# Make sense of workshop expectations before the session A facilitator has agreed to run a workshop about handing work between teams. Four anonymous pre-work answers arrive with different expectations, and the session needs a useful exercise. The responses and exercise below are fictional. They show how an assistant could prepare options for the facilitator without judging individual participants. Canonical: https://areinum.com/examples/workshop-prework-themes/ Language: en Updated: 2026-10-31 ## Fictional example The owner's request: Group these anonymous pre-work answers against the agreed workshop goal and suggest an exercise. Flag anything outside scope. Information provided: - Fictional goal: clearer handoffs for customer orders. - Fictional anonymous responses: A asks about ownership after a change; B asks where to record the latest instruction; C asks about competing priorities; D asks about salary negotiation. Example result: A and B concern handoff ownership and instructions. C may fit a prioritisation exercise. D is outside the stated goal. Suggested exercise: follow a changed order across two teams and decide how the new instruction is recorded. The next step: The facilitator checks the grouping and decides whether to include prioritisation and what to do with the out-of-scope request. ## Read the responses against the workshop goal The agreed goal is to make order handoffs between teams clearer. Answer A asks who owns an order after a change. Answer B asks where the latest delivery instruction should be recorded. Answer C wants practice deciding which competing order to handle first. Answer D asks for salary negotiation advice. The facilitator supplies anonymous excerpts that do not identify people or disclose client secrets. The salary question may be useful elsewhere, but it does not automatically belong in this workshop. ## Keep shared themes and differences visible A prepared brief can group A and B under handoff ownership and current instructions. C raises prioritisation, which may fit an exercise if the facilitator decides it supports the goal. D is outside the stated scope and should remain visible as an open question. Two related answers in a set of four do not establish what the wider organisation needs. The brief describes these supplied responses; it does not score competence or infer the participants' roles. ## Give the facilitator an exercise to consider One possible exercise: an order changes after the first team has handed it over. Ask the group to decide who records the new instruction, where the next team can find it and what happens if a second order is also urgent. The facilitator can decide whether to include the prioritisation element. A separate question for the workshop lead is whether the salary topic should be referred elsewhere or excluded from this session. ## Choose the agenda The lead facilitator checks the themes against the original excerpts and chooses the exercise, timing and follow-up. The summary is material for that decision. ## Questions you may have ### What responses should be supplied for the summary? Use anonymous material that does not identify people or disclose confidential client details. The inputs here are invented excerpts. ### Does the most common theme become the agenda automatically? The two related responses are useful signals within this small set. The facilitator chooses an exercise that fits the agreed objective. ### What happens to a request outside the agreed topic? Keep it visible for the facilitator. They can decide whether it belongs in another session, needs a separate discussion or should be left out. ## Sources and further reading - [Think180 Training Methods](https://www.think180.com/Pages/SIPs/methodology.html): Think180 describes its training process, including agreed objectives and participant pre-work. ## Related reading - [AI for consultants and training businesses: clarify workshop briefs and scope changes](https://areinum.com/ai-for-consultants-and-training-businesses/) - [Prepare and work with business documents](https://areinum.com/product/documents/) - [How to hand work over without losing the details](https://areinum.com/guides/hand-work-over-without-losing-details/) - [How to check work prepared by AI](https://areinum.com/guides/check-work-prepared-by-ai/) Explore the demo: https://platform.areinum.com/ See how Areinum approaches this work. Demo access may need to be arranged.