Navigating Turbulent Times with Team Workshops

Let’s be real: the workplace feels a bit unhinged lately: Economic pressure. AI shaking things up. Layoffs. Design getting sidelined. Sometimes it feels like you need a seatbelt for your office chair. If things feel unstable and you’re seeing more anxiety than action, then this is exactly when robust teamwork stops being “nice-to-have.” It’s survival mode for positive progress.

Big wins, small moves

Right now, even small projects can feel like a slog. Collaboration breaks down those mountains into manageable steps and rally around tiny victories. Plus, you get actual proof that you’re not solo-climbing this hill; everyone’s roped in.

If you’re wondering how to make sense of all the uncertainty, start bringing your team together to do work you normally tackle alone:

• Reviewing discovery work and surfacing insights

• Mapping processes or sketching out ideas

• Designing bite-sized solutions to real problems

• Planning and prioritizing when everything feels chaotic

• Hosting an “unstuck” session (I swear by these: here’s the method)

Trust me: workshops aren’t just meetings with a different name. They create alignment, build clarity, and remind everyone, “Hey, we’re on the same team.”

Collaboration needs intention

You can’t just slap “workshop” into everyone’s calendar and expect magic to happen. Collaboration, as the Oxford folks put it, is “the action of working with someone to produce or create something.” It’s not chatting in a meeting, letting someone scribble notes, going a few minutes over, and hoping the meeting lead wrangles up some action items.

Collaboration is showing up, thinking together, and making things happen. It’s action and it leads to outcomes (actual ones, not just hopeful to-do lists). They’re the vehicle that gets you from “let’s talk about it” to “we made something.”

Workshop design: keep it light

You don’t need to overthink every session. For internal workshops, you don’t need a five-page agenda and custom printed worksheets. But a bit of planning and structure can make the difference between “wasted hour” and “wow, we got somewhere.”

Here’s a simple and effective framework for designing internal workshops*:

1. Why do you actually need to collaborate? (Don’t just do it for show.)

2. What outcomes do you care about?

3. Which activities will get those results fastest?

4. Who’s doing what, and for how long?

5. What’s the best way to capture what gets made? What tool works for your team?

*Note: This is a simplified version compared to my full Workshop Workshop framework; designed for lighter, less formal team workshops.

Do more with more

I think we're all tired of hearing “do more with less.” Workshops let you “do more with more.” More people. More insights. More momentum. When you work as a team, everything gets lighter, faster, and more interesting.

Collaboration isn’t just about ticking boxes or getting through chaos. It’s how you find the sanity, the spark, and the reassurance that you’re heading in the right direction, even when the world is throwing curveballs.