Designers & Strategists — Answering This Question Will help You Design Better Workshops

Workshops are a very commonly used method for collaborative thinking. I’ve designed and facilitated dozens of workshops throughout my design and consulting career. I always begin with answering this question — Is my goal for the workshop to create moments of divergence or convergence?

Let me unpack this for you.

Typically, people gather in a workshop setting for one of two main goals — divergent thinking, using collective thinking and collaboration to generate new ideas on a topic, or convergent thinking, using collective thinking towards shared decision-making on a particular topic. Both these types of workshops call for different strategies, activities, tools, and energies.

Divergent thinking workshops: If my goal is to get people to have their best ideas and generate as many ideas collectively, it is essential to have a diverse group of participants and empower them to feel safe enough to share their ideas. For this, I will focus on warming the group up through play and movement. It helps create an atmosphere of friendliness as opposed to competitiveness.

Convergent thinking workshops: If what I need is to bring a group of people together to reach shared consensus and decision-making, I need to create ease for the participants to hold the tension arising from competing aims. For this, a good strategy is to spend time with the group to establish a set of community guidelines that allow people to lean into the productive tension with safety and accountability.

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