to that goal?
More than one person asked if it’s ok to not write down tomorrow’s actions, since they’ll be tired from flying home. Which to me shows how seriously they’re taking the exercise — all I wanted was for the future to close and tangible. I said it was ok, because, yes, activists and justice professionals need rest too!
Specifically, ideally, we asked them about what they, as individuals, can do towards that change? We heard people following up on existing connections at home, promising peers in the room to do something, drafting documents for certain stakeholders. Slowly, but surely, small individual actions morph into harder collective ones as participants approach their goals. We had an open sharing session again on these future paths, as a pledge of sorts. The forward-looking reflection felt optimistic, and any goals immediately more achievable (at least to me, the facilitator).
Once this is done, we had one final activation which is to give out a postcard, a physical one, for participants to write what they’d like to say to their future selves in 6 months time, about halfway between this and the next cohort of participants. Everyone took the exercise very seriously; one judge even asked us if it’s ok to write this later. I saw people signing each others cards, taking pictures with them. We didn’t read them of course, but from the friendly chatter around the room, I felt at least that people are actively making connections to the their future selves.
Finally, let’s open up
The final exercise we did as a team took much longer than expected, and tears were involved. This one was borrowed from a design get-together I attended earlier this year.
We made space at the end of the room, and invite participants to stand around in a circle. I said my last thank you’s for their time, and officially conclude my role as facilitator by creating this final safe space. I laid down the ground rules. Each person can step into the circle and share whatever comes to mind. They do not have to participate in this exercise. And the only constraint is the time since there were 40 people in all and we wanted to give opportunities to everyone.
One by one, the participants stepped into the circle. The first few took a few steps and spoke from their hearts, then people started to brave the center of the circle, with spontaneous, heart-felt orations in their native language even. Brief and simple, confident and emotional, vulnerable and funny.
There were tears of gratitude, as some never thought they’d get this opportunity with their rank. Others called attention to the diversity of voices in the room. There was certainly a strong bond amongst us South East Asians. We had just enough time to pass around tissues for the tears before braking for lunch.
Reflections: not just a night cap
At the end of the program, speaking with my co-facilitator over lunch, we noted how fun the workshop was for us, even though we were only there to encourage people to share and write about what happened, and how they felt about it all.
The reflection module, it turned out, is not just a nightcap; it has the powerful to bring new perspective to the past experience and to tell a strong narrative about the program. In the case, I learned that the reflection adds actionable hope to the respective careers of the individuals, by reminding them of successful case studies here in Thailand and the cohort of support from the program.
After weeks of interactions, mostly in professional settings (though I heard there were enjoyable downtime too), the key to a “good” — content-filled, emotionally vulnerale — reflection is a safe space for people to be themselves, to laugh with (and sometimes at!) each other, to share dreams. This space doesn’t just happen: the time they spent together is social capital that we can spend to run exercises, improv games, and set rules about public speaking that welcome vulnerabilities.
I learned that it’s ok to cry in professional settings too, because some — especially justice — work is thoroughly human and requires deep empathy for the people we work for.
The hard work now for my client’s team is what happens after the program? What to do with the alumni engagement? The postcards will play a part in this journey, and what else?
Reflections, I found, helped surface our participants’ wishes and from those insights, we can build a foundation on which to design potentially meaningful interactions and create future activities to drive long-term impact.
Maybe with a few more happy tears.
Update July 15, 2024: I caught up with this client to debrief the session, here’s some key takeaways and new perspectives (yes, this is a reflection exercise on a reflection exercises):
- Bring anonymity back to feedback: The team noted while the participants’ reflections of the content is a helpful part of learning, the “suggestions” they provided are more sanitized than the feedback they received through other media (emal and post-survey). The public nature of the gallery walk may be a factor in deterring participants to share openly. One possible solution is to provide an anonymous suggestion box.
- Backcasting exercise was broad: The exercise asking participants to walk backwards from their audacious goal was not as specific or personal as we hoped. Participants mainly talked about systemic and organizational chagnes that are big-picture and impersonal. This might be one reason why the postcards to the future lean towards emotional encouragement and motivational camaraderie, rather than tied to a clear future action. One possible solution is to have a clear example of how backcasting works, and provide detailed possible paths connecting a big goal to today’s actions.
- Embedded mindset of disempowerment? One interesting insight from the team is that there is a possibility that the participants may not see themselves as the powerful influencer that the backcasting exercise requires them to be. For example, to ask how a policeman can change the criminal justice system for the better demands a leap of faith that I as a facilitator need to encourage. If this hypothesis is true, limiting beliefs about personal agency can be challenged to a certain level with an example of a case study (i.e. see point above). Another possible to solution is to find small ways to empower the participants during the program in a space that is safe and supportive (an environment which the Academy had already successfully curated).
- Sharing vulnerability is a strong moment: The open-sharing, campfire exercise was great way to let people share their human stories and be vulnerable in an environment — the justice system — that often demands them to be objective, to stick to the system, and to put walls to protect themselves from the emotional hardship of the job. The exercise then helped promote a sense of community and shared humanity in their professional paths — we should like to keep this exercise.
This reflection is part of an ongoing series on lessons learned from implementing human-centered design workshops. Please check out the previous ones brainstorming, failures, foreshadowing, and process.
