Blog Posts
Welcome to our blog! Here you can find articles written by our team of professional facilitators. Our posts feature tips, tricks, tools, dilemmas and discussions that will help you improve your personal facilitation skills and increase your understanding of how to collaborate effectively.
Facilitating From the Side: How Participants Can Improve Meetings
Often when one of our trainers is leading a session on meeting effectiveness, a participant will exclaim, “it’s not my fault we have bad meetings,...
Facilitation Outside of the Meeting Room
At the start of our workshops, during sales calls, and in conversation with professionals I hear this all the time, "sure, most meetings could be more...
Mediation: A 5 Step Process For Unresolved Conflict
By Darryl Landau and Michael Goldman Nothing is as draining as having to manage dysfunctional conflict. It undermines teamwork and saps an organiza...
The Power of Active Listening
The #1 problem with communication between 2 or more people in or outside of the workplace tends to be a lack of ‘active’ listening. We see this pl...
Who Should Lead the Meeting – the Chair or the Facilitator?
Whether I’m delivering a keynote address or training facilitation skills, one central issue consistently surfaces – who should run the meeting, th...
The Good, the Bad and the Boring of Workplace Meetings
VIRGINIA GALT Special to The Globe and Mail Published March 26, 2018 Michael Goldman, President and Founder of Facilitation First was recently in...
Your Meeting Stinks! How To Negotiate A Great Meeting Process
When a new client asks me to facilitate, the first task I’m confronted with is developing a meeting process. 'Process' refers to "a sequence o...
Things to Consider When Co-Facilitating a Meeting
Adapted from Roger M. Schwarz ‘Working with Another Co-Facilitator’ As a professional trainer in the area of meeting or process facilitation, I...
Ensuring Empowerment Works
Early in my career I noticed that some groups dread being asked to provide opinions or recommendations because they feel that their input is rarely in...
Let us Know
Do you have a unique meeting challenge not covered by one of our blog posts? We’re always looking for different dilemmas to discuss in our articles!