{"id":2785,"date":"2018-08-15T12:18:14","date_gmt":"2018-08-15T16:18:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.afcpe.org\/?p=2785"},"modified":"2019-04-23T15:43:57","modified_gmt":"2019-04-23T19:43:57","slug":"1-2-3-steps-to-a-dynamic-workshop-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.afcpe.org\/news-and-publications\/blog\/1-2-3-steps-to-a-dynamic-workshop-2\/","title":{"rendered":"1-2-3 Steps to a Dynamic Workshop"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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When it comes to presenters who read their slides, audiences have reached their limit. The relentless dependence on bullet points and text-dense slides do more to bore than to entertain or inspire. In my last blog post,\u00a0Presenter to Bullet Point: \u201cYou\u2019re Fired!<\/a>, I concluded with a promise to provide you with a simple process \u201cto build a presentation from inspiration to delivery.\u201d Delivering on that promise, below are 3 concise steps (1-2-3) to help you build a dynamic workshop.<\/p>

Step 1: What is the ONE message of your presentation?<\/strong>
What is the one point that you want your audience to know? Whether you are persuading, instructing, or comparing and contrasting, you must be able to boil down your message to one central theme. This theme should be the glue that cements each of the 1-2-3 steps into one cohesive presentation.<\/p>

For example, if you are delivering a workshop on retirement planning, is your central theme that planning today will ensure that your audience can maintain a decent lifestyle in the future? Or perhaps you want to emphasize that small savings today can have big impacts on quality of life decades down the road. There might be an unlimited number of messages a broad subject (such as retirement planning) could evoke, but you must create and stick with one central message throughout your workshop and drive that point home repeatedly.<\/p>

Step 2: What are TWO (or three) key take-aways that support the main point?<\/strong>\u00a0
These are two facts that your audience may easily recall and will help to etch the workshop into longer-term memory. If effective fact nuggets are employed, your audience will ideally share them with others, thereby expanding the impact of your presentation.<\/p>

Continuing the retirement planning seminar example above: a key take-away could reflect that saving X dollars today = Y dollars in 30 years. Whatever the points, make them simple, easy to digest, and easy to repeat. \u00a0<\/p>

Step 3: Compose the workshop in THREE parts: Introduction, supporting body, conclusion<\/strong>.
Think back to the high school classroom, when the basic parts of the composition were drilled into your permanent memory: beginning, middle, and end.\u00a0 An essay was that simple, and every one of your workshops could\u2014and should\u2014be that uncomplicated too.<\/p>