Earlier this week I led a leadership workshop for one of my clients. I’ve been teaching this particular workshop three times a year for the past three years.  The workshop is their design and content. They just bring me in to teach it.  This particular workshop, like many, has a lot packed into it.   In the past we’ve run a “tight ship” ensuring that we got through all of it.

I decided to try something different this time. I took a page out of the playbook of my own workshops.

I let the discussions drive the agenda rather than the other way around.  As a result, we had to adjust on the fly, skipping two topics entirely, cutting back on two others, and moving one (as it seemed more appropriate to address it in the moment instead of when it was “scheduled”).

It seemed to work. Participant reaction to the workshop was incredible – they loved it!  The workshop always scores well from an evaluation standpoint.  However there was a qualitative difference in people’s engagement, how they were talking about the workshop and what they learned.  They were much more excited about it.  They talked much more about being able to apply the content when they got back to work.  Most importantly, they continued the discussions from the class into their breaks and even while they were walking out the door.

A common misconception is that learning and understanding are driven by how much information is provided. That’s not true.  Learning and understanding depend on how much is internalized.  Internalizing information requires working with it, making sense of it, and questioning it.

When we take a provider-centric view of learning, understanding, or decision-making, we create overly ambitious agendas that allow little room to deviate. I once had a client who had eighteen presentations scheduled for a two day offsite meeting.  Yikes!  Luckily I was able to talk them down. Another client set up a one hour meeting to make five key business decisions.  That would have been ok except for the fact that these topics were relatively new to the group and they did not have any prior discussion about them.

I often see training courses, meeting agendas, and presentations that are too full.  This results in instructors, presenters and facilitators cutting people off or rushing through topics to keep things “on track”.  If you are frustrated that people aren’t engaged in your training or meetings check the agenda.  You may not allow them to be.  As soon as they become engaged and want to talk about something deeper, do you let it go or do you cut them off in order to keep things moving and on track?  And, when I say “let it go”, I don’t just mean for one or two more minutes.  I mean really getting deep into the issue or topic at hand.

Despite all of the content that we didn’t cover, I strongly believe that this group learned more and will do more with it than any other group in the past.  This isn’t because it felt better for me.  It’s because through their words, questions, comments, and actions, they demonstrated that it was better for them.

Take a look at your meeting agendas and training outlines.  Have you left enough space for people to understand and internalize the discussions, decisions, or content?  Can your agenda withstand someone who is actually interested in talking about one of the topics?  If not, revise the agenda.  Pull out some content.  Leave some space for engagement and understanding.  You’ll find that you achieve a lot more with a lot less.