What a leadership workshop should change on Monday morning

When choosing a leadership workshop, ask what the team should be able to do differently on the next working day.

That question helps you move from a broad wish for better leadership to a specific operating need. Perhaps managers need clearer decision authority. Perhaps commitments disappear between meetings. Perhaps the owner is involved in work that should be carried elsewhere.

A workshop has a better starting point when everyone understands the problem it is meant to address.

Bring a real example

Choose a recent situation the team can discuss constructively. Describe the work, the decisions involved and what made it difficult. Remove unnecessary personal details and agree how sensitive matters will be handled.

An example gives people something to examine together. “We need accountability” is broad. A task with no clear owner after a meeting reveals questions that can be worked through.

Ask a potential facilitator how the session would use your example and what preparation they would need.

Decide who needs to participate

Include the people with responsibility for changing the arrangement. If managers discuss authority but the owner is absent from the relevant decisions, they may leave unable to apply what they agreed.

Consider who needs a voice in the discussion and who has authority to approve the resulting changes. Make those roles clear before the session.

Give participants enough context to prepare. Avoid turning a workshop into a surprise performance discussion for one person.

Look for usable work during the session

Ask what participants will actually practice or produce. Depending on the problem, that might be a decision boundary, a responsibility agreement, a better handover or a way to review commitments.

Leave room for questions. People may understand the principle and still be unsure how it applies to their own work. Working through that uncertainty is part of making the session useful.

Be careful about trying to solve every management issue in one workshop. A smaller change with clear ownership may be easier to apply.

Agree the Monday action

Before the session ends, record what will change, who owns it and when the team will review it. State what the owner or senior manager needs to provide.

A hypothetical example would be testing a new decision boundary for routine customer exceptions over an agreed period. The review would examine decisions made, delays and exceptions raised.

Use measures related to the original problem. Attendance and positive feedback tell you about the session experience, but you also need to see what happened afterwards.

Plan the follow-through

Ask how the team will keep the agreement visible and handle issues during the trial. A workshop can start a conversation that needs continued attention in ordinary management meetings.

If you are considering a workshop with me, bring the leadership situation you want the session to help change. We can discuss the audience, the operating need and the appropriate scope before agreeing a format.