Effective Group Facilitation

Our Effective Group Facilitation course is designed for anyone who wants to facilitate effective, engaging, and enjoyable events and meetings (If you are delivering training take a look at our Train the Virtual Trainer workshop). This course will give you practical skills to get everyone participating and give you strategies to handle any difficult situations that may arise.

This workshop is currently available online as Face-to-Face Live Online Learning using Zoom for public bookings. We are able to offer classroom sessions for private bookings — please get in touch for availability.

Course Overview

Prices

  • Standard Price

    £750*
  • SME
    Fewer than 250 staff

    £625*
  • Public Sector Price

    £550*
  • Large Charity
    Over 31+ staff

    £490*
  • Small Charity
    Fewer than 30 staff

    £380*
  • *Per person, excluding VAT

  • Duration

    1 day
  • Class size

    12 approx.
  • Location

    Interactive online sessions delivered via Zoom. The link is sent to you after booking.

    Online
  • Requirements

    You do not need any prior experience to join the course, however we also welcome people who have experience and would like to hone their skills.

Course Overview

By the end of this workshop, you will understand the role of a facilitator in designing and managing an event to ensure everyone is fully involved and that you achieve your stated aims.

This workshop is designed for anyone who wants to facilitate effective, engaging, and enjoyable events and meetings (If you are delivering training take a look at our Train the Virtual Trainer workshop). This course will give you practical skills to get everyone participating and give you strategies to handle any difficult situations that may arise.

This session is about design and facilitation skills rather than use of the technology. Please note that it is delivered as Live Online Learning via Zoom. If you attend the two-day version, there will be a chance to practise at the end of the course.

Outcomes

  • To have experienced an interactive workshop that is inclusive of all participants  
  • To identify specific structures and tools to take away and use in your own face-to-face or on-line events 
  • To identify the skills needed to effectively lead a group of people, keep their attention, and deal with any challenges 
  • To understand some of the common considerations around group dynamics and identify actions you can take to positively influence these. 

What you will learn

On this facilitation workshop, you will experience all of the techniques being taught, making it easy to adapt the tools to your own situation. You will get the benefit of Happy’s extensive experience and knowledge of facilitating events, and you will also learn from your own experiences.

Themes Covered 

  • What is the role of a facilitator? 
  • Identifying what great facilitation looks like  
  • Consider what is the role of a facilitator (and what is not!)
  • Set a clear objective for your event that will make it purposeful
  • Creating a psychologically safe space
  • Designing your event for maximum participation 
  • Discover people’s realistic attention spans and ideas to keep their focus
  • Tools to get everyone involved and being part of any decision making (including some Liberating Structures) 
  • Adapting your communication style to maximise approachability or credibility as appropriate 
  • Confidently get your audience where you need them and giving clear instructions 
  • Use questions techniques to get people thinking and sharing, and to manage questions from the audience 
  • Dealing with difficult situations 
  • Adapting your event to being online or face-to-face 

This course can be run in the following options: 

  • One-day – This will be a fast-paced course where we cover all of the areas but not in great depth to give you a thorough foundation. 
  • Two-days – This longer version provides the opportunity for groups to experience more tools and to work on their own examples. They will practise their own facilitation skills and receive feedback.

Are your events training workshops or courses where people are learning new information or skills? In which case our Train the Trainer Essentials or Train the Virtual Trainer workshops may be more suited to your needs.

Group Learning Events

Looking for a private group event for your team, or even your whole organisation?

We can organise a date that works for you, and we can tailor the content to your team. Our private workshops can be held online, inhouse at your workplace or here at Happy's HQ in Aldgate, Central London (following current government guidelines).

Find out more and enquire now
5 out of 5 stars

N/A

Trent Grassian120 days ago

What's it like to learn with Happy?

We offer complete individual involvement and participation on all of our workshops. In this video, Nicky delivers a short session about the different Communication Styles, and how they affect the way you work with and manage others.

Book now

See our available course dates, or contact us for bespoke options.

The Small Print

For Face-to-Face Live Online Learning

All learners will need to install Zoom on their machines. Full technical requirements are on the Zoom website. Your link will be included in your joining instructions once you have booked your place — if you haven't received this email then please contact our team.

You should reserve out 10am to 4.30pm in your diary for the learning. This will allow you to join the interactive workshops and have time to reflect and do the assignments in between. We believe immersing yourself in the content for a whole day will create deep learning and lasting impact. 

Learners should log into the training session 10 minutes before the start time to ensure that they have downloaded and set up Zoom correctly. The course will start precisely on time and it may not be possible to go back over material missed by late arrivals.

Your active participation is expected: everyone will be heard and seen throughout, just as they would be if we were in a room together. To be heard, hear and seen you will need a microphone, speakers and camera — if you have a modern laptop that’s all you will need. Remember, you’ll need a quiet place to call from and a decent internet connection is a must.

Please ensure you read our Terms and Conditions before booking for our payment terms and cancellation policy.

For classroom sessions

All public classroom sessions take place at Happy's HQ in London at Robert Dolan House, 9 Alie Street, London E1 8DE. Please see our Contact Us page for full directions and a PDF map.

The course will run from 10am to 4:30pm (lunch is served 1pm to 1:45pm — we offer a choice of 3 cold bowl dishes). Please be careful to arrive by 9.45am for registration and refreshments. The course will start precisely on time and it may not be possible to go back over material missed by late arrivals. If you arrive over 30 minutes late you may be asked to leave and attend another day.

Please ensure you read our Terms and Conditions before booking for our payment terms and cancellation policy.

The happy Guarantee

We want everyone to go away from our courses feeling as though they have learnt useful, practical skills that they can use straight away when they go back to work.

If you don’t feel that your training has been useful or if you are unhappy in any way, please get in touch with our Customer Services team within 30 days of the course. We will be happy to offer you additional support and training free of charge to help you to gain the skills you need, or if you’d prefer, a full refund.

Coronavirus Policy

In light of the current Coronavirus outbreak we want all of our customers to be reassured that we are working to maintain the highest standards of Health and Safety. We are monitoring the situation closely and are following all current Government guidelines.

Please see our Coronavirus Policy for more details and the latest information.

If you have any questions or concerns, our friendly team are available Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm. You can leave a message on 020 7375 7300 or email us at hello@happy.co.uk.

happy learners

Did you know...

...when facilitating groups, it helps to imagine that conversation is a ball?

As a facilitator, your job is to keep the ball away from you.

Happy offers a number of other innovative leadership programmes.

Happy Workplace Leadership Programme to enable you to gain personal insight and develop practical leadership and management skills to create a high performing team. Find out more

How to Have Conversations that Matter for Leaders & Managers to enable you to have successful conversations with team members and colleagues. Find out more