Where we are
You have a design and a willing room. Tonight is the ninety minutes on the day, which is the part everybody thinks is the whole job and is actually about a fifth of it.
★ What you walk out with tonight. A run of show with clock times on it, a decided response for each of the four difficult participants, and a hybrid plan that is a design rather than an apology.
Clock times, not durations
6 min liveA plan made of durations tells you nothing useful at minute twenty-eight, because you have to do arithmetic under pressure to find out whether you are behind. A plan with clock times tells you instantly.
LiveFacilitating and presenting, and how to tell4 min▶
The test is simple: who is doing the cognitive work right now? If it is you, you are presenting. If it is them, you are facilitating. Both are legitimate; the mistake is presenting for forty minutes and calling it a workshop.
| Presenting | Facilitating |
|---|---|
| "Here is how you classify a change" | "Here is a change. What do you think?" |
| Answering the question | "What does anybody else think?" |
| Filling a silence | Waiting through it |
| Correcting a wrong answer | "What made you land there?" |
The right-hand column is uncomfortable to run because it is slower and less controllable, and it is where the learning is. The hardest line in it is the third: waiting through a silence after you ask a question. Count to five. Somebody will speak, and it will not be you.
Four difficult participants, four different moves
6 min liveSelf-studyHybrid, and the two things that fix most of it4 min▶
Four people on a link cannot hear the room, cannot see the whiteboard, and cannot join a pair. Most hybrid training pretends otherwise and then apologises. Two design decisions fix the majority of it:
- Repeat every question into the microphone. Every one, including the ones you can hear perfectly. It feels laborious for four sessions and then becomes automatic, and without it remote people are watching a conversation they cannot follow.
- Pair remote with remote. Never one remote person into a room pair - they will not be heard and will stop trying. Two remote people in their own breakout works properly.
And one thing to accept rather than fix: remote attendees will contribute less, and that is not disengagement. Give them a written channel and count what they put in it, or you will misread the room.
If the choice is genuinely available, all-remote beats hybrid. A room where everybody has the same disadvantages is fairer and easier to run than one with two classes of participant.
Write the run of show
★ 22 min · everyone buildsClock times. Real ones, from your actual start. Not "10 min intro" - "10:00 open, 10:04 change types".
Never-cuts. Mark them on the card. Worked examples and the closed-book check, usually. Marked means you will not talk yourself out of them at 10:26.
The checkpoint. One time on the card - about 60 percent through - where you look at the clock and decide. One decision point, not continuous anxiety.
Four moves. One line each for the expert, the sceptic, the silent one and the one who was sent. Decided in advance, not invented while being challenged.
Hybrid. Repeat every question; pair remote with remote. Write both on the card because you will forget the first one by minute ten.
Write the card. One side, clock times, never-cuts marked. It goes on the table where you can see it without picking anything up.
Put one checkpoint on it. At about 60 percent. That is where you make the cut decision, once, rather than worrying continuously.
Write the expert's job. Specifically - which pair they review, which case they argue. "Give them a role" is not a plan until it names the role.
Write your sceptic line. "What specifically would stop this working here?" and then genuinely write the answer on the board. If you do not write it down, they will say it again in ten minutes, louder.
Design one activity that lets the silent person contribute in writing. Pairs, then written answers collected. This is a design fix, not a facilitation trick.
Practise the five-second silence. Ask a question, count to five, do not fill it. It is the single hardest facilitation habit and it is the one that changes who is doing the work.
Write the two hybrid rules on the card. Repeat every question. Remote pairs with remote. Both, in writing, because both are forgettable under load.
If you take one thing from tonight. Clock times, not durations. At minute twenty-eight you will know instantly where you are, and every decision after that will be one you made calmly at your desk rather than one you invented in front of thirty people.
Before session b4
20 min- Write a real run of show for your next session, with clock times and marked never-cuts.
- Practise the five-second silence in an ordinary meeting this week. Notice who fills it.
- Write your four moves for the four participants. One line each.
- If you run anything hybrid, try repeating every question for one session and note the difference in remote contribution.
- Bring your best-designed session to b4 - b4 is where you find out how much of what happens on Monday is decided by anything you did in the room.
Three questions
Clear all three and this session gets stamped in your passport.
1 · Why write clock times rather than durations on a run of show?
The estimating happens either way. The difference is what you can read at minute twenty-eight. A glance at "10:22" against your watch is instant; converting a stack of durations while thirty people watch is how never-cut items get cut.
2 · What single test distinguishes facilitating from presenting?
Both are legitimate; the mistake is presenting for forty minutes and calling it a workshop. The hardest habit in the facilitating column is waiting through the silence after a question - count to five, and somebody who is not you will speak.
3 · A remote attendee has said nothing for thirty minutes. What should you conclude?
They cannot hear half the room, cannot read the whiteboard and cannot join a pair. Reading that as disengagement misdiagnoses a structural disadvantage as an attitude. Repeat every question, pair remote with remote, and give them a written channel you actually read.
What this session teaches, and where it came from
Every fact on this page, and its verification tier, is recorded in the course's source map.
Delivery b3 cheat sheet · pin this
The session went well. Session b4 is the one that reframes the whole track: a transfer board showing where a trained skill actually goes over ninety days - and the discovery that the biggest lever on it costs a two-line email to somebody's manager and has nothing to do with anything you did in the room.