Facilitation training

Encouraging creativity – fostering engagement – managing conflicts – achieving results

Context

Wherever change must be organized, workshops are needed. Almost everyone knows them from personal experience, at least as a participant. Many workshops are poorly prepared, the objectives are not really clear, the work environment is as inflexible as the agenda and you feel sorry for the facilitator or you just don’t care anymore. Methodically, the famous case with pens, pins and stickers comes into play as well as the classic combination of a projector, flipchart and pinboard. That’s been going on like this for what feels like 100 years and workshop facilitators tend to follow those classical patterns just because they don’t know any better.
Workshops range from small to large (number of participants), from short to long (duration), from homogeneous to diverse (cultural and/or professional background of participants) and from physical (participants are onsite) to virtual
Workshops are the means of choice to bring together internal experts, affected employees, multipliers, external stakeholders and executive decision makers in any kind of transformation project.
Teams are formed, topics are discussed, suggestions are made, problems are solved, decisions are made and everything is documented.
Who wouldn’t want to be the workshop facilitator who stands out of the crowd? Successful workshops – even if considered quite tough and demanding by the participants – , the ones, that truly make a difference and that participants will stay in the memory of the participants for a long time afterwards. And those who have already made a name for themselves with their workshops in the company need no longer be annoyed by a lack of attendance or participants.

Learning Target (Example)

• Understand and clarify the role of the facilitator
• Plan and influence the general conditions (number and competence of participants, duration, facility and environment, definition of topics up for change, objectives, content preparation)
• Development of an agenda with highly interactive and agile elements (iterative modules, flexible alternatives to adapt to different outcomes during the workshop, creative elements)
• Establish an arc of suspense prior to the workshop (invitation, inspiring content for everyone to play with, small but doable homework for participants prior to the workshop)
• Facilitating and running the workshop (tools, driving conversations, language and communication, solving conflicts, driving decision making, documentation)

Methodology

The training consists of a constant change of:

• Explaining content with real examples
• Testing and exercising
• Feedback and discussion

Target group

Anyone required to run workshops. This training is addressed exclusively to experienced practitioners, who bring their own experience of running workshops (basics for facilitator beginners won’t be handled in this training). Each participant is invited to bring positive and negative examples from their own experience.