Designing Better Workshops: 7 Ways to Hear More Than the Loudest Voices

While exploring the team of the future, and what that actually means in reality for organisations, I’ve explored ways of working that support diverse ways of thinking and working. I’ve thought about career progression and how ‘Manager’ as a reward for being good at your job is not necessarily in line with how everyone wants to be rewarded.

We talk a lot about building diverse teams for the future.  Teams with different backgrounds, different experiences, different skills and different ways of thinking.

But there is little point bringing different perspectives into a team if our ways of working only make it easy for certain people to contribute.

Workshops are a good example.

I've facilitated many workshops, training sessions and collaborative exercises over the years, and there’s always a bit of a battle to hear from everyone.

You’ll always hear from a few people straight away. One or two naturally take the lead. Someone builds on their idea. Meanwhile, several other people have barely contributed.

We can easily mistake visible participation for effective collaboration.

The problem isn't the people, but the way we've designed the room and the conversation, how we’ve prepared the exercises and the skills we use to facilitate.

Participation shouldn't be about competing for airtime

Traditional group discussion rewards a particular way of contributing: think quickly, formulate an opinion quickly, speak confidently and find a gap in the conversation before somebody else fills it.

That's perfectly comfortable for some people. It isn't the best environment for everyone.

And the person who responds first isn't necessarily the person with the most valuable insight.

Good facilitation isn't simply about encouraging quieter people to “speak up”. It's about designing different routes through which people can think, contribute, challenge and influence an outcome.

This principle sits at the heart of the facilitation techniques I've used throughout my own work.

A participatory environment means actively encouraging contribution beyond the most vocal people, using techniques that accommodate different communication styles, creating psychological safety and preventing a few voices from dominating.

So what does that look like in practice?

1. Don't start with discussion. Start with thinking.

One of the simplest changes I make is to give people time to think before asking them to talk.

Rather than:

“What do you think?”

Try:

“Take three minutes individually. Write down what you think. Then we'll discuss it.”

I love Post-it notes for this. Everyone writes their responses first, and the facilitator then brings those contributions into the discussion.

It seems like a tiny design change, but it can significantly change the dynamic.

People aren't having to formulate their thinking while simultaneously listening to somebody else's argument. An idea gets a chance to exist before it is influenced by the loudest or most senior voice in the room.

Silent brainstorming, writing ideas down before speaking, is a great way of involving quieter participants and getting their ideas heard.

2. Move from individual → pair → small group → room

Not everything needs to begin with an open discussion.

A technique such as 1-2-4 progressively expands the conversation: think individually, discuss with another person, bring pairs together, and only then take the conversation to the wider group.

I've used the same principle by deliberately mixing:

individual exercises → pairs → groups of three → table discussions → whole-room discussion.

By the time an idea reaches the whole room, it has already been considered individually, challenged by someone else and developed by a small group.  It can improve the quality of our thinking.

The objective is to give everybody a meaningful route into the outcome.

3. Change who works with whom

We often spend considerable time designing workshop activities and almost no time thinking about who is sitting together.

I do.

I've deliberately set rooms up with separate tables so people can collaborate in smaller groups. After a break, I'll sometimes move people so they're working with a completely different combination of colleagues.

I've also deliberately paired people who don't normally work together, including people who may previously have experienced conflict, and supported them while they work through an exercise together.

This is facilitation design.

Changing the composition of a group can change whose ideas surface, who listens to whom and which assumptions get challenged. It can also help improve team dynamics and break down barriers between people, if facilitated effectively with adequate psychological safety in place.

4. Sometimes, give the loudest person the pen

This is one of my favourite techniques.

When somebody is particularly vocal or naturally dominates an exercise, I've sometimes made that person the scribe.

They stand at the flip chart. But there's a rule.

They don't get to answer the question.

Their job is to ask other people for their answers, prompt different groups, listen and capture what they hear.

You're not shutting down someone who has energy and confidence. You're redirecting that energy.

The person who might otherwise occupy much of the airtime suddenly becomes responsible for creating space for everybody else.

I've similarly nominated participants as facilitators and scribes within their own groups. Giving someone a defined role can completely change how they participate.

5. Use silence deliberately

Silence in workshops can make facilitators uncomfortable.

We ask a question. Nobody answers immediately.

So we rephrase it. Then explain it.

Then perhaps answer part of it ourselves.

We've rescued the room from 10 seconds of silence, and potentially interrupted somebody who was still thinking.

One of the practices I follow is very simple:

Ask the question and count to ten before intervening.

The broader principle is to trust that the group has answers rather than assuming the facilitator needs to “fix” the silence.

Another challenge as a leader or facilitator is feeling that you need to over-explain or provide ‘clues’. A good rule for facilitators can be to experiment with saying less than 20% of the words spoken during a session.

We don’t need to show off how much we know. Sometimes the best thing is to just stop talking!

6. Don't be afraid to redesign the workshop during the workshop

A beautifully designed agenda isn't much use if the room isn't responding to it.

I've changed workshop formats on the fly because I've noticed certain people dominating particular tables or groups, or because certain exercises or concepts aren't quite landing effectively for the task at hand.

After a comfort break, I might change the groups completely.

On occasions, I've deliberately put several of the louder contributors together, while creating another group where more introspective thinkers have the space to work together. I'll then adjust the facilitation technique I use with each group to suit the dynamic I'm seeing.

Planning matters, but so does observing what's actually happening and adapting accordingly.

7. Stop measuring engagement by noise

A lively room can feel like a successful workshop, with lots of conversation, lots of energy and lots of Post-it notes.

But I'd ask different questions:

Did everyone have a way to contribute?

Did people have time to think before being influenced by others?

Were different perspectives explored, or did the group converge around the first credible suggestion?

Did hierarchy affect the conversation?

Who spoke most?

Who didn't?

What might we have heard if we'd designed the session differently?

Observing those dynamics is itself a facilitation skill. Rebalancing participation, especially when hierarchy is a dominating factor, can be tricky. But it is essential for complex problem-solving and innovation.

Better collaboration is designed

None of these techniques is particularly complicated.

Give people thinking time.

Let them write before they speak. Move between individual, pair and group activities.

Change the groups. Create different roles.

Use silence. Watch group dynamics.

Adapt.

The skill is knowing which technique the people in front of you need at that particular moment.

If we're serious about creating teams that benefit from different perspectives, experiences and ways of thinking, we can't invite diversity into the room and then expect everybody to collaborate in exactly the same way.

Think about whether your design enabled you to access the thinking that was already in the room.

Sometimes, the person who spoke least may have been sitting on the insight you most needed to hear.

A Note on This Article

AI is a valuable research and writing companion, but it doesn't replace experience, judgement or human insight. The views and reflections shared here are my own, shaped by more than 23 years leading transformation across the UK and Middle East. Any statistics or external information referenced have been verified and attributed to their original sources.

If this article resonated with you, I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments.