Facilitation, Research-Based Soft Skills Learning

Good facilitation skills enhance meeting effectiveness

Course Specifications

Course Number: AOB76–003_rev1.0

Course Length: 5h 37min

A significant portion of work time is spent in meetings

Office workers spend a considerable amount of their work time in meetings—studies show this can range between 20–50 %. Meetings are highly impactful as they provide excellent opportunities for discussion, dialogue, sharing information, making decisions, and agreeing on implementation plans.

However, decisions made in meetings often fail to materialize. Studies reveal startling figures, with 50–67 % of meeting decisions remaining unimplemented. This is often due to unclear accountability, lack of follow-up actions, or failure to define the next steps during meetings. Improvements can be achieved by focusing on clarity in decision-making, assigning responsibilities, and committing to concrete follow-up actions—all areas where facilitation can have a powerful impact.

How to develop your team’s facilitation skills

How should facilitation skills be developed? Improving facilitation skills requires training, practice, and encouragement.

The foundation is built by learning the basics of facilitation. This includes familiarizing oneself with the fundamentals of both in-person and virtual meetings, mastering a comprehensive toolbox of facilitation techniques, and adopting best practices. At this stage, it’s important to actively reflect—both individually and with colleagues—on where and how facilitation skills could be applied.

Facilitation is about collaborative learning and experiential practice. Once the basics have been covered through training, it’s time to apply facilitation skills in situations identified as suitable during personal and shared reflections. Through practice, the tools and methods introduced in the training become integrated into the organization’s culture. Over time, your team will develop facilitation methods tailored to your organization’s specific goals and situations.

Establishing facilitation as a habit also requires encouragement. Employees need to be instilled with a bold mindset, emphasizing a willingness to learn and experiment. During trials, it’s essential to provide encouragement, recognition, and feedback. Successes begin to establish habits, leading to smoother meetings and enhanced productivity. Soon, employees will realize that these skills can be applied in other contexts, and their use will expand. As a result, facilitation becomes less intimidating for experts and managers alike. Employees start to understand that facilitation doesn’t have to be complicated and that anyone with basic skills and the willingness to use them can succeed. This marks a significant transformation in workplace culture.

Why invest in facilitation skills?

Facilitation is an enabler of modern work life. Today’s workplace constantly presents situations where facilitation can make a difference. You can use facilitation to develop strategies, manage change, foster teamwork, improve cross-department collaboration, innovate new products, enhance services, resolve conflicts—the possibilities are endless.

Facilitation brings efficiency to these situations, ensures every voice is heard, and saves time. Most importantly, it ensures that plans and decisions are more likely to translate into actionable outcomes.

Facilitation Tutorial Package: Real improvements to meeting productivity

The Facilitation Tutorial Package is designed to bring real change to the facilitation capabilities of professionals and managers. We develop facilitation skills through researched knowledge, microlearning, and reflection:

Research-Based Content: Rest assured, the training is impactful because it is grounded in research.

Microlearning: The content is designed to fit into even the busiest schedules.

Reflection: Reflection ensures the learning translates into practice. Through self-reflection and shared reflection, employees explore what emotions the training evokes, what the skills mean to them, where they could be used, and how to successfully apply these skills in their work.

This creates meaningful change—your team will use facilitation more often and more effectively. The result is better meeting productivity and higher success rates in implementing plans made during meetings.

Facilitation Tutorial Package provides the tools needed by leaders and experts

The Facilitation Tutorial Package is designed for beginners in facilitation and those interested in enhancing their skills. It offers practical tools for effectively guiding group processes in various work environments and situations. Whether working in-person or remotely, the Facilitation Training Package helps elevate facilitation skills to a new level, empowering teams to perform at their best.

Facilitation Tutorial package includes the following tutorials

Succeed in Facilitation, Smart-Tutorial (1h 30min)

This coaching is designed by experienced facilitation professionals! You will learn the best tips and intelligence they have gathered along the way. In addition, you will learn the most common tools and techniques that you can utilize in facilitation and participation in workshops.

Facilitator\'s Toolkit, Smart-Tutorial (1h 30min)

This course allows you to dive deeper into facilitation. You will master various tools, methods, and techniques to utilize. After the training, you’ll have more fun in creating diverse, interactive and well-facilitated workshops!

Remote Facilitation, Smart-Tutorial (1h 30min)

Understand the prerequisites for hosting a successful virtual meeting! Transferring from traditional offices to a remote environment has brought us lots of new possibilities, but also many challenges. What are the most common pitfalls of virtual meetings, and how could you conquer them? This tutorial presents the best practices of virtual facilitation. Become a master in hosting virtual workshops!

Learning Together, Smart-Tutorial (30 min)

In this training, we will tell you how to best utilize online trainings together with your team. You will get tips for facilitating conversations and motivating your team members. We offer alternative methods of learning together – you can pick the one that works best for your team.

Team leader’s Academy of Brain –Develop Your Team!, Smart-Tutorial (30 min)

In this tutorial we will go through the ways in which you as a team leader can best utilize our materials with your team. The online tutorials by Academy of Brain will provide you with concrete and practical tools to address these challenges.

The Basic Principles of Coaching Leadership, Quick-Tutorial (4 min)

Would you like to become a coaching leader? Get a grasp of the fundamentals of coaching leadership with this short video! A coaching leader directs their energy towards people to harness the potential of individuals and the group. It has been shown to increase the well-being of individuals and the productivity of the organization.

3 Ways to Find Time for Learning, Quick-Tutorial (3 min)

Struggling to find time to learn at work? You’re not alone. This short tutorial introduces three simple ways to make space for learning – without overloading your schedule. Whether it’s in meetings, daily planning, or team routines, you’ll find ideas that are easy to try and built to last.