Effective Group Facilitation 1 Day Workshop

Course Overview

This one-day workshop is currently available online as Face-to-Face Live Online Learning using Zoom for public bookings. We are able to offer classroom sessions for private bookings — please get in touch with our friendly team for more details, including availability, pricing and customisation options.

What you will learn

By the end of this workshop, you will understand the role of a facilitator in designing and managing an event to ensure everyone is fully involved and that you achieve your stated aims.

This workshop is designed for anyone who wants to facilitate effective, engaging, and enjoyable events and meetings (if you are delivering training take a look at our Train the Virtual Trainer workshop). This course will give you practical skills to get everyone participating and give you strategies to handle any difficult situations that may arise.

This session is about design and facilitation skills rather than use of the technology. Please note that it is delivered as Live Online Learning via Zoom. If you attend the two-day version, there will be a chance to practise at the end of the course.

Outcomes

On this facilitation workshop, you will experience all of the techniques being taught, making it easy to adapt the tools to your own situation. You will get the benefit of Happy’s extensive experience and knowledge of facilitating events, and you will also learn from your own experiences.

By the end of this workshop, you will:

• Have experienced an interactive workshop that is inclusive of all participants  
• Be able to identify specific structures and tools to take away and use in your own face-to-face or on-line events 
• Be able to identify the skills needed to effectively lead a group of people, keep their attention, and deal with any challenges 
• Understand some of the common considerations around group dynamics and identify actions you can take to positively influence these. 

Themes covered 

• What is the role of a facilitator? 
• Identifying what great facilitation looks like  
• Consider what is the role of a facilitator (and what is not!)
• Set a clear objective for your event that will make it purposeful
• Creating a psychologically safe space
• Designing your event for maximum participation 
• Discover people’s realistic attention spans and ideas to keep their focus
• Tools to get everyone involved and being part of any decision making (including some Liberating Structures) 
• Adapting your communication style to maximise approachability or credibility as appropriate 
• Confidently get your audience where you need them and giving clear instructions 
• Use questions techniques to get people thinking and sharing, and to manage questions from the audience 
• Dealing with difficult situations 
• Adapting your event to being online or face-to-face 

This course can be run in the following options: 

• One-day – This will be a fast-paced course where we cover all of the areas but not in great depth to give you a thorough foundation. 
• Two-days – This longer version provides the opportunity for groups to experience more tools and to work on their own examples. They will practise their own facilitation skills and receive feedback.

Is this workshop for you?

Are your events training workshops or courses where people are learning new information or skills? In which case our Train the Trainer Essentials or Train the Virtual Trainer workshops may be more suited to your needs.