- Time: 4 hours
- Participants: 8-24
- Difficulty: Advanced
- Facilitators: 1-2
Objectives
- Learning about facilitation while experiencing it directly.
- Sharing basic tools to the point where participants feel confident guiding activities themselves.
- Discussing in a group setting how to make meetings more effective.
- Co-creating a basic toolkit of methods, skills and activities.
- Discussing in a group setting how to make meetings more effective.
- Leaving with individual action plans for concrete next steps in learning and practicing facilitation.
When should this session be delivered?
This session is designed to introduce facilitation to newbies. In half a day, it gives participants the insights they need to understand what facilitation is and how they can apply it in their life in a very practical way. Participants leave with knowledge of basic tools they can take and use to improve team work, meetings and events.
During the session, the facilitator builds opportunities to:
- Share their knowledge and experience.
- Have participants experience tools directly.
- Practice facilitative skills such as active listening.
- Discuss facilitation concepts with the group.
The session is ideal as a first step in a journey towards mastery of facilitation, but can also stand alone as a support to disseminating facilitative skills among teams, managers and staff. It also works well with youth, e.g. young professionals in a soft skills programme or higher education students learning how to better work in teams.
Who can facilitate it?
The assumption is that an experienced facilitator will lead this session, with the aim of sharing their knowledge with beginners. You are surely qualified to lead it if you:
- Have some experience facilitating groups and meetings.
- Are comfortable in a classroom setting.
- Have some familiarity with basic theories and frameworks around group dynamics.
- Enjoy reflecting on the whys and hows of the tools you use.
The entire session can also be run in a team of two, with one person mainly leading practices and the other mainly providing content (there are two moments that center around presentations, one introducing facilitation, the other on effective meetings).
In this case, it makes sense to have one member of the team with more facilitation experience, while the other will be more in the trainer/teacher role.
The entire session can easily be adapted to remote/online environments. You can read more about how to do this in the accompanying blog post.
Check out the template details including step-by-step plan with instructions, timings, printable schedule and more
About the author
Deborah Rim Moiso
Deborah Rim Moiso is an Endorsed Facilitator with the IAF and the current co-chair of the Italian IAF Chapter. She is also a content writer for SessionLab and a published author of a manual+deck of cards on facilitation available in Italian (Facilitiamoci! Prendersi cura di gruppi e comunità).
She has been working with groups since 2009, particularly in the fields of climate activism, innovation in education, and participatory citizenship. One of her favorite things in facilitation is to open the door to newcomers and introduce them to its wonders. You can find her at her desk in a smallholding in Central Italy which she shares with family, friends, cats, beehives and donkeys.
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