[F2] The Art of Facilitation

Pre-requisite Courses

F1 + out-of-class assignments

Course Description

The Art of Facilitation training course takes you to a deeper level of understanding and modifying meetings. You recognise the five basic activities in meetings and how to give shape to them in effective ways.

It covers advanced issues, such as dealing with disruptive participants and making use of better meetings with your organisation as a whole. Just as in the basic course, F1, you will learn all this thanks to putting them into practice during the 2-day programme.

This training is truly a unique merger of scientific insights about human behaviour and the artful ways of helping groups behave in productive ways.

In the time between F1 and F2, participants are expected to carry out a (small) number of out-of-class assignments.

Three Highlights

1.  Learn a novel framework to understand what happens in meetings and, from that, how to optimise them.
2. Discover effective facilitation behaviours.
3. Comprehensive feedback rounds for all participants.

Modules

In this advanced programme, we cover at least the following topics:

• Recap of Introduction Course
• Conventions
• Seating
• Effective facilitation behaviours
• Active listening
• The 5 activities in meetings and their formats
• From agenda to…
• Who is in the meeting, and who shouldn’t be
• Roles in meetings
• Facilitation in organisations
• Presence and use of voice
• Non-verbal communications
• Managing conflicts
• Dealing with disruptive participants

Course Objectives

1. Learn the five basic activities in meetings and how to give shape to them.
2. Develop your presence when facilitating meetings.
3. Learn the steps to start modifying the meetings in your organisation as a whole.

Who is it for? Who is it NOT for?

This is the logical sequence to our basic facilitation training programme, F1. It is for those who wish to understand more about facilitation and reach the next level of practice. It is the next step in AMA’s complete programme to become an AMA-certified facilitator. It is helpful for everyone who regularly chairs or leads meetings within organisations and wishes to overcome all those issues that trouble meetings, in just about any organisation: unclear conversations, lack of decisions, people disturbing conversations and progress towards a useful result, etc, etc.

It is not for people who are responsible for meetings that have a completely formalised agenda, which do not allow for any variation in a fixed, legally prescribed outline.

Professional and Organisational Impact

The Art of Facilitation elevates you from going through the steps of an agenda to taking full responsibility for the entire process required to lead good and productive meetings. Thanks to the strong merger between science and art, it offers ongoing opportunities to grow as a person and professionally.

This training gives you the insights and the practical tools to start leading meetings more effectively. Especially those who lead teams or projects will see their day-to-day work benefit immediately. Or, as one of our participants puts it: “I firmly believe this is far more than a technical course on running meetings; it is a masterclass in optimising executive decision-making and driving innovation and execution.”

The programme expressly tackles the steps it takes to disseminate a more effective meeting culture in your organisation at large. That is why we regularly offer the combination of our courses F1 and F2 as a path towards greater organisational effectiveness and a highly practical route to make organisations leaner.

What are we going to do in class?

Just like during the basic course, we will practice and practice a lot! The difference between the two trainings is not in the educational approach but rather in the depth of the content. The programme focuses even more on taking participants’ own experiences and combining these with the exercises in order to optimise attitudes, behaviours and understanding.

Reading List

1. Steven Rogelberg, The Surprising Science of Meetings.
2. Steen Elsborg and Ib Ravn, Leaning Meetings and Conferences in Practice.
3. Dave Gray, Sunni Brown, James Macanufo, Gamestorming: A Playbook for Innovators, Rulebreakers, and Changemakers.
4. Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow.

Alumni Reconnect

One month after the course, this cohort will be invited to an optional online reconnect session with your guide. Join if you would like to share what happened when you applied what you learned, discuss obstacles you encountered, and receive further guidance for your practice.

Words from Your Guide

Mike van der Vijver

Taking people through this next stage of their journey towards mastery in leading meetings is a privilege and, invariably, a fun and enriching experience for me as a trainer. One of our participants wrote after this training: “I highly recommend that any leader facing cross-border communication and transformational challenges experience this profound cognitive shift first-hand.” What can I add to that?...