Last week, I spent five days in a remote learning event designed to deliver a great deal of information to a large group of employees.
By the end, I was taking notes, not on the content, but on the experience.
What happens when we ask adults to sit through long stretches of slides, minimal breaks, loosely connected speakers, and group activities that do little more than keep them technically present?
They learn to look engaged.
They answer the prompt. They unmute when asked. They wait for the next slide.
And somewhere in the process, their attention, curiosity, and sense of agency begin to leave the room.
Before the event began, I had reached out to the organizers about one detail in the original invitation: attendance was described as mandatory.
I encouraged them to rethink that language. When people are told they have no choice, many will show up physically or log in dutifully, but mentally begin making plans to be somewhere else.
To their credit, they adjusted the messaging. They sent surveys and communications meant to create some anticipation.
That was a better start.
But anticipation cannot carry an experience that is built around passive endurance.
Attendance is not engagement
People have limits. Their patience has limits. Their attention has limits. Their ability to absorb information without pausing, discussing, questioning, applying, or simply taking a breath has limits.
That is not a character flaw. It is a design reality.
During the event, many sessions followed a familiar pattern: one person speaking for a long time, slides doing most of the work, few meaningful pauses, and limited opportunities for participants to make sense of what they were hearing together.
The team challenges were intended to create connection. Yet because groups were organized around existing reporting lines, they created little room for new relationships, fresh perspectives, or the useful unpredictability of meeting someone outside your usual orbit.
We often say we want collaboration.
Then we design gatherings that keep people in the same small circles and ask them to consume information alone.
People are not empty containers
One session emphasized the importance of listening and referenced Stephen Covey’s work. The conversation afterward made something clear: several people heard the message as, “Be better at appearing to listen before moving forward with what you already planned to do.”
That is a painful gap.
Listening is not a performance. It is not waiting politely for your turn to speak. It is allowing what another person says to affect your understanding, your decisions, and possibly the direction of the work.
The same is true of learning.
If we want people to embody an idea, we have to give them room to wrestle with it. Let them connect it to their own work. Let them question it. Let them hear how someone else sees it differently. Let them test it before we ask them to adopt it.
The wisdom is already in the room. Good facilitation makes space for it to surface.
Design for contribution
As I watched this event unfold, I kept thinking about the work of Amy Edmondson on psychological safety, Keith Sawyer’s research on group creativity, and Barbara Fredrickson’s research on positive emotions and our capacity to think more openly.
Different fields. A shared implication.
People participate more fully when they feel safe enough to speak, connected enough to care, and energized enough to think beyond self-protection.
That takes more than a breakout room.
It takes choreography.
A well-designed experience can include short content segments, but content should give way to reflection, conversation, application, and discovery. It should make room for cross-pollination between people who might not otherwise meet. It should honor rest, because breaks are not wasted time. They are where people integrate, reset, and sometimes make the connection that changes the whole experience.
This is what I value about the xchange Approach. Its choreographies do not treat participants as an audience waiting to be filled up. They invite people to become part of the meaning-making.
That distinction matters.
A better question for leaders
When you are planning a learning experience, team retreat, kickoff, or all-hands meeting, ask a different question.
Not, “How much content can we fit into the agenda?”
Ask, “What do we want people to experience, say, practice, and carry forward?”
Then design for that.
Give people choice where you can.
Build in breathing room.
Invite voices that have not yet been heard.
Mix the room intentionally.
Let the people closest to the work help shape the learning.
Because the goal is not to keep people present for five days.
The goal is to send them back to their work more connected, more capable, and more alive to what is possible.
What is one meeting, learning event, or workshop you attended that treated participants like active contributors rather than a passive audience? What made the difference?
—Dwight Spencer Facilitation Partner, Executive Coach, Keynote Speaker, ICF-ACC, and Certified xchange Guide. Helping creative leaders beat imposter syndrome and lead visibly. Host, Community and Becoming For the Love of Creatives, Dallas, Texas dwight.authenticcreative.coach