Overtime Leader Workshop Activation

Building a slide-free, high-impact leadership experience in just a weekend.

Context & Goals

Overtime Leader (OTL) was running a leadership workshop for a client, and the founder of OTL wanted something different: no slide deck. The goal was to create a hands-on, tactile experience where participants walk away with clarity, momentum, and work they can use immediately.

The Challenge

When you remove the slide deck, you remove the usual backbone of facilitation. Every exercise, reflection, instruction, and storyline has to live somewhere else.
We needed a way for participants to follow along, stay engaged, and feel supported — without ever looking at a screen.

And we had a weekend to make it all happen.

My approach

Instead of treating the workbook as a passive handout, we treated it as the heart of the workshop experience.

I collaborated closely with the OTL team to strategize the content, refine the exercises, and even co-write some of the copy.
The goal wasn’t just good design — it was design that makes a workshop run smoothly, especially without slides.

I started by getting very clear on OTL’s CEO’s vision and the workshop goals.

Thought through the entire workshop flow with the founder to ensure rhythm and pacing

Designed with a systems mindset: every page of the workbook had to support the content, not distract from it

Deliverables

A fully designed workbook with participant-facing content, reflection space, and instructions, branded to the OTL client, Gisou

A poster and a handout that covers 4 different personality types

A poster that covers the Gisou brand values

Personality color-coded posters for how to interact with different leaderships styles

Instruction postcards on how to complete the workshop activities

Thank you cards branded to the workshop, with a quote from the CEO of Gisou

A digital badge for workshop participants to use on social, sharing that they completed the workshop

Impact & Reflection

  • The workshop ran seamlessly: no screens, no chaos, no confusion.
  • The workbook became the anchor for both the facilitator and the participants.

The coolest part

To bring a sense of seasonality into the experience, I used AI to transform a client-provided photo of their garden — originally taken in the summer — into a rich, atmospheric fall scene. The transformation was stunning, and it became a signature visual element of the workshop.