Applying Simple Survey Responses Makes Every Session Better (Facilitation Friday #41)
Participants' insights can inform the relevance and value of your session design and facilitation choices.
How do we ensure a meeting or workshop is a good use of people’s time?
Gathering participant insights in advance to customize a session is one way we demonstrate respect for their time. Identifying what we know and need to know about session participants is a key step in my Making It Easier facilitation framework. Whenever possible, I use quick (3-5 minutes to complete) online surveys (typically JotForm, GoogleDocs, or SurveyMonkey) to collect participant input to help shape the meeting or workshop design and facilitation. If you can only ask one question, this is my recommendation.
Collecting input also can help build participants’ ownership for the outcomes and the sense that their time and contributions are valued. Through my pre-session communications and my comments during the session, I note how survey input informed my choices. Participants are more likely to respect and own the process when they feel their input and perspectives are respected.
A note of caution:
Be careful you don’t let a subset of participants overly influence your design and facilitation choices. If your survey only achieves a 30-40% response rate for example, the majority of participants have not weighed in on your questions. Calibrate your choices accordingly for the response rate your surveying achieves.
One Rule for Surveys
I have one rule for my surveys: Only gather information that will inform my subsequent design and facilitation decisions. Don’t ask people to take time to share their input if you’re unlikely to use it.
Before you draft your survey questions, answer this vital question for yourself:
What participant insights and information, if available to me in advance, would help me make design or facilitation choices more likely to achieve the meeting or workshop outcomes?
Now review your responses. If your list is lengthy, identify the half-dozen or so that are most important to the session outcomes and/or your session design and facilitation. Those then become the basis for the questions you’ll ask.
Questions I often ask for WORKSHOPS and other learning experiences
Ultimately, you have to craft your own list of desirable survey questions, but here are some from a survey of participants in one of my facilitation skills workshops. They represent three areas I often probe.
Areas #1: What do they want to learn
Situations participants suggest are always represented in the case study discussions I include in the final session design, as well as the examples I use during presentation segments. Prior to the session, I generally share all of their responses, as well as briefly explain how we will try to address them during the session.
Areas #2: How they may engage and contribute
At the start of a session, I almost always explore with participants what their responses to these questions might mean for our time together and what they may need more or less of from me as a facilitator.
Areas #3: How they assess their knowledge and skills
Information gleaned from these questions helps shape the level of content I select and how much time I anticipate may be required for various content segments. It also slightly predicts how participants might engage in discussion and Q&A segments; i.e. more knowledgeable participants may move through nuts and bolts information more quickly. This helps me with clock management.
Questions I often ask for MEETINGS or planning sessions
My meeting prep surveys or interviews usually include a brief restatement of the desired outcomes for the session followed by asking any or all of these questions:
When you’ve been a part of similar efforts in the past, what helped make them successful?
When you think about the session’s intended outcomes and the work required to achieve them, what challenges or barriers, if any, might we need to work around or address?
What would make it easier for you to fully contribute to this work? What information might you want in advance to help you prepare? What discussions or interactions with others during the session would you find most helpful?
What do you think other participants might need in order to contribute their best effort to the work?
I typically also ask the extroversion-introversion and big picture-analytical questions noted in the survey for workshop participants (Area #2).
Respect respondents’ time and increase your response rate
For my online surveys, I consistently achieve a minimum response rate of 80%. Here’s how:
The survey email subject line stresses the minimum time commitment: Take Five Minutes and Help Customize Our (insert date) Session.
The email provides a Word file or PDF of all the questions. This makes it easier for those who like to think about or note their responses before entering them in the actual survey.
The survey includes a few open-ended questions and a few single-choice or multiple-choice questions.
The email also notes that upon completion of the survey, participants receive a link to an annotated bibliography of resources they can use to start their learning. The Bribe!
Generally, a two-week response timeframe is provided with a reminder sent three or four before the deadline, noting the percentage of people who already responded.
Three additional survey tactics
Make sure your survey invitation and the survey itself reflects the values, qualities, and attributes you want people to associate with you and/or your organization. Every communication we send tells a story.
Prior to the session, I almost always send a PDF of anonymously aggregated survey responses and choices I made as a result of their input. Feeding back their feedback shows I respect participants’ time and input and can increase their sense of comfort with, and ownership of, a meeting agenda or workshop content flow. In addition, my hunch is that over time people become more likely to offer survey input when they know it actually is used.
When appropriate and time permits, I post the draft meeting or workshop agenda (informed by their survey input) and invite people to share responses to the following two questions:
What about the agenda works best for you or holds the most appeal?
What one thing, if anything, would make it even better or a more worthwhile investment of your time and energy?
I’m more likely to offer this second round of input when the stakes are high, participants’ ownership of the agenda is critical, or if I am a bit uncertain if my agenda reflects their survey responses.
Bottom Line
The answers we get depend on the questions we ask. To make the most of meeting or workshop participants’ time, identify the information that will best help you design and facilitate an effective session. Survey participants to gather those insights, apply them to your subsequent choices, and share how their input influenced your efforts.
Getting in Action
Think of when or why you’re more likely to respond to an advance survey for a meeting or workshop. How might you apply what influences you to your future surveying efforts?
For a typical meeting or workshop, generate your half-dozen responses to the question specified at the start of this essay under “One Rule for Surveys.”
What other tactics might you employ to increase the quality and percentage of participant responses to your surveying efforts?
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