The workshop.
60, 75 or 90 minutes.
One concept, worked properly. This is the format where a room stops listening and starts working: a real question on the board, silence with a pen, tables arguing it out, and every person leaving with one thing written down that they said out loud in front of their peers. Pick the length that fits the slot you have. The hour is a complete workshop, not a trimmed one.
You do not need to be a facilitator to run it. The whole thing is written out block by block, including the questions to ask and how long to hold each one.
Deeper than a lunch and learn.
Shorter than a day.
The lunch and learn covers all ten concepts at five minutes each, which is the right call when you have one hour and a room that has never heard any of it. This is the opposite trade: one concept, sixty to ninety minutes, and the time to actually get somewhere with it.
Roughly seventy of the ninety minutes are the room working. The person running it teaches for ten and asks questions for the rest.
Seven minutes where nobody speaks and everybody writes. It feels long the first time and it is where the real answers show up.
The second half is the team deciding what they are going to do differently, out loud, in front of each other. Not a takeaway sheet somebody else wrote.
Every person writes one commitment with a date on it and says it to the room. That is the takeaway, and it is theirs rather than yours.
Pick the one thing
this is about.
This format runs on a single concept. Choose the one that matches what your team is actually working on, print that worksheet for every seat, and you have everything you need.
Setting the Room
Tables of four. Not rows, not a horseshoe. Four people talk honestly, twenty people watch two people talk. If the room is fixed seating, have people turn around.
Print the worksheet. One per seat, for whichever concept you picked. They are all on the printables page, free.
Something to write on at the front. A flip chart, a whiteboard, or a shared doc on the screen. You will be capturing what the room says, and people work harder when they can see their words go up.
A timer you can see. The blocks below only work if you hold them. Running long on the discussion is the most common way this format falls apart.
Not sure which concept? Use the workshop planner to pick, or have people take the assessment the week before and run whichever one the room scores lowest on.
Ninety minutes,
block by block.
This is the full ninety. The hour and the seventy five run the same blocks on the clocks above. Times are from the start, and the words in red are the ones to say out loud.
Open With the Question
Do not introduce the topic, the book, or yourself. Put one question on the board and ask people to sit with it. No answers yet, no hands. Tell them you will come back to it at the end.
Teach the Concept
Ten minutes, and this is the only stretch where you are the one talking. Read the concept page in your own words, land the one idea at the centre of it, and tell one story where it was true for you. Your own story beats anything from the book.
If you would rather not carry it alone, read the concept page aloud and stop after each paragraph to ask whether the room recognizes it.
Hand Out the Worksheet
Seven minutes of silence. No phones, no talking, nobody circulating. Say the number out loud so people know it is deliberate, then sit down and do it yourself.
Expect the first ninety seconds to be uncomfortable. Do not rescue it. The room is not stuck, it is thinking, and the person who breaks the silence is usually the one who needed it most.
Talk It Out in Small Groups
Three questions, six minutes each. Call the time between them so no table spends the whole block on the first one. Nobody has to share what they wrote, only what they are willing to.
“What has it already cost you?”
“What would it look like if you were good at this?”
Put the Room on the Board
One sentence per table, and write every one of them up where everybody can see. Do not comment, correct, or improve them. Just capture.
This is the moment the session turns. People realize the thing they thought was only true for them is on the board four times in four different handwritings, and the room gets honest.
The Harder Question
Now point at the board and make it about the team rather than the individuals. This is the collaborative block and the reason to run ninety minutes instead of sixty.
Push for something specific enough to start on Monday. If the room offers you a slogan, ask what it would look like on a Tuesday afternoon. Land on one or two, not eight.
Everyone Commits to One Thing
Three minutes to write, then around the room. One specific thing, with a date on it, said out loud. Not a goal and not a value, something a person could be asked about in two weeks.
Go last yourself and make yours real. Whatever level of honesty you use sets the ceiling for everyone else. The Promise tool does this on a phone in four minutes and keeps it private if that suits your group better.
Go Back to the First Question
Put the opening question back on the board and ask whether anybody’s answer changed in the last ninety minutes. Let two or three people say it.
Then close on what happens next: who is collecting the commitments, when the team is coming back to the one or two changes it named, and the date of that conversation. Say the date. A workshop that ends without a date is a nice afternoon.
Three clocks,
same workshop.
Companies rarely have a blank calendar. Run whichever one fits the slot you can actually get. Every version keeps the question, the silence, the small groups and the commitment, because those four are the workshop. The extra time buys you the team decision and longer discussion.
60 minutes. Complete on its own. The most common way this gets run, because an hour is what most teams can protect.
0:00 Open with the question
0:04 Teach the concept
0:12 Six minutes of silence
0:18 Tables of four, two questions
0:32 Put the room on the board
0:42 Commitments, said out loud
0:54 Close and name the follow-up date
75 minutes. Adds the team decision back in a short form. The best value for the time if you can get the extra fifteen.
0:00 Open with the question
0:04 Teach the concept
0:13 Seven minutes of silence
0:20 Tables of four, three questions
0:35 Put the room on the board
0:45 The harder question, short version
0:57 Commitments, said out loud
1:09 Close and name the follow-up date
90 minutes. Everything, with room for the discussion to go where it wants to. Written out in full below.
0:00 Open with the question
0:05 Teach the concept
0:15 Seven minutes of silence
0:22 Tables of four, three questions
0:40 Put the room on the board
0:52 The harder question, in full
1:07 Commitments, said out loud
1:20 Close and name the follow-up date
Making It Yours
Half day or all-staff day? Run the ninety twice on two different concepts with a break between, or use the boot camp guide, which does all ten across a day.
Shift work or multiple sites? The hour version is designed to be repeated. Run the same one three times in a day so every shift gets it, and put all three boards side by side afterward.
Thirty minutes is the floor. Below an hour you can still teach a concept and hand out a worksheet, but you cannot get to the discussion or the commitment, which is the part that changes anything. If thirty is genuinely all you have, use the lunch and learn structure instead and treat it as an introduction.
Five things that decide
how this goes.
Read These Before You Run It
Do not answer your own questions. The urge to fill a pause is the single biggest risk in this format. Count to ten in your head. Somebody will go.
The most senior person goes last, every time. If the boss answers first, everybody else calibrates to that answer and you get a room agreeing with the payroll. Tell them beforehand.
You are a participant, not an instructor. Do the worksheet. Make a commitment. Answer the hard question honestly. The room can tell instantly whether this is being done to them or with them.
Do not fix what goes on the board. If somebody writes something uncomfortable about how the team works, leave it up. Editing it in front of them ends the honesty for the rest of the session and probably for the next one too.
Come back to it. Two weeks later, open a normal team meeting by asking who did the thing they said. Five minutes. That follow-up does more than the ninety minutes did.
Progress does not come from knowing more. It comes from doing more with what you already know.
Run one.
Then run the rest.
Most teams run this once on the concept that hurts most, and then want the other nine. Every format below is free and built on the same ten.
Choose Your Concept
Ten sessions named by what they help with. Pick one for this workshop, or pick six and get a running order.
Open the Planner →The 10-Week Program
One concept a week with real life in between. This same workshop, ten times, with the space to try things.
Open the Guide →The Worksheets
All ten, free to print for every seat. You need one per person for whichever concept you picked.
Print Them →Have Chris Run It
The facilitated version, a keynote paired with the workshop, or bulk copies for the room.
Start a Conversation →Run it with your people.
The same ten concepts at five different levels of commitment. Every guide is written so the person running it takes part rather than instructs, and nothing is gated, licensed or paid.
The Lunch and Learn
All ten concepts at five minutes each, with a full run of show. Nobody needs to have read the book.
Open the Guide → 60 to 90 minutesThe Workshop
One concept worked properly. A question, silence, tables of four, and a commitment from every person.
Open the Guide → Ten x 45 minutesThe Book Club Guide
One session per concept, built to be run by anyone in the group. Everyone needs a copy.
Download It → One dayThe Boot Camp
All ten condensed into a day, or two half days. The group leaves with a written plan.
Open the Guide → Ten weeksThe 10-Week Program
One concept a week with real life in between. The version that changes how a group operates.
Open the Guide →Seventeen free guides for managers, sorted by the problem — first 90 days, feedback, hard conversations, retention, onboarding, meetings, retreats and change. Browse the guides, or pick the concepts your people need and get a session order back.
Choose Your SessionsSeen On
Chris has taken this material onto morning television across the country, and writes for Forbes and Inc.
When I’ve got something worth sending.
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