Strengthening Your Facilitation Skills

If your employer is a compact member of the Harold Alfond Center for the Advancement of Maine’s Workforce, you may be eligible to take this program at a reduced cost. Click here to learn more.

Group of young people sitting outside around a table with a giant piece of paper in the middle with writing on itPROGRAM DESCRIPTION

In your professional or volunteer work, have you ever needed to:

  • help a new group get started?
  • guide a group to solve a problem?
  • help a group deal with a conflict?

Skills for working with groups don’t usually come naturally and are not routinely taught. If you have ever worked with a group and wished you had more practice or skill, Strengthening Your Facilitation Skills is for you.

Are you involved with municipal boards, non-profit committees, staff teams or community members that need to produce results? Are these groups as successful at getting the job done as you’d like? This training can help you get great results.

Fun, creative, and thought-provoking, the Strengthening Your Facilitation Skills, Level 1 curriculum is a dynamic and comprehensive multi-session facilitation training series full of activities, practice opportunities, and potential aha! moments.

PROGRAM DATES & TIMES

Please sign up for the interest list and we’ll let you know when future program dates are announced.

For those looking to build their virtual facilitation skills, Kristen Grant also offers Building Your Virtual Facilitation Skills. Learn more here.

 

MODALITY

This program will be offered live, in-person. 

Facilitation is a skill that can only be mastered through practice. With this fact in mind, opportunities for training participants to practice facilitation are central to the training design. Each participant will sign up and prepare to facilitate an activity with a small group during one session.

PROGRAM BENEFITS                                                      

Participants in this training will:

  • build competence in essential facilitation skills and knowledge
  • actively engage and collaborate with other participants
  • apply a variety of  processes for guiding groups to useful outcomes
  • practice facilitating and receiving feedback in a supportive environment.

 

TOPICS COVERED

Session One: Facilitation Basics

  • An Introduction to Facilitation Core Values of Facilitation
  • Working Agreements
  • Contracting
  • Decision-making Options
  • Stages of Group Development
  • Facilitation Guiding Principles and Practices
  • Behaviors that Hinder and Help Groups
  • Developing a Meeting Design

Session Two: Facilitation in Action

  • Achieving Desired Outcomes
  • Generating Ideas, Narrowing Ideas and Action Planning
  • Identifying Core Facilitation Practices
  • Recognizing and Redirecting Difficult Group Situations
  • Assessing Your Facilitation Strengths and Weaknesses

Session Three: Facilitation Challenges & Opportunities

  • Using the Left-Hand Column
  • Designing Interventions and Making Interventions
  • Using the Diagnosis-Intervention Cycle
  • Clarifying Circle Consulting Method
  • Opening and Closing Ideas and Other Resources
  • Evaluation, and Celebration

WHO SHOULD ENROLL

This course is designed to benefit:

  • Analysts
  • Community-based groups
  • Consultants
  • Educators/Teachers
  • Executives
  • Managers
  • Municipal Officials
  • Nonprofit organizations
  • Trainers
  • Sales Professionals
  • Others whose professional and/or community work involves working with groups to achieve results.

The creation of a cohesive group is a focus of the series. It is expected that if you join the training, you will make a commitment to attend all three sessions and participate as fully as possible. If it’s not possible for you to make that commitment at this time, please consider waiting to take the training.

Not sure if this program is right for you? Contact us at um.continuinged@maine.edu or 207.581.3113 and we can help you figure it out.

INSTRUCTOR

photo of Kristen GrantKristen Grant, Senior Extension Program Manager, Coastal Community Resilience and DEI Leader (she/her)

Kristen’s work focuses on the interactions between the people, and ecosystems of the coast. Her work includes a range of activities to build the capacity of coastal communities to plan and adapt for their future, such as building community engagement and facilitation skills, considering housing options, addressing coastal access and waterfront development issues, and understanding erosion trends and planning for coastal hazards. To this work, Kristen brings a Master of Science degree focused on Environmental Education, and has an extensive background in outreach education and community development, as well as nearly a decade of experience in training facilitators.

 

 

PROGRAM FEE

$400

Click here to apply for a need-based scholarship.

 

CLASS CAPACITY

22 participants

 

CONTINUING EDUCATION CREDITS

20 hours / 2 CEUs are available.

Certificate for completing the entirety of this program.

If you’d like to receive CEUs for participating in this course, please note this in your registration via our online store.

A micro-credential will also be available.

 

ACCOMMODATIONS

For more information or to request an accommodation contact um.continuinged@maine.edu, 207.581.3113.