facilitation skills * meetings * professional facilitator * Facilitation4Results courses

TRAINING

Good meetings don't just happen. Statistics show that American professionals lose an average of 31 hours per month in unproductive meetings. Leaders with outstanding facilitation skills are key to productive meetings that save time and money by increasing meeting focus and efficiency.

Ruth Siguenza regularly offers courses in facilitation and graphic facilitation in North America.  She also offers courses in Asia, Africa, and/or Europe about once a year, most often in conjunction with International Association of Facilitators annual conferences in those regions.  All her courses give participants common sense processes they can use immediately to facilitate and support facilitation in their organizations.

Courses available:

          • Make Meetings Meaningful:  Practical Facilitation

          • Graphic Facilitation

          • Other courses, workshops, and presentations

Make Meetings Meaningful:  Practical Facilitation

This course was developed in response to repeated requests from Ruth's clients and colleagues for a consolidation of her approach, worksheets, and templates that she has developed and used for over 15 years.  Originally developed as a short workshop for professional conferences, the course has been expanded to align with both the International Association of Facilitators core competencies and to be endorsed as a Tier II facilitation course for the International Association for Public Participation Professional Development Series. 

Offering participants the skills and confidence to design and lead productive meetings, this course demystifies the art of facilitation by providing an easy and practical method that participants can use to help groups efficiently generate information and ideas, sort and make sense of gathered information, and act on information to make better decisions.

This course is appropriate for participants of all skills and interest levels, including staff professionals, project leaders, supervisors, and managers at all organizational levels who need to run effective meetings and achieve meaningful results.

Running a full three days, the course offers both presentation and hands-on practice of key concepts and skills.  Participants also receive a 125-page course book filled with checklists, templates, and practical, real-life examples.  Participants leave the course with skills and tools they can use to facilitate a meeting right away.

Course objectives:

1.  Understand the unique roles of facilitators, meeting sponsors, clients, and those for whom the meeting results are the most important.

2.  Learn to align meeting purpose, agenda, and facilitation tools to maximize meeting effectiveness and productivity.

3.  Be able to identify the three (3) primary types of facilitation tools and select the appropriate tool(s) for the situation.

4.  Address common facilitation challenges, including building consensus, constructively addressing challenging behavior, and assessing and managing conflict.

5.  Practice and receive feedback on your individual facilitation style and skills through practical exercises. 

Sessions of this course will be offered in Everett, Washington, USA, on March 17-19, June 3-5, September 9-11, and December 2-4.  Dates for a November course in Las Vegas, Nevada are currently being negotiated.  

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Graphic Facilitation (Flipchart Graphics: Increase Meeting Communication and Understanding with Graphic Facilitation)

This course is available in a full-day, half-day, and 90-minute session.  It illustrates how to increase meeting communication and understanding with flipcharts and graphic facilitation.  It focuses on bringing out the creative artist that already exists inside each participant.  Through hands-on experimentation and practice, students discover the ease and impact of adding color and basic shapes to regular flipcharts.  They learn the secrets of adding emphasis with chalk pastels in combination with regular flipchart markers.  In addition, they share ideas for bringing life to plain flipcharts.  Students leave the session with increased confidence and comfort with their own writing and drawing styles. Course Objectives:

1. To illustrate the value that can be added to meetings through the use of graphic facilitation

2. To become more comfortable with basic writing and drawing skills, including drawing of basic figures

3. To learn to use different marker and chalk colors for effect and emphasis

4. To share ideas for graphically illustrating various meeting concepts and terms

This course is appropriate for students of all skills and interest levels.  No prior experience is necessary.

Full day sessions of this course will be offered in Everett, Washington, USA, on April 11, May 15, August 14, and October 16, 2008.

Other Courses, Workshops, and Presentations

Ruth also develops customized courses in response to individual client requests. For example, in 2004, she developed a workshop for the YMCA entitled " Life Skills: The Sitcom Approach to Communication and Problem-Solving " which used a light-hearted approach to exploring how the art of asking questions can help families more effectively approach conflict resolution.

Ruth presents additional workshops and presentations around the world each year, including:

"Tools for Collaborative Environmental Problem Solving"

   Mesquite, Nevada, USA 2006