Mistake #2 of The 3 Workshop Design Mistakes Sex Educators Need To Avoid
Join Reid Mihalko for this FREE TRAINING on what embarrassing mistakes to avoid so YOU can build a thriving sex ed career that pays the bills while reaching more people and transforming more lives!
Reid: Hello and welcome back to video number two in our free video training series on the three workshop design mistakes to avoid. My name is Reid Mihalko I’m the creator of https://reidaboutsex.com/, http://www.sexgeeksummercamp.com/, https://reidaboutsex.com/sex-geek-conservatory/ so I want to welcome you to video two.
We’re super excited and by…we I mean me and hopefully you because I’m getting to share what I’ve been learning in the last over a decade of designing and running over at least four dozen workshops, events, college lectures at this point that had been attended by over fifty thousand men and women in college age adults and cuddle party which was my workshop that I started in 2004 which we talked about at length at video number one. So if you haven’t seen video number one make sure you go watch that, maybe put….pause this one and jump to the first one but cuddle party is now being taught in I think at least six or seven different countries at this point and being taught in different languages. So, the other thing I just want to say is you know if you’re feeling overwhelmed by the fact that I…I’ve had so many people come to my workshops, I want to let you know that…that designing really good workshops allows for other people to teach those workshop too. And cuddle party was one of those….those babies that we just got right early on and we’re able to train and certify people to run that event to the extent that they could even translate cuddle party into their own languages and run cuddle parties in different languages. Designing a certification program or training might not be your thing but the principles that we’re talking about here apply to those two. There are….these are the same mistakes you want to avoid if you’re doing a certification program or if you’re creating a training weekend for…for facilitators or things like that. So if you haven’t seen the first video, please go check that out and thank you everybody who’s been leaving comments or sending me emails. It’s great to see your names pop up in my inbox. I can’t always respond to every email but I love what you’ve all been sharing and getting out of these video training series.
In video number two, we’re going to talk about the second mistake to avoid which I’m just kind of dive in right now is a lot of people and I certainly made this mistake early on and I’d try to do it less. None of us are perfect but we can always be improving is so many people — myself included make the mistake of putting too much information into their workshops. We create because we’re nerds and geeks a fire hose that we force our attendees to drink from and while you and I may really enjoy drinking from the fire hose, a lot of people out there do not. A lot of people when you give them too much information, they retain even less of it and there’ve been lot of different studies on different aspects of adult learning styles and I believe this applies to…to children’s learning styles although I’m not an expert on that but there’ve been lot of studies that…that basically point at we have a limited capacity certainly to remember things in our short term memory. Studies seemed to indicate like seven bits of information for the most part especially when they’re kind of related, most human beings can retain seven bits of information or like five bits of information. So like a phone number easy for a lot of people to remember for a little while in our short term memory especially when you just kind of you chunk the information you have the zip code but you remember the….the…the main part of the…the phone number those three number dash four numbers and then you remember the zip code. That’s how I do it. Everybody is a little bit different but what study show is that most people from a lecture or a workshop can’t even remember seven points to a presentation. When we’re talking chunks of information, not a number but a concept the numbers goes way down to what looks like somewhere between three and five. So you know some places talk about the magic numbers four and that whenever you’re giving a…an hour long or a ninety-minute presentation, don’t try to cram more than four bits of…of information or four con…concept or con…contextual chunks of ideas into a presentation because when people leave, they’re not going to remember twelve different things. There’s just not and this is a principle that I just want to kind of orient you to which is if you overwhelm you’re attendees and they can’t remember anything from your presentation, how did you actually help them? Like I want you to orient yourself to….to this like the orientation of like “wow. My intention is to help people that means they have to be able to remember things to be able to implement and integrate things to transform their lives. I want to give them these twelve bits of information but they’re not going to be able to retain it.” So how did you actually help them? If we put too much information and just blast….them with the fire hose and they just walk away with this experience either the experience is they’re overwhelmed and that’s bad or they really liked your presentation but they don’t know how to follow through then how did we actually help people? One way you can get away with overwhelm or start to minimize it is chunk your context or the….the concepts, chunk them into frameworks. I hope you heard me talk about the casual sex protocols or what I lovingly refer to as slut protocols. So if you go to https://reidaboutsex.com/slut or https://reidaboutsex.com/protocols either one should work you’ll go to a video where I will invite you to sign up and download the protocols and there are seven casual sex protocols and the idea is this are things that you can do to make casual sex healthier and create less drama in your life. So there’s seven basic steps but then there are couple of bonus steps. There are five bonus steps that make it really….make the whole thing really “humm” nicely for people who want to have healthy casual sex or healthy dating ‘coz you’re going to apply this to dating as well even non sexual dating. But you know seven steps, we’re going back to frameworks that’s….we’re already over the line of what people can absorb and then I wanted to throw an extra five in an extra bonus. One way you can get away with overwhelm or start to minimize it is chunk your context or the….the concepts chunk them into frameworks. So when I’m teaching this workshop, I talk about you know the twelve steps — the seven plus five as being a framework. The context that I’m teaching is how to minimize dating drama and casual sex drama by understanding how we fall in love unconsciously; why it’s important to be able to not to fall in love if you want to like how to keep things casual; and then the protocols that you should follow? So while I have twelve steps which seems like overwhelm, I put these twelve steps into a framework that I… because I have a framework because I have steps, I can now have a worksheet or a hand out or a…eventually I’m going to put these steps on a fridge magnet so that college kids can put them on their refrigerators or their locker or things like that so that those concepts can constantly be re-anchored for them but the framework itself becomes the third thing I share in that workshop and now I’ve…I’ve taken something that’s complex but I give it to them that’s kind of a take away to practice more at home. And in the workshop, I’m not giving them too much information ‘coz I’m only covering three things. I have my three bits of information, my three concepts and that’s how I redesigned that workshop so that it’s not overwhelm. Does it make sense?
Another example of a workshop that I redesign so that I wasn’t just you know blasting people with the fire hose is I teach a workshop that’s very popular I teach in a lot of stores around the country and also in Canada is my “Negotiating Successful Threesomes Workshop”. And negotiating successful threesomes for me what I started to figure out and ask myself was rather than in a ninety-minute or two-hour workshop, try to give people everything they need to know all in one shot and then have them leave stunned. What I started to figure out and ask myself was like, “what’s….What’s the main idea or three ideas that I could share that would help people have more successful threesomes?” And the way that I approach that is the idea of if you imagine that you’re going to be interviewed by Oprah or Larry King or whomever and that they’re….they’ve got two minutes for you. They can fit in at the end of the show, they’ve got two minutes for you to speak to their audience on the piece that you are an expert at. What would you teach them in two minutes that would change their life if you’ll never going to see them again, what do you share in two minutes that you can teach that will change their life the most? And generally speaking, when you go through that exercise and walk yourself through it that means you can only teach like one or at the most three concepts or introduce them to three concepts or three tools and ideally I want to keep it to like one or two tools. So what’s the most powerful tool that would help the most people not everybody but the most people gain the most empowerment or make the most progress? So when I’m teaching my Negotiating Successful Threesomes Workshop like there’s a lot of stuff I can cover to help people negotiate and have healthy successful threesomes. The way I boil it down is I teach two frameworks and then I give them some visual ideas and examples and I make it really fun because ultimately what people need to learn how to do is talk openly about what they want in sex and being able to talk openly in what you want in sex really helps you have better threesomes. So the foundational principle is, how do…I get people to talk about something that they’ve been that culture for the most part told them they…they shouldn’t be talking about at all and they’re not going to be good at it. So I’ve….I’ve figured out this is the….the main challenge that most people have and so how do I address that? And I teach two frameworks and then I get people to practice talking about threesomes and how to envision threesomes so they know what they want to ask for. Those two frameworks are The Embrace The Awkward Formula which is how do you break the ice and kind of keep the you know break the ice and then keep the ball rolling and then we give that a context and The Embrace The Awkward Formula which you can find at you guessed it https://reidaboutsex.com/awkward. The Embrace The Awkward Formula isn’t just for threesomes, you can use it in all sorts of relationship situations you can even use it at business when you need to you know overcome the awkward ‘coz people get awkward and then they freeze. So being able to break the ice and keep the ball moving really useful in that workshop for negotiating successful threesomes.
The second framework I teach is the Safer Sex Elevator Speech which we talked about in the first video but if you’re just tuning in now and you haven’t watch the first one, that’s https://reidaboutsex.com/elevator. Another framework that helps people talk about their fears and their needs, wants and desires around healthier safer sex really important when you want to invite too more people into your bed. And then the third piece that I do in the workshop is we do kind of a…an improv comedy miming with people from the audience different positions that people can get into when you have three people in bed rather than two people and then we have audience participation where they’re yelling out positions and everybody is trying on you know different positions and not actually having sex. This is PG-13 but we make it really fun to help people anchor that it’s okay to talk about this stuff and that it can be awkward and….and funny and that doesn’t make it wrong. So rather than in a ninety-minute or two-hour workshop, try to give people everything they need to know all in one shot and then have them leave stunned. They might be impressed with your vast knowledge but if they can’t retain anything, did you really change their life? For that two-hour or ninety-minute workshop I’m focusing on two frameworks that I think going to be most helpful and then an activity ‘coz now it’s at the end of the workshop and people might be a little bit tired or might starting to lose their attention and then the foundational principle is how do I get people to talk about something that they’ve been that culture for the most part told them they shouldn’t be talking about it at all and then you’re going to be good at it. And that keeping it to three points fits in…..into that four the magic number four framework and it gives me lots of rooms to be able to take questions, to kind of let the workshop breathe a little bit. If I was invited to teach at the store and I…..they can only give me forty minutes then I would pick one framework and probably teach or ask Q and A’s or do one framework and then do a five minute version of the interactive exercise.
So the other thing here is that you start to like geek out and realize what to avoid. You start to get more clarity on what are the important things to teach so that then even if somebody….if it’s a podcast and they’re like “oh, Reid we want to talk you about threesomes. We’ve got…ten minutes.” I’m like “oh, okay.” I can teach that and I can teach those ideas really quickly in ten minutes. I have the worksheets and the download links on my website so I can point people to more resources and as we’ll cover in…in the third video after I helped them in this instance like the podcast instance I help you for free. I can point you at other materials for you to go deeper with more structure and support and those materials and that kind of structure are usually the things that I invite people to pay me for my time and my efforts. So this is also how you start to be able to build a business and when we come back in our third video, we’ll deal with the third mistake for people to avoid and that mistake is actually one of the….the biggest mistakes that I made early on in my career which is why I wasn’t making a living and when I figure that one out and made some adjustments, “ta da!” I started to be able to pay my bills and now I get to you know have the privilege of running around and being on the internet being a dork and a geek and helping people and paying my bills.
So, share below what was useful for you today about avoiding the mistake of too much information? What was the take away for you on how you can apply this to your own workshops and curriculum and lectures? Again if you have existing workshops and things like that how you could if you might want to share how you can apply these things to go in and tinker and tweak and make your workshops even more powerful and more fulfilling for folks and then hopefully more fun and easy for you.
This is Reid Mihalko signing off. Leave a comment. Share this video….these series with a friend and I just want to acknowledge you and appreciate you for being somebody who cares about this stuff, who wants to get better at it that we just can make the world a better place. I super appreciate you being a part of the sex geek community however you’ll identify with that. Leave a comment. Next video coming up soon. Thank you so much. Bye!