What could be more satisfying than sharing your skills with an interested audience? This bucket list experience is possible even if you’ve thought you might not have the confidence.
The first step is, of course, to identify which of your skills you would most like to teach, and those which others would most want to learn. What’s the one thing about your job that people ask about the most? Which skills do you wish others could learn more easily?
Asking the Key Questions
It doesn’t matter what your job is, there’s likely a skill you’ve developed that would improve others’ lives, whether it’s something physical such as bricklaying or plumbing, or an IT or marketing skill related to working online, or presentations and motivational speaking.
When planning a workshop, you can choose to plan an in-person event in front of a live audience, or create an online workshop, ideally recorded for repeat viewing. Either way, you can choose to charge for the event or provide it as a service — and your own life experience — for free.
Designing Your Workshop
NCVO has some good guidance on how to plan your own workshop. You may find it helpful to attend similar workshops first, to get an idea as to how they are structured. Would you like your audience to have a more hands-on experience, with the opportunity to try out their new skills? Are you expecting them to listen and take notes, or will you prepare some written material for them to take away?
Recording a video workshop can reach a wider audience and maybe more appealing if the idea of standing in front of people makes you nervous.
In fact, you don’t even need to appear in the video if you use presentation slides with a simple voice over.
If teaching a workshop on your job skills is high on your bucket list, the payoff can be improved confidence for you, and possibly the satisfaction of helping someone else find a new career.
