The Workshop Survival Guide: How to design and teach educational workshops that work every time

by Rob Fitzpatrick, Devin Hunt

Our goal for this book—and our promise to you—is that you’ll feel comfortable designing a workshop from scratch and running it successfully, regardless of whether it’s 20 minutes or two days long. You’ll also be able to “fix” a broken workshop that you’ve been saddled with. While the first attempt at a new workshop is never perfect (testing and refinement matter), it should still be good enough that both clients and attendees leave happy, and that you get invited back. Throughout this book, you’ll also gain the skills and knowledge such that if something goes wrong, you’ll understand what’s happening and how to fix it. Whether workshops are your whole world or just a small part of it, we can help you succeed.

Over the last 15 years, we’ve now designed and run a huge number of successful workshops (and a few major flops) covering every type of audience: executives, undergrads, MBAs, disadvantaged youths, busy professionals, and more. We’ve designed everything from 20-minute teasers to 3-month intensives, in locations ranging from Costa Rica and Qatar to London and Berlin. We’ve taught for companies like HP and Deloitte and for universities like Oxford and NYU. We’ve built workshops for every price point, from free upskilling (paid for by the state or employer) through to $4000-per-seat premium events. We’ve taught casual sessions, with beer in hand and flip-flop on foot, through to formal, posh affairs with glitzy venues and high-end catering. In every case, no matter where it was located or who it was for, the process outlined in these pages worked.

Perhaps most importantly, we can teach you how to do this. And you don’t need to turn into some kind of charismatic superstar for it to work. In fact, you don’t even need to be particularly confident. You only need to know how to design a good workshop. We’ve trained up teachers from scratch who are now billing upwards of $2500 per day and getting invited back to teach again and again. This stuff isn’t complicated. You can learn it and you can do it.

Genres: Business, Nonfiction, Design, Education, Teaching, Management, Leadership

221 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 1, 2019

About the author

Rob is an entrepreneur of 12 years. He went through YCombinator (s07) with an attempt to figure out social advertising before Facebook managed to do so, which obviously didn’t work out so well. He has raised funding in the US and UK, built products used by customers like Sony and MTV, designed and Kickstarted a card game, cofounded the education agency Founder Centric, rebuilt a little sailboat, and has built and launched countless silly hobby and side projects which have (so far) managed to keep the wolf from the door. He’s a techie who (grudgingly) learned enterprise sales. He now specializes in the gathering of unbiased customer learning and taking an idea from nothing through to its first dozen or so paying customers.

Rob is the author of The Mom Test book about how to talk to customers and learn if your business is a good idea even when everyone is lying to you. Taught at top universities including Harvard, MIT, UCL, and many more.

Coauthor of Workshop Survival Guide about how to design and run effective, engaging, high-energy workshops.

Reviews

[Siobhan Curran · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is focused on educational workshops where the goal is to teach, upskill and educate (as opposed to brainstorming or consulting workshops).

As someone who fell into delivering workshops, this book has been an absolute goldmine of useful advice for developing and delivering high-value learning outcomes. Get the skeleton, slides, and format right and it's really just a matter of delivering, learning, amending, and delivering again until you are so confident that one day you too will be able to deliver a workshop at the outdoor muster point after a building evacuation and not blink an eye.

Top takeaways

- First up work on who the workshop is for, when they will get breaks, and what they will take away.
- Figure out the Teaching Formats for each Learning Outcome and mix them up every 20 mins or so to keep energy levels up. 
- Add exercises and build out your detailed workshop schedule which you can use to market the workshop.
- Q&A is the ultimate flex format - insert when too much time is left, delete when there's not enough.
- Having students share their learnings/experience is key. Develop focused discussion prompts with ambiguous answers and draw on students to share their insights.
- Use bare minimum slides, then 'sprinkle on the flavour slides'
- Preparation leads to good facilitation. Try to figure out as many of the known unknowns before the workshop commences (attendees, venue)
- Be cool as a cucumber. There's always a way to diplomatically deal with difficult people and situations.

[Alireza Aghamohammadi · Rating 5 out of 5]

کتاب رویکردی گام به گام را برای برگزاری ورکشاپ‌های آموزشی ارائه می‌دهد. بخشی که خیلی دوست داشتم، آموزش‌های فوت کوزه گری تدریس بود. اگر مشغول به تدریس هستید، قطعاً کلی تکنیک ارزشمند از خواندن کتاب یاد می‌گیرید.

[Paul Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great and easy read with lots of insights which will help...

This book is really in two parts. Part one is all about planning and building a skeleton for a great workshop and I found the method described simple and effective, especially the KSW categorisation (knowledge, skills, wisdom) to help with formatting which I have never seen before and which is really useful! Part 2 is all about how you facilitate the workshop itself, from room layout to dealing with the unexpected; again, some great advice and tips from a team who have clearly been there, done it. All-in-all, a great book from which I picked up lots of useful stuff - read this as a beginner and you will get lots out of it, read as a pro and you will still find great advice and thinking I have not found anywhere else. Highly recommended

[Kristin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great, informative and to the point. Unfortunately, the facilitation section does not cover online workshops.

[Weldon Burge · Rating 5 out of 5]

For anyone looking to tune their public presentations and workshops, this is an excellent guide to help you along the way. I've just started teaching two-hour workshops for writers, and this book gave me a great many tips and sound advice to use as I improve my public events. Recommended!

[Bhavani Ravi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have been conducting workshops for the last 5 years but still there were big takeaways from this book

[Alejandro Sanoja · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short and actionable book on how to create great workshops.

[Sascha Fast · Rating 5 out of 5]

A highly practical book. It is almost plug and play in the offering of practical knowledge. This is what you want from a "How To X" book.

[Honza Marcinek · Rating 4 out of 5]

Musím říct, že tuto knihu rozhodně hodlám doporučovat každému, kdo vede nebo tvoří workshopy. Já sám jsem si ji měl přečíst už dávno, protože je plná praktických nástrojů, jasných kroků a tipů pro zvládání skupinové dynamiky a pomáhá učinit workshopy poutavějšími a produktivnějšími. Přímočarý styl knihy usnadňuje její čtení, i když věřím, že se najdou lidi, kteří by ocenili hlubší prozkoumání pokročilých technik. Celkově se však jedná o fantastickou příručku pro začátečníky i zkušené facilitátory, kteří chtějí vést workshopy, které přinášejí očekávané výsledky.

[Vincent Bourassa Bédard · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great books with a lot of useful tips. I wish I read this book when I had just started teaching workshops because I learned a lot of these lessons/tips the hard way.

[Graham Archbold · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's refreshing to read non-fiction how-to books without lots of filler content. Ones that make a simple promise and then deliver.

I'd read Rob Fitzpatrick's other book, Write Useful Books, so largely knew what to expect from this one. Practical and hands-on advice with no fluff.

I had a workshop to deliver that sorely needed updating and reconfiguring, my not having run it in many years. The book gives a simple outline and method for making workshops effective in delivering learning outcomes, so it was just what I needed.

It really helped with the timings, ensuring variety of modes and production of materials. If you've never taught a group of professionals before, then this might not have enough detail but as a refresher on how to plan, it's perfect.

I don't think that the five teaching formats constitute a mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive list but were good enough to persuade me to try vary the content sufficiently. The emphasis on managing group energy levels and minimising lecturing were helpful.

If you're not completely new to teaching adults in a professional environment and want advice on structuring your session to optimise learning, then this is a good read.

[John William · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Workshop Survival Guide is an incredibly practical and engaging resource for anyone who runs, organizes, or participates in workshops. Written by Rob Fitzpatrick and Devin Hunt, the book delivers a clear, no-fluff approach to designing and facilitating workshops that actually work. It’s packed with actionable tips, insightful frameworks, and real-world examples—including scenarios that feel just as relevant in a corporate boardroom as they do in a hands-on home depot training session—that make the advice feel immediately useful. The authors do a great job breaking down how to keep participants engaged, how to structure content for maximum impact, and how to avoid the common pitfalls that plague so many workshops. What really sets this guide apart is its strong focus on learner experience and outcome-driven design—something that’s often overlooked in typical facilitation books. Whether you're a beginner or a seasoned facilitator, The Workshop Survival Guide offers a refreshing and highly effective roadmap for creating workshops that people genuinely enjoy and learn from

[Max Burtsev · Rating 5 out of 5]

Свою першу лекцію я провів десь у 2005 році. З тих пір їх кількість зростала кожного місяця, аж допоки я не зрозумів, що викладання - це ще одна моя повноцінна професія. Я відкрив три школи, був викладачем у багатьох проектах, але незважаючи на це, книга Роба не тільки чудово структурувала те, до чого дійшов інтуїтивно, а й подарувала деякі значні зміни у підходах до викладання. Тепер залишилося тільки вибити русню з України, щоб можна було повернутися до практики.

P.S. Перша книга Роба - «The Mum Test» - давно очолювала мій список рекомендованої літератури по проведенню глибинних інтерв’ю, тож я можу бути трохи упередженим.

[Arushi Somani]

The biggest argument for the effectiveness of this book is this book itself. Not a page is wasted, no topic lingered on too long, the reading time between each insight the book is giving you perfectly calculated. I don't have to tell you that this book is written by someone with a ton of experience in education, reading this book will make that obvious. I also don't need to tell you what value this book is going to create for you — just read the title, and take my word that it's a promise well kept.

[Bridget · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. This book is phenomenal. I am currently working on my grad school thesis, which is creating a specific type of workshop. Finding this book was a huge stroke of luck that I am beyond grateful for. From the first chapter, I already had a ton to think about. Now, it's become a huge leg of a tripod that my entire process forward is depending on. It breaks the entirety of creating and facilitating a workshop into manageable, bite-sized pieced and makes the whole process feel less daunting. Anyone who is considering or interested in workshop development NEEDS to read this book.

[BookCupid · Rating 3 out of 5]

As an L&D manager, in-person training and conferences are part of my job hence what brought me to read this book.

The author discusses his experience with in-person trainings and workshops with a varied type of audiences (corporate, teens, mandated, not interested in the topic...). Something I enjoyed was seeing that I'm not alone in having to constantly adjust my teachings depending on my audience. And the post-it exercises before the meetings.

I wish there had been more icebreaker examples.

[Thirdsak Kajornboon · Rating 5 out of 5]

For reviewing, I would say reading this book Cuz I have worked with the parents who create homeschooling and I weekly have some sessions with the parents to develop their competency in managing educational tasks. This book, I like the principle of creating the workshop, including the learning outcomes, the time design, and the problem-solving. I also like the real situation cases that are provided for a variety of points of view. That can help us to imagine and prepare some prompt or plan B before the date of my meeting.

[Lester · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an incredibly clear, precise and useful book!
Especially for those just beginning in training, or even for those who are presenting, the value for money in buying this book as an easy reference guide is incredibly high. It is:
- easy to read, in simple factual language
- believable, based on small examples the authors have experienced
- short, providing utility in every paragraph
- useful: I have marked about 10 sections I will keep returning to

It is especially useful in combination with other - more detailed - books on design, for instance. But as a stand-alone primer, invaluable.

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

Centered on teaching workshops with clear learning outcomes understood in advance (vs. a design sprint or other alignment/sensemaking process workshop.) Straightforward, focused, delivers on its promise with impressive clarity.

Most importantly, it guides readers through the *correct sequence of decision making* for building this type of workshop. That alone prevents major mistakes & creates quality.

[Sugeng Shi · Rating 5 out of 5]

The real survival guide

As the title mentioned, this is really a workshop survival guide. I have run many workshops the past 8 years both offline and online. I wished I had this book when I first started. Although I have encountered most of the scenarios mentioned inside, the bokk nevertheless summarized them well. Thanks for putting all these types together in a book that I can always refer back.

[Matt Hutson · Rating 5 out of 5]

You probably couldn't ask for any better guide to help you prepare and deliver a successful workshop. With science and education-based learning and teaching methods, Rob and Devin provide several chapters on how to present and present a valuable workshop that helps students to achieve the learning objectives you set for them.

I highly recommend this book for anyone who teaches, runs public speaking events, and/or workshops.

[Santosh]

Must for Trainers, teachers. Book is full of tips n Technics

Nice quick read.
Many things explained are common sense things, but often uncommon and unexplained.


I could improve my sessions immediately and quickly, is evidence of books efficacy.

I enjoyed reading it, I will take notes too. And going to include it in my L&D class.

[Emma Charleston · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ploughed through this in >24 hours on a couple of long tube rides, which feels like something of a record for me, for a non fiction. Super easy read and SO helpful — quick, to the point, full of good, relevant anecdotes, and most importantly, solid planning advice. As the authors say, if you follow the clearly outlined ‘how to’ in this book it would be hard to go too far wrong.

[Jakub · Rating 3 out of 5]

Book that could be a blog post. It’s not about how to create slides etc but more about how to structure it so you have time for everything and you do not bore attendees to death.

Good advices in general. A fresh person might find this insightful - but it really could be turned into workshop or 10 page long book and be able to pass the message, my take.

[Juan Manuel Vera · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent. Simply excellent.

If you are in training and speaker business, You must read and practice this book.

Rob and Devin train you to execute succesful workshops. They guide you step- by-step for doing that.

You can get confidence on designing and executing your workshops to better serve to youraudiences.

Certainly, I do recommend this masterpiece.

[Véronique-Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best book I've read so far about creating workshops. It takes you through the whole process of creating an educational event in an structured and comprehensible way. I've modelled my latest worship with the instructions from this book and even though I still dreaded it, it went like a 1000 % better that any of my previous workshops. Highly recommended!

[Nacho Bassino · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing guide to creating workshops. I don't consider myself a beginner, but I definitely lacked some frameworks and structure, and this is a topic with few options available. The book is great, to the point, and a handy reference guide.

[Visnja Zeljeznjak · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazingly practical and useful.

Lots of examples. Zero fluff. Every page is gold. Ideal for experts who know their stuff, but need a quick reference on what is most important for your first classroom. More advanced teachers can use this as a check list.

[Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

easy to read, no empty phrases

I found lot of practical things and methods to make a successful teaching event. i would recommend it to everyone who's planning to teach or work with audience.

[Robin · Rating 5 out of 5]

For anyone who runs workshops this is an extensive, helpful resource.
The book is divided into two clear, applicable sections. Both come with clear direction, well-defined goals, actions for practice, and examples to demonstrate the guidance.