“These are people who run a lot of workshops, like Climate Fresks or activity dashboard reviews. The goal is to give them the tools to facilitate smoothly and keep each workshop aligned with its objectives.”
Before Facilitation, a solo skill.
Facilitation often stays a solo skill. The default is familiar: train one person and expect the skill to travel. At Mobilize, eight colleagues were already leading workshops, each drawing on their own experience. The goal was clear: workshops that run smoothly and stay on their objective. What they did not have yet was a shared method to get there.
“We realised more people than planned could take the facilitation training.”
The Art of Facilitation An hour of video, a day of practice.
The Art of Facilitation: about an hour of video to learn the basics, a day in the room to practise them, then a remote session to facilitate online. We rebuilt the brief around the eight people who would use it, and kept the budget already approved.
It started as a catalogue order: one seat on a three-day course. Then the innovation team realised more people than planned needed the skill. At their request, we dropped a product-management course from the order and opened facilitation to the whole group on the same budget. A facilitation specialist from our network shaped the program with us.
Before the practice day, the videos covered the basics: the challenges of working together, the theory, the techniques, the tools. On 18 June the group spent a day in Paris putting them to work. With post-its, dot votes and a live poll on Mentimeter, they went through a whole workshop as participants, then looked at why each exercise worked.
The second session moved online to practise facilitating at a distance. On 12 July the group met on Butter, a platform built for remote workshops, and reworked the essentials for sessions run through a screen. Each participant then received the course guide to keep.
After Facilitation, now a team skill.
Before
One seat on a 3-day course.
Eight workshop leaders, no shared method yet.
After
8 workshop leaders trained.
One method, in the room and online.
Same training budget.
Eight workshop leaders learned the same basics, side by side. They practised the moves that keep a workshop on its objective and get the whole room working. Then they took the same method online.
Feedback from the group after the final session was positive. The video-first format held up: with the theory covered beforehand, the day in the room went to practice.
Legacy. After The Art of Facilitation, the skill no longer depends on one trained person. It sits with the eight colleagues who run workshops at Mobilize, backed by one shared method and a course guide they can come back to.