September 21-22, 2023


Do you want to lead meetings that harness a group’s full POWER and have FUN doing it?
We are excited to announce the first Face-to-Face version of the popular Journey to Group Power Workshop ever offered in Madison. This highly interactive, 2-day workshop has been delivered over a dozen times virtually and face-to-face at several client locations outside of Madison. Read testimonials for our highly successful workshop designed for an evenly paced, immersive experience…
This facilitator training course is for you! Whether you are a sponsor, group leader, or participant, you will fill your basket with group engagement tools and know-how and when to use them. You will be introduced to the dynamic facilitation framework of Integral Facilitation and a dozen or more Liberating Structures to fuel new levels of group engagement, productivity, and transparency.
I can’t thank both of you enough for the knowledge you have passed on to me and my work. I ran a Dare to Lead workshop this past weekend. I would have never made it through without all of the training you have given. I used the full wheelhouse of tools you gave me to read the class and interject new activities on the fly to keep them engaged. It was a big success. Oh just so you know the challenge… 109 people came and Brene’s work deals with some emotional processing that can get be tricky to get through! I was the only facilitator in the room… the results have turned a few heads in Brene’s management team!
–Pamela Brooks, Senior OD Consultant, Arizona State University–
Learn Powerful Facilitation Skills & Liberating Structures
Help your teams, committees, boards, or any group achieve FULL ENGAGEMENT. You will leave with cutting-edge tools and skills to maximize productivity, innovation, and enjoyment. Employees who are engaged this way are RETAINED, ENLIVENED, AND HAPPY in the workplace. We will also play with over a dozen Libarating Structures in our quest for GROUP POWER!
Learn to Promote Collaboration in Group Settings
This immersive experience will prepare you to expedite meetings, leadership discussions, and events in your organization to the next level!
When I signed up for this workshop, I had fairly low expectations, but I was blown away! I learned so many skills to help improve and confidently facilitate meetings (large and small). The facilitators of this workshop were patient, kind, encouraged participation, and had great senses of humor. I think this workshop would be beneficial to staff at any level.
–Brenna Tonelli, Associate Director – Recruitment & Student Services–
Facilitator Skills Training Outcomes
- Begin viewing yourself as a catalyst for learning, engagement, and collective results.
- Begin viewing each meeting or group event as a design challenge and as a prototype for the next.
- Learn to create a container for engaging and effective group work.
- Leverage your personal presence as a catalyst for healthy group collaboration and innovation.
- Learn a proven protocol for meeting design, facilitation, and follow-up.
- Learn the essential tools to produce effective meetings across all meeting types.
- Learn techniques to engage participants and achieve extraordinary results.
I have been working with the Journey of Collaboration team for three years. Darin and Steve have created an amazing program that doesn’t just provide excellent information but creates actual facilitation strengths in the people that attend. We have brought the Group Power course to ASU for the past two years, and the course is always well received. I think the greatest compliment to their program is when I run into people who took the course and they tell me that it changed the way they lead and that they have been using the lessons they learned in the class on a regular basis in their day to day work. I highly recommend the program for anyone who leads or thinks they want to bring out the best in the people they have on any team in any organization.
–Pamela Brooks, Senior OD Consultant, Arizona State University–
Fee: The cost of this 2-day workshop is $850 and includes breakfast and snacks each day.
Those with at least some basic facilitation knowledge and experience will get the most from this course. Please contact us to deliver this course to your group or organization.
Facilitator Training Course Agenda
Day 1
9:00-10:00 Develop a Learning Container
10:00-10:30 Integral Facilitation Model
10:30-10:45 BREAK
10:45-11:15 Facilitate Yourself
11:15-12:00 Blind Spots & Triggers
12:00-1:00 LUNCH
1:00-1:30 Embrace the Unexpected
1:30-2:00 Listen & Connect
2:00-2:30 Integral Intervention
2:30-2:40 BREAK
2:45-4:00 Intervention Practice
4:00-4:30 Synthesize & Close
Day 2
9:00-9:30 Check-in
9:30-10:15 Wicked Questions
10:15-10:45 Meeting CraftTM
10:45-11:00 BREAK
11:00-12:00 Virtual Meeting Best Practice
12:00-1:00 LUNCH
1:00-1:45 Open Space Technology
1:45-2:30 Liberating Structure Review/Design
2:30-2:40 BREAK
2:40-3:45 Action Planning
3:45-4:00 Synthesize & Close
We can tailor this course to your specific needs and interests and deliver it to your organization on-site.
If you are interested in bringing this course to your organization, contact us for details. View Refund Policy here.
Facilitator Training Testimonials
I wish I took this training years ago. The tools I’ve learned are so practical to my practice, from leading small workgroups/daily meetings to presenting at national conferences.
—Julianna Manske, New to Public Health Residency Program Facilitator—Darin and Steve are a cut above the rest when it comes to facilitation and experience and modeling the golden standard for online learning, group collaboration and facilitation. It’s a breath of fresh air to experience their class act.
I would never have believed that a virtual version of this type, of course, could be EVEN MORE effective than a live, in-person, but I’ll be damned if it wasn’t. Using the virtual breakout rooms really eliminated a lot of the natural lags that cause real-life schedules to fall behind, and it somehow felt more intimate to be having these conversations from my home than it does in a hotel ballroom. Seriously, it’s brilliant. It’s the future (or should be).
While I was familiar with many of the techniques used in this training, the larger picture model of when and why to use these techniques was enormously beneficial. No matter what your current level of facilitation skills are, I truly believe you will walk away from this training a better facilitator.
–Theresa Kim, Program Manager, Learning and Talent Development, UW-Madison–The tools I learned in The Journey to Group Power Facilitation Skills Workshop are ones that were new to me, immediately applicable, and relevant to a variety of settings.
–Kinsey Mannebach – Public Health Specialist–
This course has exceeded my expectations in many ways. It has given me so many valuable tools and strategies to engage not only learners for a course I am co-facilitating but also how to better manage internal meetings and team relations, in addition to ways that I may apply this to my personal life as well. I am incredibly grateful to be a part of this learning experience.
Darin and Steve provide an excellent real-world, high-touch learning environment that seamlessly blends mindblowing, earth shaking fundamental truths with practical tips and tools for everyday life and work.
–Erin Barnes, ioby CEO__
This course can help you be an effective facilitator in so many different aspects of life (work, personal, extracurricular) with groups of any size.
–Jessica Ellner – Environmental Health Specialist–
I learned and practiced new ways of facilitating meetings and solving problems that I will apply in my daily work. In a very brief time we formed a strong virtual team, even though this was “only” a workshop. Dan Easley, Project Manager.
I came to this workshop depleted and exhausted as a leader.
I’m grateful to feel creative juices flowing again as a result of your efforts. Thank you!
This workshop not only will help me in my job, but also my personal life. So many things I learned can be applied to all sorts of relationships to make them better. I’ve already used some of the great things I learned! The best part is that it was also fun too. Not boring like some conferences can be. Totally relevant to any situation.
I really appreciate that the workshop was straightforward and practical—not overly touch feeling but aware of how emotional intelligence shapes meetings.
You made everyone feel welcome and created a safe space to explore ourselves and others, encouraging us to speak up, participate, and collaborate.
It was incredibly useful to be able to actually use the highly applicable and novel approaches you taught on the spot in the workshop that I can use with staff.
I liked how the workshop providing an excellent opportunity to network with other leaders on the campus.
I appreciated the deeper understanding of group dynamics and how to get to deeper solutions. The workshop was very well organized and the information presented in a good layering manner.
Great balance between learning new information and reflecting on how I can incorporate it into my work.
The facilitators were human and not talking heads. They participated throughout the workshop.
I appreciated practicing the specific techniques and I enjoyed how active the exercises were–we got to try things out, which will help us remember them better in the future and work to hone our new skills in a safe space.
I wasn’t sure what to expect, but really appreciated the amount of practical and easily applied strategies we learned in such a short amount of time.
It was very well organized, well executed, and I got more than a few takeaways to use every day.
This two-day course helps you overcome your fears and objections to what you thought was the norm. It helps break away all barriers and open up to your peers and finding new ways to understand old information. I was pleased to help and be helped and find that all of us struggle with the same issues.
It is very easy to get into a rut at work and learning the techniques provided and actually getting to work through them with others really helped figure out how you can apply them in real situations at work.
I received a number of simple processes that can help me address real issues I face in my work on a regular basis.
I left feeling ready to more effectively, efficiently wrangle my disparate proposal teams. I will lead meetings where decisions are actually made that end on time and offer value and answers for my attendees.
Working in a group CAN be energizing, productive, and fun if the facilitator sets the correct tone and agenda. This course confirmed that using some standardized common sense goes a long way.
The room came alive as we witnessed Darin and Steve putting the skills to use in real time.
The timing of the next workshop is TBD.
Contact us if you’d like to schedule a custom event for your group at your location.