Virtual Facilitator Training Solutions

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With many teams working remotely for the foreseeable future, the skills needed to structure, engage and guide a group through critical virtual meetings has never been more important. Whether you’re new to facilitation or have years of experience, this workshop provides a unique opportunity to enhance your mastery of any group situation. Learn essential skills from certified, veteran trainers who have taught meeting facilitation skills for years. Experience a dynamic and totally interactive learning environment.

Download Overview PDF

This workshop is designed to equip participants with the foundational skills and knowledge necessary to conduct active, engaging virtual learning events with confidence. Participants will engage in two highly interactive half-day sessions with many opportunities to practice new skills and receive coaching and peer feedback in a safe environment

Workshop Purpose: To enable subject-matter experts, internal trainers and managers to feel more confident and competent in being more ‘facilitative’ when leading virtual training sessions

Workshop Outcomes:

By the end of this workshop participants will:

• Be more competent and confident in their ability to ‘virtually facilitate’ training
• Appreciate the additional challenge and opportunity virtual training presents
• Distinguish between their dual roles of subject-matter expert (content provider) and virtual facilitator (process leader)
• Have clarity on how to effectively prepare for and set context to successfully launch a virtual workshop
• Be able to deal more effectively with typical individual and group challenges experienced in a virtual session
• Be better able to maximize participant engagement and leverage the groups wisdom during training
• Have tools and checklists to ensure you are prepared to deliver engaging virtual workshops

Download Overview PDF

This workshop provides participants with specialized skills and knowledge necessary to design active, engaging virtual learning events with confidence. Participants will engage in two highly interactive half-day sessions with many opportunities to practice new skills and receive coaching and peer feedback in a safe environment. This workshop focuses on designing content that results in highly interactive workshops.

Workshop Purpose: To enable training designers, managers and subject-matter experts to create virtual training materials that are guaranteed to engage learners.

Workshop Outcomes:

By the end of this workshop participants will:

• Clarify the five most common design challenges of the virtual environment, identifying strategies to overcome each challenge
• Commit to an adult learning approach that strives to teach through asking and engaging rather than through excessive telling of content
• Use research-based guidelines, decide what to teach in the virtual session and what to relegate to asynchronous teaching such as pre-reading, video, and quizzes
• Structure and sequence workshop topics for maximum learning, and demonstrate how to show the participants the structure
• Design enhanced openings for their workshops, using 1) a checklist of context-building elements and options and 2) strategies for focusing participant attention
• Design Training to reduce learner’s cognitive load (Using a standard hour-long template, help learners focus, link new learning with existing ideas, organize and remember the new information)
• Use five powerful strategies to overcome the challenge of technical or content-heavy training content (ensuring that the training engages participants)
• Design visuals that support engaging delivery – increasing visual interest in slides and graphics to encourage discussion and learning versus reactive note taking
• Create appropriate competition to illustrate key learning points from the content

The Virtual Facilitator Primer – Learn how to effectively prepare for and structure any virtual meeting. A great micro- workshop to pair with any other. Learning outcomes include:

• Tips and techniques for how to “show up” professionally on camera
• List of preparatory steps/questions to consider when designing a virtual meeting
• Practice designing a typical virtual meeting

How to Launch A Successful Virtual Meeting – Learn effective virtual meeting start techniques such as how to set context, set participation expectations, get buy-in on meeting Purpose, Outcome and Process and getting buy-in on meeting norms.

Learning outcomes include:

• Critical steps to include when setting context for simple and complex meetings, including Parking Lot and Action Plan
• Practice gaining buy-in on your meeting’s Purpose, Outcome and Process
• Suggested norms for virtual meetings and when and how to collaborate with participants to agree on meeting guidelines/norms

Managing and Engaging Participants in Virtual Meetings – Dealing with low participation, setting expectations, utilizing virtual tools for maximizing engagement, virtual warm-ups, handling power issues, etc

Learning outcomes include:

• Clarity as to why engagement is even more critical in virtual meetings
• An understanding of critical virtual engagement principles
• Best engagement practices for teleconferencing and videoconferencing
• Tips for prepping, starting and managing great videoconferences
• Application of learning to mitigate some common virtual engagement dilemmas

Virtual Brainstorming Techniques – Learn and experience fun and engaging group virtual brainstorming techniques that promote great generative ideas! Learning outcomes include:

• Clarity on the norms that encourage safety in idea generation
• Understanding of the unique challenges and opportunities of virtual brainstorming
• Methods for “priming” the pump ahead of the meeting
• An array of easy to use virtual brainstorming techniques, including anonymous brainstorming

Virtual Techniques for Achieving Consensus – Learn simple, yet powerful processes for helping a group/team come to consensus, overcome polarization and gain buy-in. Learning outcomes include:

• Clarity on what consensus is, what it “looks like” and when it is worth taking the time to use this decision-making method
• Understanding of the most effective processes to bring a group to consensus, including synthesis, impact/effort, multi- voting and criteria-based processes including how to leverage virtual feature such as polls, chat and breakouts

Facilitating Virtual Problem-Solving Meetings – Get armed with practical, easy-to-apply processes that help groups/teams move from problem identification to problem resolution in a virtual meeting.

Learning outcomes include:

• Clarity around the pitfalls of problem solving in virtual meetings
• Understanding and practice virtually facilitating a quick and effective structured problem-solving methodology

Facilitating Highly Productive Remote Teams – Team, Project and Program Leaders will learn effective tips and techniques for forming (or re-forming) their teams to accelerate performance.

Learning outcomes include:

• Clarity around why teams need to form or re-form in the remote environment
• Virtual strategies to achieve team alignment including:
  • Transforming work into measurable and trackable output
  • Sharing, understanding and agreeing to uses for available collaborative tools (Teams, Slack, etc.)
  • How to facilitate a team discussion to align and buy-in to team norms
  • Defining a team communication strategy including a discussion around what is working and not working in your virtual workspace

Facilitating Your Remote Team Through the Storm – Team, Project and Program Leaders will be equipped with tools for managing challenging behaviours, resentments and conflict within teams.

Learning outcomes include:

• Clarity as to what storming looks like in a virtual environment
• How to review and redefine your teams operating guidelines
• Understanding and practice conducting a “needs and offers” exercise to mitigate unproductive team dynamics
• Review of three communication tools that enhance trust between remote team members

Facilitating Through Challenging Behaviors – Learn when and how to intervene when conflict or challenging participant behaviours risk taking you and the group off track.

Learning outcomes include:

• Practical ideas for proactively managing conflict
• A simple reactive technique for reactively managing conflict
• Some processes for creating buy-in when conflict is anticipated or suddenly occurs

Zoom Meeting Host Training for Facilitators (Basic) – Lead Zoom meetings like a pro.

Learning outcome include:

• Why and how to use waiting rooms, share screens, manage participants, chat, non-verbal icons and reactions
• How to ensure your meetings are private and secure.

Zoom Meeting Host Training for Facilitators (Advanced) – For Facilitators or trainers who want to leverage Zoom’s interactive features.

Learning outcomes include:

• How to create and use breakout rooms, creating meeting templates for repeating sessions
• When and how to fully leverage screen sharing options and how to create, launch and share a poll
• How to provide a participant or co-host remote control access of your screen, document or power point
• How to ensure your meetings are private and secure.

Download Overview PDF

When facilitating virtual meetings or training workshops, session leaders often find their greatest challenges to be in engaging participants and balancing participation so that everyone has an opportunity to be heard.

How do you transform a group of passive virtual session attendees/participants into highly engaged collaborators?

At Facilitation First, our go-to Zoom features are breakouts and polling! Where appropriate, we break
the group up into pairs or smaller groups to increase intimacy, a sense of ‘safety’ and quality of input. We use polling as a way to gauge interest, take a pulse and keep content dynamic.

We have developed this program to build confidence and competence in creating, launching and leveraging Zoom Breakouts and Polling. Delivered by a professional meeting facilitator and trainer, learners will also understand the ‘when and why’ you would use these features, as well as the how!

As a facilitator, you own the meeting process design – a set of deliberately sequenced activities intended to lead to achieving an outcome(s). Yet one of the most challenging skills for a developing facilitator is learning which process tools or activities to use for a particular meeting and in what order. How do you create a natural flow to the dialogue, build trust and fully leverage the expertise in the room?

In this two half-day workshop participants will explore the critical elements of great meeting design and expand their “toolkits” by learning and working with highly engaging, proven process tools and techniques. Based on class needs, we will delve into problem solving, consultative feedback, ideation or decision-making processes that can be applied in your very next meeting. This workshop has been designed to utilize a curated collection of some of our favorite techniques!

Please note: Participants must have completed the two-day Facilitating Meetings with Ease (or comparable program) to attend.

The Learning Opportunity:

• Gain a deeper understanding of how to effectively scope out and prepare for highly collaborative group meetings
• Learn the core elements of great meeting design
• Expand your personal facilitator’s toolkit with clarity around which tool to use in a variety of different meetings
• Receive coaching and feedback from Master Facilitator and Meeting Doctor, Michael Goldman, focusing on your real, upcoming meeting designs

Ask meeting facilitators what they fear most when leading discussions and they’ll tell you – conflict. Yet healthy disagreement helps groups see problems from new perspectives, make better decisions, and build trust. So how can we harness the strengths of conflict while limiting damage such as not achieving meeting outcomes, damaging rapport, and shutting down conversations prematurely?

This program directly addresses the sources of conflict – including you – and provides methods to prevent or facilitate through them. Explore your conflict behavioral style, learn how to mitigate client sabotage, and practice using tools and techniques to deploy when conflict erupts amongst group members.

Participants will build on the learning from their foundational facilitation skills course(s) by taking a deeper dive into proactive and reactive techniques for managing specific disruptive behaviors.

Please note: Participants must have completed either the one-day Facilitating Meetings That Work or the two-day Facilitating Meetings with Ease (or comparable) workshop to enroll in this course

The Learning Opportunity:

• Gain a clear understanding of effective techniques and behaviors to facilitate through conflict
• Discover your conflict style and how it can either contribute to or help minimize conflict
• Practice the three-step intervention process for redirecting dysfunctional behaviour
• Arm yourself with tools for identifying and managing resistance
• Receive personal feedback and coaching from a ‘Master’ meeting facilitator and learning peers
• Practice new tools in a safe environment

Our Virtual Strategic Planning Workshop delves into a proven, seven step strategic planning process and hones the facilitation skills required to collaboratively create and successfully implement strategies that will have the power to shape the future of your organization.

The overall focus of this workshop is to learn how to facilitate the development of a strategic plan and a process for operationalizing the plan for implementation.

With most Committee meetings taking place virtually, it is even more important for Chairs to understand their role as meeting leader, how to actively engage the members and be more collaborative in their decision- making discussions. There is an art and science to effective meetings and we provide highly practical tips and techniques that can be applied in their very next meeting. Whether you’re new to facilitation or have years of experience, this workshop provides a unique opportunity to align your Chairs and staff on a standard approach to collaborative Committee meetings. Learn essential skills from certified, master facilitators who have taught meeting facilitation skills for years. Experience a dynamic and totally interactive learning environment.

Workshop Purpose

To enhance the Chair’s, Vice-Chair’s and/or Support Staff’s ability to be more facilitative in designing and/or leading their meetings

Workshop Outcomes

Participants will leave with:

• Multiple tips and techniques on how to more effectively chair virtual meetings utilizing process facilitation
• Clarity around of the duties of Traditional vs. Facilitative Chairs
• Why Chairs need to S.L.A.P.S. themselves! (the Five Core Facilitation Best Practices)
• Why you need to make your meetings POP! (How to structure any outcomes-based meeting)
• Clarity as to the importance and best practices for engaging people during virtual meetings
• Critical considerations for designing decision-making processes
• Methods for managing challenging behaviors during meetings