Hosting a Soft Skills Workshop

On 21st October 2022, I hosted a three-hour in-person workshop with a local French partner in Le Grand Paris, France. It was fun, energizing and insightful. Discover my debriefing below.

Table of Contents

Participants of the Soft Skills Workshop

Thirteen French solopreneurs from diverse sectors who activate and propel their soft skills.

As a workshop host, I invited the cohort:

To discuss the need for soft skills development over a monthly offline community chat.
To share knowledge and encourage conversations between participants on this topic.

Active Pedagogy

As a proponent of social learning, learning by moving, doing and reflecting, I turned the room into three or four pods of tables and chairs before the participants entered the room. To do so, I arrived twenty minutes before the kick-off of the workshop and got some help from the staff of my workshop’s partner. I intended to nudge the participants upon their arrival to go to a pod and later to be in a group of three or four.

This set the right conditions for forming a peer learning circle with listening, caring, sharing knowledge and reflection. As a host, my role was to suggest assigning roles (master of inclusion, master of time, master of production). Turning solopreneurs who barely know each other into teams of possible collaborators and fellow active learners.

Hosting the Soft Skills Workshop

Debriefing the Soft Skills Workshop

To Monitor

The roundtable was longer than expected: 20 minutes instead of 10. Leaving the floor to each participant to introduce themselves take time while being the time master as a host.

Leaving more time and space per team to get to know each other and collaborate on a precise and expected deliverable: the top skills and ways to activate and develop them as solopreneurs.

Welcoming, onboarding and offboarding the workshop participants with a few introductory words, smiles, tea and coffee. This is how, as I host, I show I care.

Setting up the workshop room with four pods of tables and chairs before the arrival of participants is physical and takes time. Next time, perhaps, invite the participants to do so, as well as a first collective effort.

After the workshop, the follow-up communication between moi and the local partner was ok. The participants got an actionable version of the deck I used to animate, and a few connected and carried on the conversation via Linkedin.

Matters Raised

The projection of the deck on the wall was too small sometimes to read the sources and small typography I added from my research and curation on soft skills and future skills.

No wifi in the room. Only smartphone connection. I did not need to use the Internet to host this workshop. The participants use their mobile to pull links and get inspiration on this topic per team. Fine.