Learn to create a better world through inspiring, healthy & effective collaborations
We invite you to the first ever ‘Group facilitation skills: putting participatory values into practice’ training in the Netherlands: a world-class, certified course, that has brought thousands of team and organisation leaders, maverick facilitators, and consultants worldwide to build rock-solid foundations for their collaborations to flourish and create more impact from a place of clarity, competence, and courage.
3-day in-person training:
• In-house training on-demand throughout Europe
• Public training May 26 - 28, 2024 • Rome, Italy
or
The foundational facilitation training that enables you to make collaborations and groups thrive
In today's collaborative work environments, facilitative skills are indispensable. They form the bedrock of healthy organisations by nurturing team spirit, unlocking collective wisdom, forging solid decision-making that leads to sustainable outcomes, and enabling resilient execution of plans.
By the end of this course you will be able to understand and skillfully navigate these essential skills:
Tackle challenging group dynamics
Learn how groups work in reality and how to deal with challenging group dynamics such as misunderstandings and difficult communication styles.
Design purposeful meetings
Become competent in designing purposeful meeting agendas; delivering on productive, healthy, and inspiring meetings and conversations that remain open to any insight that emerges.
Master the mechanics of group decision-making
Become skilled in metabolising complex issues into more authentic relations and sustainable agreements that go well beyond ‘business as usual’.
Facilitate as a leader
Become skilled in facilitating groups as a leader by navigating the confusion around power and authority with clarity and going beyond “wearing two hats”.
Engage everyone’s energy
Learn the art of engaging everyone’s energy and participation by validating them and their ideas through active listening. Encourage mutual understanding to co-create solutions.
Find out if this training is right for you
Book a 25-minute discovery call to see how this training might help you and your team
A training backed by three decades of development
This particular training has been developed, tested, and improved for over three decades by San Francisco's renowned consultancy firm, think thank, and provider of world-class training: Community at Work. Founded in 1987, Community at Work has played a remarkable role in supporting businesses and organisations tackle complex problems through participatory approaches to systems change. Their approach includes foundational principles about leadership and collaboration that serve any type of team to collaborate more effectively and solve wicked problems.
This training has been widely available in the North America and has been offered globally, and is now available in Italy, the Netherlands and throughout Europe.
Meet a masterpiece on collaboration and facilitation
As part of the training you will receive a copy of the ‘Facilitator’s guide to participatory decision-making’ written by the lead facilitators at Community at Work, which includes all foundational concepts and frameworks that allow you to integrate the training even further.
The Facilitator’s Guide provides a full set of models and tools to enable an organization to reap the benefits of a well facilitated, participatory decision-making process.
Pierre Omidyar - Founder, eBay
This book is an outstanding resource for tackling complex community and business challenges. We’ve used it both at the City of Denver and at the State of Colorado. I keep a copy on my desk for easy reference.
Roxane White - Chief of Staff to Governor John Hickenlooper, Colorado
This training is for anyone who works with or in groups
This training is highly experiential and is for anyone who desires to become skillfull and competent in leading and/or facilitating groups with clear direction, including those with solid group experience. This training truly encompasses all foundational principles that allow you to work with any group or situation that requires collaboration and goes far beyond receiving tools and templates, and will even uplift the leadership skills of seasoned facilitators.
—> This training is for anyone in a leadership position, even those who have been leading groups for many years
—> but also forteams that want to become self-facilitative and want to learn how to organize themselves effectively and tackle complex problems.
Find out if this training is right for you
Book a 25-minute discovery call to see how this training might help you and your team
What you will learn during the course
-
On the first day of the training, you will be able to clarify the role of a facilitator, practice with facilitative listening skills, developing the group memory and suspending judgment to develop ideas. As a bonus you will learn how to receive feedback non-defensively and evaluate a meeting.
-
The second day is instrumental: it reveals in details the mechanics of group dynamics. You practice, reflect and receive feedback on your stand-up facilitative skills in normal settings and when facing difficult dynamics. You explore how to manage the group energy.
-
The last day of the training integrates learnings from the previous days by focusing on how a group can reach closure effectively. You also delve into clarifying the objectives of a meeting and designing a realistic agenda that sets the group up for success while keeping flexibility to adapt.
Meet your trainers
Ewen Le Borgne - Lead Facilitator
Ewen’s work exists to unlock and strengthen everyone’s collaborative, facilitative and relational capacity to achieve collective impact for a better environment and/or human societies. He does this through direct facilitation support, coaching/training/co-design and co-facilitation of ambitious people and collectives.
Ewen is an associate of the world class facilitation and collaboration reference firm ‘Community At Work’, as well as of ‘Convene’ and the ‘Liberating Structure’ community. He has trained many groups on the critically acclaimed ‘group facilitation skills’ training since 2016 as well as on other facilitation repertoires and approaches.
Ewen’s energy, expertise and passion for his craft is matched only by his ambition to inspire everyone everywhere to enjoy the privilege of living a facilitative and relational life that makes a real positive difference in the world.
“Ewen possesses outstanding knowledge and capabilities in facilitation. Capable of creating a deep, technical and impact-oriented conversation among stakeholders from different backgrounds, different interests, different organisations and different ‘agendas’ to facilitate the development of the blueprints of a coherent strategy. Excellent professional.”
- Apollinaire Djikeng, Director General of the International Livestock Research Institute
Brigitte Laliberté - Co-Lead Facilitator
Brigitte has a strong background and expertise in participatory group decision-making gained over 30 years’ experience in international agriculture research for development.
She focuses her work on facilitating complex multi-stakeholders’ collaboration initiatives. She facilitated over 150 expert workshops and consultation processes, international conferences, symposia and prestigious award ceremonies, involving more than 10,000 participants from a range of countries.
She has extensive experience engaging with farmers’ associations, national and regional government organizations and NOGs to implement initiatives promoting participatory values and supporting local communities.
Since 2004, she advanced her skills by taking part in the trainings led by Sam Kaner of Community At Work on Group Facilitation Skills: Putting Participatory Values, on Multi-stakeholder Collaboration and on Organisational Diagnosis and gained practical experience in leading several large and complex programmes.
In 2024 she translated into French the Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision-Making, (Kaner et al) 3rd Edition (2014) to make the tools and resources accessible to the francophone world in support to a broader community of facilitators.
Come and join us
-
Date & Location
May 26th - 28th 2026
Rome, Italy
08.30 - 17:30Prices
€ 2000,- Freelancers & NGO employees
€ 2200,- Company employees
excl. 21% VAT -
An in-house workshop is an economical way to get more of your colleagues fluent in group facilitation skills, reinforcing opportunities to put these skills in practice and deliver higher value, all on your location, at a more appealing price.
What is included in the training?
A depth and breadth of work and life skills that will empower you and those around you for your entire life
1-hour of 1:1 coaching after the training (public training)
A copy of "The Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision-Making" written by Community at Work
Healthy lunch and tea/coffee throughout the day (public training)
Do you still have questions?
Book a 25-minute discovery call to see how this training might help you and your team