A workshop invitation can promise participation while giving everyone a script to repeat.

Being asked and being heard are not the same, and the gap between them is usually accidental. A session can be framed so tightly, with its prepared questions and its fixed options, that only the anticipated answers can physically be given. Everyone leaves having participated, and nothing anyone said could have changed anything. The form was real and the substance was settled beforehand.

When you are invited into one, ask early what could actually change as a result, and listen to how that is answered. If you run them, leave one genuinely open question and be visibly willing to lose the argument.