Applied & Virtual Facilitation Workshop

Applied Facilitation

When you bring a group of individuals together for a specific discussion, how do you keep them on-track and productive? How do you make sure there's room for everyone's voice? How do you create structure without imprisoning people's thinking? How do you maintain engagement and energy? How do you do all of this while sticking to a schedule?

Facilitation is the art of group coaching backed by the sciences of conversational dynamics and behavior.

This workshop is particularly suited to those who are building their facilitation, delivery and coaching skills to better work with groups.

In this workshop, you will...

• Ensure you and others engage with self-awareness and balance
• Learn how to keep conversations aligned and on-track
• Successfully surface and navigate conflict
• Understand group dynamics and manage harmful behaviors
• Scale activities according to group size
• Identify how to prepare the physical and/or digital space for participants
• Learn how to create working agreements
• Manage participant energy
• Explore visual facilitation tricks
• Practice managing time and learn how to end gatherings quickly, when needed
• Gain techniques for effectively capturing discussion summaries
• Learn how to assess the success of a gathering quickly

Virtual Facilitation

Today's reality is that a huge majority of important conversations are happening virtually. Even relatively simple interactions now require more pre-planning and a greater familiarity with a range of emerging technologies.

Based on our extensive experience building training and facilitation experiences for groups (sometimes including 100s of people), we've designed this workshop for anyone who needs to make virtual gathering tools work in practice. It's particularly suited to anyone who wants to know how to lead virtual gatherings more effectively - such as L&D professionals, events professionals, and facilitators who've primarily worked face-to-face.

In this workshop, you will...

• Learn how to effectively open and close a virtual gathering
• Discover how to use virtual gatherings to increase connection and intimacy in a group
• Identify the pitfalls with virtual tools and techniques
• Explore how effective preparation can deliver a seamless experience 
• Gain exposure to a range of digital whiteboard technologies (Mural, Miro and Jamboard)
• Learn how virtual gatherings can be uniquely memorable
• Nail the art of effective breakout rooms
• Dive into Zoom best practices including on-boarding participants, dealing with large groups and identifying features to incorporate / avoid

End-to-End Facilitation

Building on our Applied Facilitation and Virtual Facilitation workshops, this is the complete package of training that will empower you to...

1. Be deliberate in deciding when / why to meet
2. Create thoughtful, human-centered designs for your meetings
3. Facilitate your meetings skillfully and inclusively
4. Run smooth, engaging virtual meetings

This workshop is particularly suited to anyone looking to receive a comprehensive training in facilitation - whether working in-house or externally.

In addition to covering all of the items from Applied Facilitation and Virtual Facilitation, in this workshop, you will...

• Learn how to identify whether a synchronous gathering is the best choice
• Explore your digital workplace and the use of asynchronous tools as alternatives
• Practice defining a strong purpose for gatherings and creating effective invitations
• Calculate the value-cost tradeoff of synchronous gatherings
• Choose the minimum set of invitees needed for success
• Define the outcomes of a gathering, build its agenda and then evaluate its success
• Design gatherings for engagement, focus, inclusivity and participation
• Plan for the capture of discussion content
• Identify problem areas and how to mitigate them
• Learn how to create self-organizing agendas
• Explore how to distill information quickly and find points of alignment
• Tour simple decision-making processes
• Make brainstorming more accessible and inclusive
• Practice designing a real gathering using our frameworks
• Help teams develop their principles for great meeting cultures
• Gain a framework for driving change in a team's meeting habits, norms and behaviors