Trauma-informed facilitation training
“Perplexity is the beginning of knowledge.”
– Khalil Gibran
What is facilitation?
Facilitation is the art of making conversations easy.
Facilitation is about building bridges between different perspectives, needs, priorities and experiences so that people can understand each other and find common ground.
It’s a core skill for enabling more purposeful and effective conversations between colleagues, friends, organisers, students, clients, family members etc.
Good facilitation is particularly important when the stakes are high, people feel activated, and time is precious.
What is trauma-informed facilitation?
Group conversations can sometimes tap into difficult feelings, memories or even traumatic experiences for people.
Trauma is created when choice and agency is taken away from someone. Trauma-informed facilitation therefore centres the following principles:
Voice, choice and agency: All participation is optional, and participants get to choose how they engage
Collaboration: Building in feedback loops so the group can make adjustments together when something isn’t working
Safety and trust: Providing anticipatory guidance so people know what’s coming and actively integrating their feedback
Peer support: Creating opportunities for people respond to each other by sharing their own experiences
Cultural humility: Actively working against dominant cultural norms based on race, gender, sexual orientation, class, religion, age, geography etc., creating space for self-expression and mutual learning
As a certified Resilience Toolkit facilitator, I draw on my knowledge of the stress response in the nervous system to support people in the moment when activation occurs.
What does the facilitation training look like?
My facilitation training is highly interactive, practical and playful.
It can be adapted to different contexts and is designed to support people to host engaging and inclusive conversations with greater clarity and confidence.
The training is split across a minimum of two sessions, which cover:
Session 1
What is (and isn’t) the role and responsibility of the facilitator?
How do you clarify the purpose of a conversation, meeting or gathering?
What methods and tools can you use to help the group achieve that purpose?
Session 2
How can you create more safety in a group to enable meaningful engagement?
How do you deal with power dynamics and conflict?
How do you take care of yourself while you facilitate?
What clients have said
Are you looking for something else?
If you’re looking for facilitation training that is focused on a particular angle (such as navigating conflict or dealing with differences in power and seniority), a training the trainers approach or anything else, book a free call so we can think it through together.