Mastering Facilitation and Professional Meeting Skills

Overview
Facilitation is fast becoming a key skill for anyone who is in a team, leading a project team, heading up a working group or managing a department. It can be defined as the skill and art of guiding others to solve problems and achieve objectives without simply giving advice or offering solutions. By this nature, facilitation is the primary skill required to chair effective meetings. A facilitator provides the structure and process, enabling groups to function effectively and make high-quality decisions. This highly interactive training workshop will introduce participants to the process and skills of powerful facilitation. It will enable them to plan and develop meetings and group events and meetings that will significantly improve the outcomes that they are able to achieve.

Who Should Attend?
Anyone who frequently chairs meetings or facilitates group events and wants to gain maximum audience participation and contribution from the team involved. Anyone for whom chairing meetings or facilitating teams or groups is a key competency in the performance of their role within the organisation, and who needs to improve their ability to design and run meetings and events that produce high quality outcomes.

Course Objectives

The course will enable you to:

• Chair effective meetings and group events through learning and applying a framework for facilitating
• Gain and use insight into meeting and group dynamics
• Plan and prepare effectively for meetings and group events that will deliver the right results
• Learn, develop and use warm-ups and energisers
• Deliver effective chairing and intervention
• Understand and apply a range of facilitation styles
• Handle difficult or tricky participants
• Recognise and deal effectively with game playing

Focus

• The role of the chair as facilitator
• Distinguishing facilitation from training/instructing/presenting
• The good, the bad and the ugly of meetings
• A framework for facilitating meetings
• Planning and preparing for the event
• Task and process agendas
• Key chair and facilitation skills
• Understanding meeting and group dynamics
• Using warm-ups and energisers
• Facilitation styles
• Introduction to process interventions
• Handling difficult participants
• Dealing with game playing
• Role play facilitation on live issues
• Action Planning