Looking back at a year of work and drawing some lessons from the reflective summaries I write after closing each project.
How I think about what I do
“Speaking and learning sessions” lie on a spectrum from interactive workshops that are very nearly training, to guest lectures and appearing on a podcast to share a bunch of thoughts I hold in my head. I bring specialist knowledge and offer some ideas to springboard people’s thinking. In “training and workshops” I bring the same specialist knowledge but with a more specific focus on people taking away models and new knowledge, so my job is about ensuring learning, not just thinking. This is sometimes more of a fuzzy distinction than a clear cut one, as my training sessions are usually very interactive!
While training and workshops, and speaking and learning sessions, are about my specialist knowledgeand how I help other people to acquire it for themselves, “events facilitation” is about applying a specialist skillset– not bringing the content, but providing the structure that enables people to think and come to decisions and planning. I tend to facilitate a lot of strategic sessions, and I think they are very fun to design and run.
“Engagement delivery” is me going out to talk with people and finding out what they think of things. Sometimes it leans into co-design and leads on to co-production (and people shaping the services that support them), but other times it’s more like participative research (I gather the information for the client, in a nice interactive trauma-informed way, and the client does something with it).
In 2025
Engagement delivery:3 projects
Speaking and learning sessions:4 projects (4 sessions)
Training and workshops:8 projects (21 sessions total)
Events facilitation: 7 projects (7 events)
Big project: 1x setting up a governance structure (facilitation, project management, engagement, research)
One-off pilots and experiments: 3 projects – mentoring, resource development, judging an award category
TOTAL:26 projects closed during the calendar year (not counting projects carrying over into 2026)
Out of the newish and more experimental projects, the resource development led on to another project running into 2026. I would like to do more mentoring, and find a way to build more of this into what I do. (There is a 2026 project that looks like it will involve more mentoring, so that’s good.)
What I’ve learnt
Facilitation:
- There’s always a balance between session design and accommodating client add-ons. Every time I have squeezed in client afterthoughts and additions to the brief, it has had an impact on the session flow and timings (obviously, I guess) – but it can detract from the purpose of the day, and cause a drop in energy in the room. I’m still learning to be braver, to push back, and to protect my session design in order to protect the participants’ experience. Additional things often deserve to have their own session to do them justice! Or, sometimes, they could just be an email. 😀
- Over the course of the year I have changed how I brief groups on the “quiet giraffe” prompt to quickly get everyone to silence and attention quickly – after feedback in one group that people found it patronising, I now run it with a simple hands up, and have been asked if I was in the Girl Guides as it’s used a lot there!
Training:
- The most challenging project this year: when the client team aren’t aligned on the purpose of the training, or even the audience, and the goalposts keep moving – with negative client feedback on what we’re delivering because it doesn’t match what they… haven’t told us they expect. Luckily I know the training content well enough that I can do a knowledge and purpose check directly with the participants in the room, and adapt the content on the fly to meet their needs and expectations. As long as the feedback from the room is good, I think I have done ok! 🙂
- Researching and developing new training content from scratch takes longer than I expect. I wrote a session which could fit in a day with longer exercises and more in-depth discussions, but had to be condensed to fit into half a day – and it took 4.5 days to develop. (I had anticipated 3.) On a different training workshop I planned 2 days development and took 3. This 1.5 factor is A Thing that I am seeing a recurrent pattern of. (There’s an article about the 1.6 factor and Hofstadter’s Law which I now try and keep in mind when estimating times for quotes!)
Huge project:
- My biggest solo project to date took 6 months and 40 days of work. I went over time a lot – I had anticipated 30 days. I could have quoted a bit more time and gone for the full available client budget: I’m learning to overestimate at quoting / proposal stage because I very often go over time on projects at all scales – not because I’m not efficient, but because there are always unpredictable things that you can only factor in with hindsight. Building in a buffer is a good idea wherever possible.
- Huge projects of this kind, even though they’re supposed to be e.g. 1.5 days per week, take up way more headspace than that even with strong time boundaries. This project was my whole life for 6 months (with all the other projects co-existing of course!) but it was a rare unicorn of a project that allowed for a good amount of time and a good amount of budget (you sometimes get one of those, but rarely both), working with a genuinely lovely team of nice people. Feeling lucky to have had the opportunity!
These are a few of my favourite things
- Designing and facilitating strategic workshops is really fun. I like those.
- Building skills and capabilities in relational work, and talking about complexity (which go hand in hand). Our public services need more people who are good at relationships, and at operating in complexity, and I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of banging on about this.
- Engagement delivery is ok, it’s a bit of a bread-and-butter sort of project, but I can take pride in doing *good* engagement. And I always get to meet interesting people and learn new things in the process.
Photo by Marc-Olivier Jodoin on Unsplash