Facilitation Skills and Techniques — a 2–day national and local course
Benefits of the course
A group of people brought together to do a substantial piece of work may benefit from having a skilled facilitator to guide the group in becoming an effective team and in carrying out its work. A competent facilitator also can teach group members practical techniques for making decisions, analysing issues and solving problems.
The course is designed especially for individuals who want to learn how to work more effectively to help groups achieve important goals. The course teaches participants how to use 15 different practical techniques and tools to use with groups and gives guidance on how to be a competent facilitator.
Intended participants
The course is for individuals who have been designated to work with clinical and non–clinical groups brought together to achieve significant outcomes or improvements. Clinical service or practice managers, general practitioners, clinical staff in all professions, public health professionals, specialty registrars, clinical audit or clinical effectiveness facilitators, risk managers and clinical governance managers all have participated in the course.
Learning objectives
The course is designed to help individuals develop competence and confidence in how to:
- use facilitation to contribute to a group and the possible roles of a facilitator
- help a group of people work together as a team
- help a team make decisions and reach consensus
- help a team test commitment to its decisions
- help a team understand how a process key to its work happens now or how an outcome is achieved now
- help a team use investigative approaches, find problems to be acted on and their causes and agree on the priorities for action
- help a team develop workable change strategies, carefully plan implementation of the strategies and be prepared should things go wrong
- help a team break down possible projects into workable components and to develop effective, workable project plans
- prepare to serve as a facilitator for a group.
Course programme
The course runs from 9.00 am to 5.00 pm each day. The course tutor gives brief presentations and participants work extensively in small groups practising facilitation techniques and tools.
We provide the course for local groups on request.
Materials
Each participant receives a 240–page Facilitation Skills and Techniques manual and other materials. Certificates of participation in the course are provided.
What participants say about the course
Participant comments about the course include:
- 'The course has given me the confidence, skills and tools to help me guide my team through its chosen projects'
- 'The techniques were good at making you think through a process that sometimes seems quite difficult’
- ‘Giving me a better understanding of how to achieve the corporate objectives of reducing errors in records was of most value'
- 'The practising of facilitation tools applying to real project topics was valuable'
- 'Very robust and comprehensive coverage'
- 'Learning about facilitation in practical terms because here it has meant arranging meetings, taking minutes, designing questionnaires, inputting data and collecting papers for meetings'
Booking
View a calendar of dates for national courses.
Contact us to register for a national course or to arrange a local course in your organization or area.