(Fl)awesome Facilitation
Training
Support your team to elevate engagement and participation with groups.
❌ Struggle to communicate information without slides.
❌ Talk more than they ask questions or listen.
❌ Find it hard to balance the loud and quiet voices in a group.
❌ Stick to a script and struggle if things don’t go to plan.
❌ Are unaware of their facilitation style and how it affects a group.
❌ Hesitate to be themselves with a group.
75% of us have had no training in how to facilitate a group.
We are expected to know. It’s rarely taught. We make it up as we go and repeat the mistakes of others. It can feel too late to ask for help.
It’s never too late to build and enhance your team’s facilitation capability and elevate engagement with groups.
Here are some reasons why your team may not get the engagement they want from groups. Each one can be fixed.
❌ They haven’t told people what to expect at your workshop.
❌ They are focused on the content, not the people in the room.
❌ There is too much content. People leave feeling stuffed.
❌ They expect too much of groups: ‘they’ll get through this fast’ and don’t leave enough time for them to share and listen.
❌ The same workshop goes well with one group but not with another and they don’t know why.
❌ They stick to the same old workshop activities. People disengage.
❌ Their questions land like lead balloons. Nobody responds.
❌ They only hear from the loud people.
❌ They can’t get a peep out of the quieter people.
It doesn’t have to be this way. You can elevate the facilitation capability of your team with (Fl)awesome Facilitator training.
Facilitation is a critical skill for any professional who engages with stakeholders, service providers, community, clients and customers.
Facilitation skills are the secret to people not just learning your content, but experiencing it.
Facilitators know how to cut and dice content into engaging activities that appeal to different professions and learning styles.
They provide the structure for people to be able to touch and feel the content, look at it in different ways and share their stories to bring it to life. All while meeting learning outcomes and finishing on time, energised.
Facilitators know how to make content stick. Education researchers starting with Edgar Dale in the 1960s have shown that what people retain in learning increases by about 90% when they participate in their learning.
If your team want to engage their teams and stakeholders, how would you rate your team’s facilitation capability?
✔ Gave people opportunities to learn from each other, not just the content.
✔ Had the time and space to explore unexpected questions.
✔ Gave everyone the time and space to think and contribute.
✔ Were not dominated by the loudest voices.
✔ Heard from the quieter people.
✔ Left people feeling energised, not drained.
✔ Left people wanting more, not feeling stuffed.
✔ Energised the facilitators – your team.
Your team are confident in their content but their confidence varies when it comes to their facilitation capability. They need your support to strengthen it.
Flawed: At this level, team members are herding cats and ploughing through the agenda.
Awkward: Team members tend to stick to the script and are scared to go off it. Neither they, or their groups, are at ease.
Adequate: The work ‘gets done’. Your team members are going through facilitation motions, but people don’t leave energised.
Adept: Your team members are well-prepared but leave little room to adapt and innovate in the moment.
Accomplished: A team member at this level make facilitation looks effortless. Their advice is sought by others.
(Fl)awesome: At this level, your team members are serving the group. They are comfortable with their imperfections, being vulnerable with a group and trying new things.
This program will help your team explore the question, ‘what type of facilitator am I?’ and gives them a map to help them navigate their response to it.
A (fl)awesome facilitator accepts that no group, facilitator or workshop is perfect. They know the only thing they can truly control with a group is themselves.
At their best, a (fl)awesome facilitator aspires to be like a guide with groups, while recognising that they can also be a crowd pleaser, a referee and a dictator.
No matter how familiar they are with the territory, a guide needs a map. This map helps a (fl)awesome facilitator to navigate themselves. They know their default style, which type of facilitator they are being, or need to be, with a group.
The one thing that a team member leading a workshop can control is themselves. In this training, team members explore:
❏ What am I like as a facilitator?
❏ What is my facilitation style?
❏ How does that impact the group and the workshop?
❏ How do I facilitate when things don’t go to plan?
Your team will:
1. Learn the characteristics of four facilitator types.
2. Appreciate how each type influences the behaviour of groups and what results they get.
3. Identify their default type and what this means for their design and facilitation of workshops.
4. Recognise when they might be facilitating like one, two or all four of them in the same workshop.
5. Understand when they might need to move from one to another and between all four.
Jacinta draws on a range of content to address a team’s facilitation capability, context and needs including:
• Design: workshop flow, variety of activities, transitions, timing, what to cut out.
• Workshop stages: before, connect, ‘the work’, so what, now what and reflect.
• Visual facilitation to communicate memorable content fast.
• Group dynamics: group agreements and how to maintain them, working with dominate people and the quieter ones.
• Facilitation 'red flags' to look out for, avoid or negotiate.
The focus will be agreed with you in our Discovery Meeting.
❏ Want to stand out from other professionals.
❏ Want to truly be themselves with their meeting and workshop participants.
❏ Dream of consistently high engagement from people in their meetings and workshops but are not sure where to start.
❏ Embrace the opportunity to build, expand and extend their facilitation capability.
❏ Are happy with how they facilitate their meetings and workshops.
❏ Believe the agenda and the content speak for themselves.
❏ Want to convey information, not facilitate conversations about it.
Let’s talk about training with your organisation!
Click the button below or send me an email
What people say:
“Jacinta's training and ongoing mentorship has helped enhance the bd infrastructure team's facilitation skills to the next level. She is creative, surprising, generous, thought-provoking and fun; and we all feel inspired and empowered to take on our next facilitation challenge. Thank you Jacinta!!”
Rachel Fox, Principal, Engagement and Social Impact, bd infrastructure
“If you run workshops, training, forums, meetings, I highly recommend doing Jacinta Cubis’ (Fl)awesome Facilitation workshop. As the Population Health team, we were lucky enough to spend a few hours with Jacinta today - so many gems and takeaways from today, to boost our facilitation capabilities and improve getting our oral health messages out there. Thank you Jacinta, look forward to working together again.”
Amy Patterson, Director, Population Health, Dental Health Services Victoria
“My team completed Jacinta’s training program. Fantastic! It was engaging and energising, and provided really practical tips and strategies that the team have already used and implemented. It is one of the most useful programs I have undertaken.”
Anita Craike, Merri Health
“Jacinta's facilitation training re-inspired me to 'zoom out', push for clarity and support shared understanding of purpose and intent. She respectfully stretched us beyond our comfort zone. Jacinta, thanks for your passion and bringing your best for our team – every interaction has been a pleasure, learning experience and uplift in my day!”
Laura-Fayers-Pooley, Principal and Service Line Lead, Engagement and Social Impact, bd infrastructure
“Jacinta is an expert facilitator. Her training is purposeful, outcome focused, thoroughly in service of the group and full of surprises.”
Angela McMillan, Organisational Development and Learning Partner, Planet Innovation
“Jacinta helped me take my facilitation of leadership programs up to the next level. Working with Jacinta has made such a difference to the leadership programs I deliver. My programs are now more enjoyable for participants, and for me, too as the facilitator.”
Rita Cincotta, People & Capability Leadership Expert
“You will love Jacinta’s training. You’ll be challenged in a good way and take tonnes of practical tips away with you with the theory behind them.”
Emily Hargreaves, Health Infrastructure NSW
“Jacinta will show you how to plan and deliver engaging and worthwhile workshops, plus a host of tips and trick to add some extra zing!”
Nicola Holland, Level Crossing Removal Project
“Jacinta's professional development on was excellent. Lots of great resources, tips, inspiration. Very flexible for different skill levels. Highly recommended!”
Sophia Tipping, Orgyen Health
ABOUT JACINTA
Jacinta Cubis is a facilitation expert.
She loves supporting teams to ‘level up’ their facilitation capability. Clients and groups love her energy, creativity and humour.
With 25 years of facilitation experience, Jacinta has earned a reputation as a go-to facilitator, trainer and mentor for clients in diverse sectors including government, universities and community organisations, as well as consultants, technical experts and fellow facilitators.
Jacinta’s exceptional talent in visual thinking enables her to create captivating cartoons that make it easy for people to talk about the hard stuff. Her illustrated e-book HUM troubleshoots problems with online meetings.
Jacinta holds accreditations in community engagement (IAP2) and as a partnership broker, along with tertiary qualifications in corporate social responsibility, international relations and communications.
When not facilitating, or helping you learn how, you might Jacinta on her yoga mat, in her art studio, on the tennis court or the tango dance floor.
Jacinta is trusted by:
