Design and Facilitate Effective Meetings
Prerequisite : None *
Meetings That Work is included in the Professional Facilitator Program, and the Advanced Facilitator Program.
Get more from meetings than you ever thought possible with best practices from professional facilitators. Turn meetings into “events” that people want to attend, increase participation and get the best input and results from everyone.
Meetings That Work is for anyone who leads or attends lots of meetings and will provide you with professional tips, templates and practical tools to increase commitment to action, and handle difficult or controversial items.
This course has been endorsed by the International Association of Facilitators (IAF) as part of the Professional Facilitator Program to lead you to become a Certified Professional Facilitator (CPF). MTW alone covers many of the competencies required by the IAF.
As with all ICAA training, this course is delivered by professional facilitators who actually demonstrate the materials, lead reflections to learn collaboratively, provide real life examples from experience, and set you up to practice with others using a suite of tools. Sometimes you might work on interesting case studies. Sometimes you work on your own case. The high quality manual is full of useful materials: underlying theory, short readings, step-by-step instructions, templates, and worksheets. As a result you will have the confidence to use your new understandings immediately with clients of your own.
Both the “live online” and “in-person” courses are usually scheduled from 9 am – 5 pm in the time zone of the location mentioned. Please check the timing carefully when registering.
You will need to choose your preferred type of setting or mode of delivery. The descriptions of the differences between live online (LO), in-person (IP), and self-directed (SD) are explained in an expandable section near the bottom of this web page.
Courses are held from 9 am – 5 pm in the time zone of the location mentioned.
Price is in CAD$1,445.00. Applicable tax is extra.
Benefits
Design and run great meetings
- Create engaging agendas
- Construct meaningful processes
- Increase group participation and productivity
- Make group decision making more effective
Create a Participatory Environment
- Use diversity to make everything interesting
- Deal with difficult situations
- Get the very best results
- Develop teamwork and follow-through
Gain Confidence as a Facilitative Leader
- Learn best practice tools and techniques
- Enhance meaningful participation
- Communicate more effectively in groupa
Course price is $1,345 plus tax.
Day One
Participation and involvement
- Great meetings
- Participation at its best
- Levels of involvement in decision making
- Facilitating brainstorming
Planning Agenda
- Elements of dialogue
- Asking questions
- Planning for agenda items in meetings
- Creating facilitation plans for agenda items
Day Two
Designing meetings and events
- Keys to healthy communication
- Preparing for meetings
- Creating meeting designs
- Meeting planning
Facilitating Meetings
- Stages in the group’s journey
- Facilitator’s role
- Dealing with difficult situations
- Personal action planning
- Organizational leaders and managers responsible for strategic and operational planning meetings.
- Project managers responsible for guiding a whole project cycle.
- Team leaders responsible for organizational operations and project implementation.
- Community leaders responsible for planning and implementing action campaigns.
- Government officials responsible for program development, project implementation and policy formation.
- Facilitators responsible for enabling group productivity.
Plan, prepare for and facilitate productive meetings with best professional tools and approaches available.
- Dialogue approach
- Ladder of participation
- Effective flipcharting
- Product oriented agenda design
Play the role of meeting facilitator more effectively and get results that generate confidence and motivation in the whole team. Turn meetings into events.
- Process and its elements
- Tips for effective communication
- Event design and orchestration
- STEPS model
Throughout the course, there are valuable tools, contexts and guidelines that will deepen your capacities as a leader, facilitator and coach.
- 72 facilitation tools
- Seven intelligences
- Working with difficult behaviours.
You can choose to take this course In Person (IP) or Live Online (LO). The codes IP or LO show in the course name when you register.
In Person (IP) classes are instructor-led events occurring in the same room on specific dates with one group of people. You have a deep level of dialogue with face-to-face practice in breakout groups, get paper manuals and books, use pen-and-paper worksheets and exercises and enjoy breaks and lunches together. Instructors demonstrate methods using flipcharts, index cards, marker pens and wall chart visuals . The experience for participants can be similar to working with a client in a live setting. There is no practice of online tools.
Live Online (LO) classes are instructor-led events occurring at the same time with the same people, using our learning management system and online platforms, primarily Zoom and Mural. The course covers the same material as an IP course but uses online tools with plenty of small group exercises. Manuals and books are downloadable as PDFs that can be printed out if you want. There are no programs or apps to download. Participants need a computer with a large screen (a cell phone won't work well), a high speed internet connection, and earphones or earbuds. We do not actively “teach” online tools, but participants get so see and experience the ones we use during the course.
Self Directed (SD) courses are sets of “modules” like mini-courses, each containing short videos, readings, quizzes and games and assignments. You take them at your own speed any time from anywhere. You get written feedback from instructors on your assignments. The modules are assembled to resemble the in-person and live online course content. The disadvantage is the absence of collegial interaction, teamwork, and dialogue, which is a key component of facilitation. Participant manuals and materials are downloadable in PDF form.
All course graduates are encouraged to follow-up with some 1:1 coaching and join communities of practice we have set up to help extend and reinforce learning.
