A good task is never too easy.
And never too hard.
Push too far in either direction, and learning stops.
The real learning happens in the middle.
The zone where participants can succeed —
but only with a bit of help.
In education, this is called the Zone of Proximal Development.
In workshops, it’s simply the sweet spot.
Design the help. Don’t improvise it.
You don’t need to hover over every participant.
You don’t need one-on-one coaching for everyone.
The support should already be inside the exercise.
Good workshop design bakes guidance into the task itself —
so people can move forward without getting lost.
The most common mistake: hidden complexity
Tasks fail most often not because they’re “too hard,”
but because they hide multiple steps inside one vague instruction.
Here’s a real example.
In a sales workshop, an exercise was framed like this:
5 minutes
Write down the description of your perfect customer.
Looks simple.
It isn’t.
For an expert, it’s obvious.
For a beginner, it’s paralyzing.
Because “describe your perfect customer” is not one task.
It’s many.
And sure enough, the room filled with questions:
“What makes a good customer?”
“Do you mean age and income?”
“What if I don’t have customers yet?”
The fact that these questions appear is the signal:
the prompt is weak.
Fix it by revealing the steps
To improve the exercise, we didn’t add more explanation.
We broke the task into smaller, guided steps.
Instead of one big leap, we built a path:
90 seconds
Where does your ideal customer spend time; offline and online?
90 seconds
Are they already aware of the problem you solve?
If yes, where do they learn about it?
120 seconds
How are they dealing with the problem today?
What does it cost them : time, money, energy?
Group discussion
Known problems vs. unknown problems.
Same destination.
But now everyone can move.
Why this works
Breaking tasks into steps does three things:
It keeps beginners out of panic.
It keeps everyone aligned, doing the same thing at the same time.
It gives you natural moments to pause, explain, and reflect.
It also makes facilitation easier.
Time is clearer.
Energy stays higher.
Repeat. Then remove the support.
If the skill matters, don’t run the exercise once.
Run it again.
And again.
Each time, remove a bit of help.
This is called scaffolding:
temporary support, gradually removed as confidence grows.
You’re not trying to reach mastery in a workshop.
You never will.
Your real goal is simpler:
Get people far enough that they dare to try on their own.
That’s the sweet spot.
That’s where learning sticks.
Thank you.
And Free Palestine.