10 great facilitation training courses (and more ways to learn facilitation)

Facilitation skills are considered “the best kept leadership secret” (that’s from a Forbes article) and a workplace superpower. Knowing how to design a meeting or session productively, include different voices, ultimately leading groups to shared decisions: these are skills that are essential in today’s complex work environments, where collaboration and buy-in are key. 

In this article we’ll focus on in-depth facilitation training and courses but also touch upon other related topics, such as accreditation and resources such as podcasts and newsletters. Here’s what to expect:

What is facilitation training?

Facilitation is the craft of designing group processes and guiding people through them. To do this, facilitators will employ a set of techniques and best practices that will engage participants and help them achieve their collective goals.

In facilitation training, participants will develop a set of facilitation skills, techniques and best practices that will help them facilitate with confidence. Facilitation training can come in many forms: online, in-person, self-paced courses and more. It can look like a single workshop or training session or an ongoing practice-based qualification that results in professional accreditation.

In most cases, you’ll learn facilitation experientially, with a mix of theory, practice and feedback from an experienced facilitator. Choosing which is right for you depends on your circumstances and career goals. Hopefully, this guide will help you choose facilitation training that is right for you!

How will facilitation training help develop your career?  

A growing number of professionals are making facilitation their main profession, either as freelance facilitators or working in-house to lead workshops for various company departments. That said, facilitation is not only for those who choose to make sticky notes and whiteboards the stuff of their daily life. 

Facilitation skills are invaluable in many situations, such as:

• managing team meetings and workshops;
• improving participation and engagement at events and conferences;
• increasing clarity in group processes, getting everyone on the same page;
• including a diversity of opinions and stakeholders;
• evaluating choices, creating action plans as a group;
• supporting the group in making actual, effective progress toward its goals.

Facilitation is valuable for anyone who leads groups, brings people together to solve problems or wants to collaborate effectively.

It’s especially important for leaders who are responsible for helping their teams work together to achieve their goals and any people who want workshop facilitation to be their main role.

Want to learn more? Read about how to improve your facilitation skills in this guide.

Why should you invest in a facilitation training course? 

It is quite a common pathway to discover facilitation a bit later in your career. You may have gone through more than your fair share of boring and unproductive meetings and want to make them better. Maybe you took part in a design sprint and were intrigued by the participatory methods used. Or you’ve simply seen a facilitator in action and gone “How did they do that? Why did that work?”. 

Based on the results of the State of Facilitation 2024 report, the core skills of facilitation are mostly picked up on the job, through learning-by-doing (69.9%) and observing experienced practitioners at work (40.8%). 

Direct practice, shadowing experts, and sharing tips and tricks with peers are key to testing your abilities as a facilitator and beginning to practice those skills. But what about training courses? Where does one go to learn how to facilitate and even get a form of recognized certification? 

Given the current scarcity of facilitation courses within the formal education system (something I hope will change over time), private training organizations are currently the main source of facilitation education. 

Let’s be clear: you do not need a certification or a course to be a good facilitator. Many experienced professionals out there never got any certification at all. At the same time, going through a course, whether online or in real life, peer-based or self-paced, is an invaluable opportunity to systematize your knowledge, give names, meanings and frameworks to actions you might take intuitively or because you picked them up along the way, and boost your confidence. 

Facilitation certification can also help you build credibility with clients if you are considering a freelance facilitation career, or be an extra asset in your curriculum as you search for your next position. As collaboration needs increase in workplaces around the world, especially (but not exclusively) in remote-first environments, collaboration skills will become more and more valuable.

10 great facilitation training courses 

Without further ado, in no particular order, here are 10 training courses for facilitators we recommend if you are interested in investing your time and energy into learning facilitation.

Facilitator School 

The Facilitator School’s Facilitation Masterclass offers a six-week online experience to learn impactful facilitation skills. It includes self-paced video lessons and live workshops and is peer-based, with a new cohort starting every few months.

This course works well for busy professionals, as activities are distributed along a relatively long period (six weeks). Each week includes 3 or 4 video lessons to watch in your own time and a 2 hour online participatory workshop with hands on activities and discussions.  Each participant will also lead their own workshop before the course is over, testing their new skills with feedback from the whole group.

Facilitator School staff have clearly given lots of thought on how to reach a global audience, so live classes are held in two different timeslots, friendly for both Asia/Pacific/EU and Europe/Americas.

This course is great for

• Busy professionals;
• Team leaders, managers, and other people who might be expected to lead meetings and teams as part of their job;
• Learning how to facilitate in digital-first, online environments;
• Those who learn best in experiential training, with a cohort of peers.

Facilitator School course price

€1500 to €4000 (+ taxes) 

Do I get certification?

Yes

Liberating Structures Immersion Training

If you are looking for a way to pick up an evergreen set of methods, Liberating Structures is for you. Liberating Structures, developed by Henri Lipmanowicz and Keith McCandless, are micro-structures for facilitating dialogue that are flexible, adaptable, versatile. They are enough in and of themselves to form the toolkit of a good facilitator. 

A Liberating Structures training is practical, based on trying things out as participants, and then trying out leading them. “Once you’ve seen a Liberating Structure in action and practiced doing it in the workshop, you can use it in any setting.” 

Immersion trainings are 2-day in-person workshops, regularly organized around the world. There is also the opportunity to join an online version, composed of four 3-hour workshops delivered over the span of a month (for more information, this is the website). Over 14% of professional facilitators responding to the State of Facilitation 2024 survey have gone through these trainings, making them the most popular form of facilitation training currently out there. 

This course is great for

• Picking up a reliable set of methods you can apply anywhere;
• Consolidating your skills as facilitator;
• Those who prefer to learn in person;
• Practice, practice, practice.

Liberating Structures Immersion Training price

Varies depending on organizer and location

Do I get certification?

Varies depending on organizer and location.

LEGO Serious Play Certification

One of the most valued certifications out there, combines fun, hands on experience, storytelling and LEGO® bricks! LEGO® Serious Play (LSP) is a well-established methodology pioneered, of course, by LEGO® itself, but now practiced and taught all over the world. 

Depending on your location, you can find individual trainers and organizations offering training and certification in LSP in different locations, mostly in person (for self-explanatory reasons), although you can even get an introduction online. Usually, trainings last 4, intense, days. SERIOUSWORK is the best-known provider in this space but keep an eye out for local opportunities and courses as well. 

Becoming a Lego Serious Play facilitator can be quite the investment, not only in training but also in materials (and you will need to lug suitcases of blocks around) but can also prove incredibly rewarding. It’s a valued form of training, with a growing body of evidence supporting claims of its effectiveness. In these courses you will learn some structures through which to guide participants. At its core, LSP is about using building blocks to make metaphors and stories and sharing them with colleagues and peers, thereby building shared understanding and meaning, as well as planning for change. 

This course is great for

• Professional facilitators, coaches, and consultants wanting to up their game;
• Working (mostly, although not exclusively) in the private sector;
• People determined to make learning and training experiences interactive and playful;
• Lego lovers who’ll be happy to invest in materials!

LEGO Serious Play Certification Price

Varies depending on organizer and location

Do I get certification?

Yes.

Voltage Control

Voltage Control hosts a cohort-based, online certification program to develop facilitation and workshop design skills. The 3-month program is extensive, starting with Facilitation Foundations, which focuses on assigned readings from foundational facilitation texts alongside hands-on application of facilitation skills.

The second module, Facilitation Electives, consists of one-on-one instructor coaching, cohort-partner discussions, and a choice of two self-paced course electives from a library of 20 facilitation courses, such as Workshop Design, Liberating Structures, and Design Thinking Foundations. The final module, Facilitation Capstone, focuses on developing a personal facilitation portfolio by gathering and illustrating examples of how you’ve demonstrated key facilitation skills.

Upon acceptance and enrollment, participants receive a reading learning pack of facilitation books, resources, and tools. The program lasts three months, is carefully curated, and aligns with the International Association of Facilitators (IAF) core competencies (which, by the way, ought to be required reading for anyone contemplating getting into facilitation!)

Check out one of their free Intro to Facilitation workshops to get a better understanding of their method-agnostic, competency-based approach. 

This course is great for

• Team leaders, executives, managers and other professionals with a passion for collaboration in the workplace;
• People who are able to attend live sessions from 11:00AM – 2:00PM US Central Time;
• Getting serious about facilitation.

Voltage Control course pricing

$5000

Do I get certification?

Yes

ICA ToP facilitation courses

Have you ever noticed a huge blue sticky wall in a training or facilitation space? That’s a dead giveaway that a ToP-trained facilitator is in the room. ToP stands for Technology of Participation.

The Institute of Cultural Affairs’ (ICA) methodology was first named Technology of Participation with the publication of the book Winning Through Participation, written by Laura Spencer back in 1989.  The first ICA:UK ToP training course under that name was in 1996, making ToP courses the longest-running in the business, with over 30 years of experience delivering facilitation training worldwide. 

ToP offers a range of courses. The foundational 2-day, in-person ToP Group Facilitation Methods course is available in many countries, but on a regular schedule of public courses in Australia & New Zealand, Canada, Taiwan, UK & USA. This and other ToP courses are also available online from several ICAs (Institutes of Cultural Affairs) in different time zones. 

I’m a great advocate of peer-to-peer experiential learning at meetups, conferences and the like, but for a really in-depth learning experience on a particular topic, method or approach there’s really no substitute for a tried and tested training programme with a recognised expert in the field.

Martin Gilbraith, IAF Certified Professional Facilitator | Master & ICA Certified ToP Facilitator

This course is great for

• People working in public participation, social enterprises and organizational change;
• Learning a lot in a short time span;
• Facilitators wanting to expand their knowledge through one of the many extra courses offered.

ICA ToP facilitation course price

Prices vary greatly from country to country, generally including tiered pricing. A typical 2-day UK course starts at £395.

Do I get a certification?

Most courses offer a Certificate of Completion. Certification as a CTF (Certified ToP Facilitator) is a separate process, rigorously checking your competencies, which can start after training for those interested. 

AJ&Smart

AJ&Smart is an award-winning studio with particular expertise in using Design Sprints. They offer a range of online courses as well as coming to your company in-person if you are looking into training for a whole team. Their starter program is Facilitation Fundamentals, with about 5 hours of self-paced videos to watch, a rich workbook and access to a community of past participants. 

For individuals wanting to seriously train as facilitators, they offer the Workshopper® Master facilitation program. The course itself is fully online, with about 8 hours of videos to watch and a wide range of resources and templates, and includes weekly 1:1 coaching sessions. Here you will find a deeper focus on how to make facilitation a profession, including marketing and career development advice.

Check out their free 1-hour videos to see if this is the right course for you. 

This course is great for

• Joining in your own time, as it’s self-paced;
• Those aiming to become professional facilitators;
• People who have had some practice with facilitation and want to structure and consolidate their knowledge;
• Learning not only how to facilitate but also how to design, and sell, workshops.

AJ&Smart course price

€6000 

Do I get certification?

Yes 

Art of Hosting 

Art of Hosting (and harvesting conversations that matters) is a leadership approach working around the pillars of Hosting Oneself, Hosting Others, and Being Hosted. Participants explore soft skills and leadership abilities around deep listening, connection to self and others, and meaningful conversation. 

Some of the preferred methodologies include Open Space Technology, World Café, and Appreciative Enquiry: methods that have in common a high degree of freedom and autonomy given to participants, so it’s really about being able to create a solid container for great conversations to emerge.

Training is generally provided in the form of three-day course, where participants learn and practice a range of collaborative methods. Practice is empathized, with the training team guiding and encouraging participants to take the lead in hosting different parts of the program. Most trainings are residential, happening around the world (a recent check included locations in the US, Canada, Colombia, Germany, and more).

This course is great for

• Learning the deep foundations of great facilitation;
• Those who like to learn in residential settings and in community;
• Learners who want to get more comfortable with holding complex, emergent, transformative spaces;
• Acquiring the kind of transferable leadership skills you will find yourself using beyond meetings and workshops.

Art of Hosting training price

Varies based on provider and location

Do I get certification?

No, the Art of Hosting is an informal network of practitioners and does not provide forms of accreditation.

XChange

XChange organizes some of the best conferences and events in the world, and their experts put their knowledge at learners’ disposal in online courses that are both heartfelt and scientifically based. 

xchange offers a Conscious Facilitation Masterclass, which is a 1-day immersion into the most practical and powerful elements of the xchange Approach. After completing the 1-day masterclass training, participants have the option to continue the learning journey on a path to certification, as well as the option to join a vibrant membership community of purpose-driven change agents.

Membership with xchange sets you on a path of continuous learning and development, with a variety of opportunities for learning, coaching, practicing your facilitation technique, and connecting with peers.

This course is great for

• Balancing the heart and the head of great facilitation;
• Those who want to know about the scientific data behind facilitation skills;
• Trainers and conference organizers who want to develop a faciltiative approach to learning;
• Continuous learning: participation includes a lot of resources to dig into in your own time;
• Learning a lot in a very short timespan.

XChange 1-day Conscious Facilitation Masterclass training price

$997

Do I get certification?

No, you are “trained” upon completion of the 1-day Conscious Facilitation Masterclass and then have the option to become an xchange certified Guide through a comprehensive certification process that involves learning, applying and engaging with the community to demonstrate your skills.

IIFACE

What if you want to study facilitation but are not comfortable working in English? In this post we’ve focussed on courses for anglophones, as those are the majority of offerings in an international context, but they are far from the only ones! Many local organizations in various countries offer facilitation training in languages other than English. For Spanish, of the main reference points is iiface, instituto de facilitación y cambio, the institute of facilitation and change. 

IIFACe’s training courses are very in-depth, generally delivered in a series of residential modules over weekends during a year. They are in three levels, beginners to advanced, with each level a year long, opportunities to practice and on-the-job training. 

This course is great for

• Spanish speakers;
• A long-term commitment and a transformative life experience lasting one to three years;
• Those who have time during the weekend;
• Learning in peer groups and in residential settings.

IIFACE course price

Varies based on provider and location; generally includes tiered pricing

Do I get certification?

Yes

School of Facilitation

Facilitator and trainer Kirsty Lewis founded the School of Facilitation in 2014 in pursuit of a dream of creating learning-in-community opportunities for freelance facilitation and training professionals. Since then the School has flourished, offering classes, coaching, community “pod” online calls, and a four-month learning pathway called the Flourishing Facilitator Experience.

The program is blended and based in the UK: it includes two residential intensive weekends and a series of online workshops, conversations, masterclasses and courses. 

This course is great for

• Trainers, L&D managers, and creators of learning experiences with an interest in facilitation and participatory learning;
• UK-based people or those willing to travel to the UK;
• Getting serious about fine-tuning your skills and building a more professional practice;
• Learning in community, both online and in person.

Price

£2099 + taxes (early bird price) 

Do I get certification?

No

How to get your existing facilitation skills accredited

Besides training and certification, there is another important pathway to consider on your way to professional facilitation: getting your skills accredited. You may have picked up facilitation abilities informally, by co-facilitating with others or simply on the job, and now feel it’s a pity that you have no formal piece of paper to showcase this. If that sounds like you, you might want to consider accreditation.

Accreditation is a different process from training: the aim is to demonstrate your existing skills to assessors, rather than gain new ones through a learning course. This is usually done by showing a portfolio, undergoing tests and/or interviews, and having an assessor present at one of your sessions. 

The process itself can be an intense and important professional growth experience as you reflect on work done in the past years and improve it to rise to the occasion. Some of the organisations above offer accreditation as a further pathway to pursue after training. This is the case of the community-based Xchange certified Guide and the ICA’s ToP Facilitator Certification.  

The two organisations we will focus on next, on the other hand, focus mainly on accreditation. If you know of others, we’d love to hear about them: add them in the comments section or talk about your experience with accreditation in SessionLab’s community! 

IAF Accreditation programs

The International Association of Facilitators (IAF) doesn’t certify any particular approach, but gives accreditation levels, attesting your range of facilitation knowledge and ability to facilitate. This is coherent with its mission to share the power of facilitation around the world in its many forms and variations.

Leaders, trainers and professionals applying facilitation skills to their jobs and wanting to demonstrate this to clients and employers can apply to be Endorsed™ Facilitators (like myself).

To become an Endorsed™ Facilitator, you need to:

• be an IAF member
• have been facilitating for at least one year 
• demonstrate that you understand the IAF Core Competencies. 

When you apply, you provide information on how you use the competencies in your day-to-day practice and take a multiple-choice online exam to demonstrate your understanding of the competencies. 

IAF assessors review your application and exam results to determine whether you have met the standards to become an IAF Endorsed™ Facilitator. 

The endorsement is given for 4 years. To maintain it, you must remain an IAF member and apply again after 4 years. 

If professional facilitation is your main profession and you want to demonstrate proficiency, IAF accredits CPFs, Certified Professional Facilitators. This refers mainly to people facilitating workshops and sessions (not to trainers, coaches, or team leaders using facilitation in their daily work). The process is thorough, including interviews, role-play, presenting a work portfolio, and having assessors observe how you facilitate a workshop.  

The International Institute for Facilitation

INIFAC, the International Institute for Facilitation, was founded in 2003 to advance the profession and promote mastery in facilitation. It has an extensive accreditation program and a rigorous program testing competencies. 

While IAF focuses on facilitation per se, INIFAC includes accreditation for those applying facilitation to learning and training, as well as a specific accreditation program for virtual-first facilitators. 

INIFAC’s accreditations are:

• Certified Competent Facilitator® and Certified Skilled Facilitator®. This is actually the same program, with different names based on your region of provenance; The Certified Competent Facilitator® is a mark of distinction in the Asia Pacific area, and the Certified Skilled Facilitator® is at the same level of distinction in the Americas and European countries. A candidate for CCF® or CSF® must have facilitated at least 7 sessions with a minimum of five different project sponsors from a minimum of three different organizations.
• Certified Learning Facilitator®. Requirements to become a CLF® are the same as above, but with a focus on training and learning sessions.
• Certified Advanced Virtual Facilitator® Requirements to become a CAVF® are the same as above, but with a focus on online facilitation skills. 

And the advanced Master levels Certified Master Facilitator® (which requires documenting at least 30 relevant facilitated sessions over the three-year period prior to application, of which 15 must be in person) and Certified Master Learning Facilitator®.

Other ways to learn more about facilitation

Besides these top facilitation courses and accreditation programs, there are many other ways to learn about facilitation. You can find short introduction videos online, some offered by the same providers we’ve listed above. 

There are also plenty of free resources available to explore, some of which we’ve included in this guide to some of the best downloadable toolkits.  

Podcasts and newsletters are very popular ways of fitting a bit of learning in your everyday life. If you’re interested in facilitation but not in investing time and money in a full course, read on for podcast and newsletter tips. 

7 podcasts hosted by expert facilitators

Podcasts are a great way to stay updated on trends, new techniques and learn the latest insights about successful workshops and effective collaboration. Here is a pick of 7 of the most popular ones, where you can eavesdrop on discussions and conversations at your convenience.

First Time Facilitator

Leanne Hughes’ long-running First Time Facilitator podcast is a great place to begin. With over 240 episodes, you’ll find inspiration and encouragement that are consistently beginner-friendly. The podcast has a focus on training and learning, bringing a no-nonsense, can-do attitude to creating learning experiences that really work.

Workshops Work

Myriam Hadnes has collected so many in-depth interviews in her essential podcast Workshops Work that she had to have a special map designed just to help listeners orient and choose! Workshop Work has a faithful following among facilitators worldwide and was voted the most-listened to podcast in the State of Facilitation 2024 Report.

It features deep, insightful interviews with experts in meeting design as well as with professionals drawing in their expertise from other fields, such as mediation, marketing and the arts. You can also download scripts and one-page summaries of each conversation.

Facilitating on Purpose

Imagine sitting in a cafe and listening to two facilitator friends talking shop. Beth Cogler-Blom’s podcast Facilitating on Purpose is for anyone who wants the inside scoop on designing and facilitating learning experiences. 

We love it for the host’s infectious enthusiasm: Beth has a real knack for getting authentic insights that are both beginner-friendly and intriguing for those more advanced in their careers.

A Facilitator’s Journey

A Facilitator’s Journey gives a glance into what it’s really like to be a facilitator, with a special focus on the business side of things. 

Kirsty Lewis and her guests cover topics such as pricing, promoting and the day-to-day of running your own facilitation business. Full of important and inspiring ideas to develop your career, especially if you are just starting out as a freelancer. 

Facilitation Lab 

Douglas Ferguson is on a mission to help everyone have better meetings, and understand how important that is, with his Facilitation Lab podcast. He speaks with experts about their various jobs and how they apply facilitation to many industries, sharing real-world advice you can use right away.

Known for being both practical and inspiring, the Facilitation Lab podcast (previously known as Control the Room) is all about making a difference and having an impact, whatever your role. 

There’s a Workshop for That! 

There’s a Workshop for That! is a podcast created to supercharge your facilitation skills. Host Nathy Ravez’s interviews top facilitators, book authors and corporate managers across the globe who share their advice on building workshops for better collaboration.

One of the unique things about this podcast is that Nathy began it when she was herself a rookie of the freelance facilitator world, coming from years of experience inside companies: to tune into the early episodes is to share an authentic learning journey into how to start building a successful freelance business. 

Facilitation Stories

Facilitation Stories is brought to you by the England and Wales IAF chapter. Here you can discover how facilitators ended up in the profession, and how facilitation methods, principles and techniques are used more widely.

Because of its roots in the International Association of Facilitators, you’ll often find episodes exploring how the different local chapters work, full of ideas useful for community organizing and supporting one another as facilitators. 

5 newsletters packed with facilitation tips

Let’s say you prefer reading to listening (or want to do both). Subscribing to facilitation newsletters equals keeping constantly in touch with what is currently important to global community. Here are 5 of the most popular facilitation newsletters you should definitely be getting in your inbox! 

The Quest

The Quest is a much-loved newsletter, written by Gwyn Wansbrough, who shares her experience of facilitating 1000s of hours of online workshops. It’s filled with information for facilitators and those passionate about effective learning design. 

The online workshop is such a popular format these days, it’s certainly worth checking out Gwyn’s newsletter and learning from her what facilitation techniques and models work best online. 

Melting the Ice

Jan Keck’s weekly tips to melt the ice includes ways for you to increase engagement, build trust and foster deep connections – without making people cringe. Many facilitators resist the idea of icebreakers as key to good facilitation: misuse of these fun tools has led to a widespread (incorrect!!) sense that they are useless and embarrassing. 

Jan has leaned into that to debunk the concept and correct course, rebranding them as Ice melters. Ice melters are effective, empowering tools that can help a group get into the right groove for the work ahead. But they must be used wisely! How? Sign up to his newsletter to learn more, and get snippets of wisdom from his upcoming book.

Workshops Work 

In her beautifully written, deeply personal newsletter, Myriam Hadnes shares insights from her life as a professional facilitator and takeaways from conversations and learnings.

The newsletter is also where you will find excerpts and insights from her vast collection of podcast interviews, and announcements about upcoming episodes. After every podcast episode, Myriam generously puts together a 1-pager summary, and has recently reached the milestone of 250! 

IAF newsletter

The IAF (International Association of Facilitators) shares regular facilitation news for both members and non-members. In this newsletter you’ll often find reading recommendations and invitations to online and live events and meetups around the world. 

In recent years, opportunities to learn online through IAF events organized by various chapters have really boomed. By subscribing to the newsletter you’ll be informed of many learning opportunities to join and peek into the lives and discoveries of facilitators world-wide. It’s also the best way to get save-the-dates and advance notice about main events in the yearly facilitation calendar, such as Facilitation Week, Impact Awards, and global conferences. 

SessionLab’s newsletter

Our very own SessionLab newsletter focuses on a different facilitation, training or learning design topic each month. It’s packed full of blog content, ready-to-use workshop agendas and resources to elevate your workshops and meetings!

How SessionLab can help you learn facilitation skills 

Here at SessionLab we believe that anyone working in groups and teams should have a handle on at least the basics of facilitation.

This is not because we think everyone should be a professional facilitator: learning facilitation skills is beneficial in many other ways. First and foremost, it will make you a better group participant, skilled in collaboration, organization and listening. Facilitation is a leadership superpower!

Besides providing facilitators and leaders with software to help them design excellent sessions, we’ve created a range of free materials you can look into to learn more about facilitation skills, what they are and how to develop them further.

Delve into SessionLab’s learning manuals

Download these learning materials and read at your leisure.

• We’ve packaged ideas of activities to help you improve your next meetings in our Essential Meeting Facilitation Toolkit. Here you will find 12 easy-to-use group activities to open, run, and close your meetings with.
• If you want to create a workshop but are not sure about where to start, read the Complete Guide to Workshop Planning for a thorough step-by-step approach from the first idea to execution.
• Applying facilitative approaches and tools to training will ensure learning sticks and your participants have a memorable experience. To read up about applying facilitation to training design (especially with adult learners), download the Training Design Handbook.

Subscribe to SessionLab’s newsletter

Over 70% of facilitators surveyed for the State of Facilitation report said that staying abreast of changes was very or somewhat challenging for them. With SessionLab’s newsletter we try our best to help with that, sending emails twice a month that are packed with tips, links and opportunities to improve your facilitation game. 

Browse SessionLab’s library of facilitation techniques

Techniques and methods are just one, often the most visible, part of facilitation. That said, the more you facilitate the more you’ll want to have many activities to choose from. In SessionLab’s library, you’ll find over 1300 activities and techniques, complete with instructions and tips from the professional facilitators who compile it. Open up a session plan in SessionLab and easily drag and drop any activity from the library to create an agenda in minutes! 

Get SessionLab’s free email courses delivered to your inbox

From reflecting on what is working well (and what needs improvement) in your workplace to facilitating difficult conversations, learn more about the basics of facilitation and mastering facilitation challenges with our email courses, delivered to your inbox every Mondays and Tuesday. Subscribe from this link. 

Find inspiration in SessionLab’s collection of workshop facilitation templates

Facilitation is best learned by doing or by watching someone at work. In our collection of templates, we’ve distilled learnings into plans you can read through, adapt and be inspired by for your own workshops and training courses. 

For each template, you’ll find an introduction explaining its objective and requirements. From there you can directly open the template as a session in SessionLab’s agenda planner. You’ll see the workshop agenda divided into blocks for each activity, with detailed information, instructions, and facilitation tips guiding you each step of the way. 

Many templates were provided by our friends and partners, making this a great way to learn about the many different styles and applications of facilitation.

Learn from the best in SessionLab’s free community events

SessionLab’s friendly community hosts a calendar of events you can join to explore specific topics related to facilitation and leadership skills. We keep a nice variety of offerings throughout the year, with something for novice and experienced practitioners. 

Sessions are always free, online, and interactive, giving you the opportunity to learn from the best while at the same time building a network of peers. You can also watch recordings (although you’ll miss out on the interactivity!). SessionLab’s community is also a great place to ask questions to fellow facilitators and share stories and experiences.

Read up in SessionLab’s blog

If you found this article, you probably know already, but let’s reiterate: SessionLab’s blog is the place to go for guides and information about many aspects of facilitation and workshop design. Here are some of the content you’ll find there:

• A collection of icebreakers to add to your next event or retreat;
• A practical, in-depth guide to workshop design, from ideation to delivery;
• More specialized guides like this one on hybrid facilitation;
• General introductions of who facilitators are and what they do, and more!  

In closing

We hope this article is sending you on your next step in learning facilitation. If you are just exploring, this could be about subscribing to one (or more!) newsletter or checking out some podcast episodes.

Ready to go deeper? Many of the facilitation training schools listed above offer some free materials to start with, perhaps a video or a pamphlet. Check those out to see if the courses are right for you!

We’ve been purposefully using the word “investment” when discussing facilitation courses. Most of them require a strong commitment, whether financial, in terms of time and effort, or both. They will also deliver life-lasting results and improvements in your collaboration style and level of awareness of what is going on in the room, and how to exercise your influence to get the best possible results from a group of people. 

Best of luck in your facilitation journey, and do let us know in the comments or in our community how it’s going!

Deborah Rim Moiso Facilitation Content Writer

Deborah Rim Moiso is an Endorsed Facilitator with the IAF – International Association of Facilitators and former co-chair of the Italian IAF Chapter.

She is the author of a manual and deck of cards on facilitation available in Italian (Facilitiamoci!). Deborah has been working with groups since 2009 in the fields of innovation in education, citizen participation, and environmental conflicts.