Facilitation Skills

“The main aim of the facilitative leader is to leverage the resources of group members.”

Ingrid Bens

When a group of people get together, they are usually geared towards actions. There are issues or problems they want to address. There is information and insights they want to exchange. One way to do this is to simply invite people to a meeting and say let’s have a chat. This, as you can imagine, is very inefficient. People would end up talking about everything else but the main topic.

To make the event “purposeful” there is a need for someone to shape and guide the process of working together. This person can help the group to reach its goals and accomplish what it set out to do. This person is called a “facilitator”.

Facilitation is an important set of skills suitable for anyone, especially those in a leading position. Facilitation skills can be used in meetings, training courses, planning sessions, workshops, brainstorming sessions and a variety of events where a group of people need to interact with each other.

In this course, delegates learn about a variety of facilitation techniques and how to help people move through a process together towards a specific objective. Delegates will learn how to draw out ideas and opinions of group members and inspire them to become more creative and productive while interacting with each other. They will learn how to prepare for a meeting, what facilitation tools to consider, what “group processes” to use, how to handle difficult situations and when to intervene. The course is full of best practice guidelines that if followed would make the task of facilitation easier and more efficient.

The course contains numerous exercises enabling delegates to practice facilitation skills in simulated meetings. Facilitation skills is fairly hands-on, requiring face-to-face interaction with people. As such, this training materials is an ideal resource to setup and deliver an exercise-driven course on this important skill.

In this highly practical course participants will learn:

What is Facilitation?

• Who is an ideal facilitator?
• What are the three stages of facilitation?
• What is a “group process”?
• What should you consider when designing an event before you get to facilitate it?

Making People Work Together

• How to create a positive atmosphere.
• How to establish your authority as a facilitator.
• How to handle energy levels.
• What are icebreakers and how can they benefit you?

Facilitation Tools

• What are some of the facilitation tools and group processes you can use to get people interacting with each other?
• What are best practice guidelines on running roleplays?

Brainstorming Tools

• What are the 4 main stages of brainstorming?
• How to run efficient brainstorming sessions.
• How mind maps can be used as creative tools as well as a recording tools?
• What are some brainstorming techniques you can utilise to encourage creativity?

Responding to Issues

• What are conflicts?
• How to handle difficult people and situations.
• What to consider when you need to intervene.

Guiding the Event

• What are best practice guidelines on facilitating an efficient event?
• How to avoid cascading problems where one issue leads to a bigger one until it leads to a stressful situation.
• How to pace an event.

Audience: Anyone

Prerequisites: None

Course Duration: 1 Day

Course Level: Beginners & Intermediate 

By the end of this course the delegates will be able to:

• Understand the three main stages of facilitation and how to approach the task systematically
• Use a number of proven facilitation guidelines on managing people to run an effective event
• Use a series of facilitation techniques and group processes to help participants engage in efficient discussions
• Run brainstorming sessions in four stages and use best practice guidelines to maximise idea generation
• Handle behaviours that can be detrimental to your facilitation or for the group using effective intervention strategies
• Use a number of best practice guidelines to run an event efficiently and with ease

Facilitation skills is all about managing a group of people to work towards an objective. As such it is best taught in a face-to-face interactive course where delegates get to practice the skills with each other. This course is designed specifically to simulate a number of scenarios where delegates get to manage a subgroup. They will learn to use a variety of facilitation tools as well as how to respond to potential challenging behaviours exhibited by participants. Delegates can then give each other feedback on their performance as well the feedback they receive from you, the trainer. This way, the training is maximised.