Workshop Facilitation Deck

About this template

A deck the facilitator holds

Eight slides for one half-day workshop or guest session. The cover subtitle reads “from running the timetable to trend analysis, an 8-slide template”, and the order is cover, agenda, section divider, body, lecture-style versus workshop-style, key metrics, trend analysis, closing. The agenda lists four lines – timetable, lecture versus workshop style, key metrics, trend analysis – and all four have slides behind them. Only the first carries a divider (“SECTION 01”), so slides 3 and 4 are the one divider-and-body pair. For a full-day program, duplicate that pair per session.

The body slide is the schedule

Slide 4 is introduced as planning the day to the minute, breaks included, and ships with three lines: four hours split into six blocks, a fixed ten-minute break per block, and a pre-agreed order for what gets cut when you run late. Timing is what usually collapses, so keep those three lines and change only the values. The third is the most useful in practice: without deciding in advance what to shorten, the closing reflection is what disappears. Add start and end times per block, and write activities as time boxes rather than names.

• Icebreaker, e.g. “introductions, 40 seconds each, 20 minutes for thirty people”.
• Group discussion, e.g. “groups of five, 12 minutes on sticky notes, 2 minutes per group to present”.
• Wrap-up, e.g. “each person writes one action, signs it, and puts it on the wall – 5 minutes”.

The four bars do not add up to four hours

Slide 7 holds four bars: opening 15, diverge 45, converge 60, wrap-up 30. Those read as minutes allocated per stage rather than a trend, and the slide carries no unit caption, so retitle it as time allocation and state that the unit is minutes. They sum to 150 minutes, while the four hours on the metrics slide is 240 – 90 minutes unaccounted for. Even adding the six ten-minute breaks from slide 4 gets you to 210, still 30 short. Reconcile it one of three ways: add a bar for presentations and questions, extend the converge stage past 90 minutes, or shorten the session to three and a half hours. The bars are shapes rather than a chart, so scale each height by value / largest value after editing the number. Leave the gap unresolved and the 30-minute wrap-up is the first thing to vanish on the day.

Put the day’s logistics on the metric tiles

Slide 6 reads four hours of running time, 30 participants, 6 groups, and 18 ideas generated. The first three interlock: 30 people across 6 groups is 5 each, and above six per group someone always stops speaking, so add groups as headcount grows. The fourth cannot be filled in at the start – set it as a target of three per group and correct it to the real count at the end, which leaves participants a visible number for the day and turns the deck into a record when you share it afterwards.

The comparison slide and group assignment

Slide 5 splits into three lines per side. The lecture-style column reads: the facilitator does most of the talking, the planned material is delivered in full, what remains is the participants’ notes. The workshop-style column reads: participants speak more than 60% of the time, the volume adapts to each group’s pace, what remains is each group’s output. Use it early to contrast how the work is done now with the method you are teaching, and rewrite the six lines for your topic. Group assignment appears neither in the agenda nor as a slide, so duplicate slides 3 and 4 and insert one after the comparison – group numbers, seating and how leaders are chosen on screen removes most of the confusion at the start.

Where facilitator notes go

Script lines typed into the slide body are visible to the room. Put them in the notes pane below and run presenter view so participants see only the slide. Add the materials checklist and the start and end times for each group activity there too, and one printed copy runs the session.

Where a workshop falls behind

• Running an icebreaker, group assignment or presentations that appear nowhere in the four-line agenda. Participants read the agenda as a timetable and treat anything missing as unplanned; add the line and the slide.
• Showing exercise instructions once and moving on; keep them on screen throughout.
• Planning without breaks – slide 4 fixes ten minutes per block, but the four bars on slide 7 leave them out. A schedule built without breaks always overruns.
• Ending the closing slide on its two shipped lines. A workshop leaves work behind, so put the follow-up task and its deadline there.