Secrets to Designing Dynamic Workshops from Scratch

This 5-day teleclass will walk you through the building blocks of designing and delivering effective experiential workshops. It will cover all the elements of workshop design using a simple, well-organized, and proven approach. You'll have the opportunity in this class to complete the design of your own workshop with the help of fellow students and instructors. If you'd like to learn this material at your own pace and on your own schedule, you can purchase the real audio version of this teleclass complete with the learning guide. Click here for details.

Managing People You Rarely See

Do you need to get rapid results from people collaborating across multiple locations? This class will discuss managing remote relationships and frameworks for successfully managing projects across large distances. There are issues created by the geographic distance between team members. But those issues can be overcome, and in fact, the potential of a distance team to accomplish amazing feats far outweighs any logistical liabilities. The course contains consolidated information packed into a five-hour format. Click here for details.

This Meeting Sux, 12 Acts of Courage to Change Meetings for Good.. Many of us are frustrated with our leaders at all levels.  We are realizing that it is time to take intentional acts of leadership ourselves, even when we are not in charge.

This is the first practical guide that contains the knowledge, skills, and action steps that you, as a meeting participant, can use to change meetings for good. . Bring this timely information and a willingness to “act now” in your meetings, and you will be a formidable force for change in your organization.

Also available in paperback. ==> preview

Facilitating at a Distance--The Essentials of Teleclass and Virtual Meeting Facilitation. Have you considered offering a teleclass as a more efficient way to deliver training, enhance group learning and generate more income for your business?  Or, are you working with a distributed team that requires you to design and facilitate virtual meetings?

When done right, Teleclasses and Virtual Meetings (T/VM) are very effective and inexpensive ways to train, collaborate, and problem-solve. But if they aren't effectively facilitated, T/VM's can be a boring waste of time! This ebook covers all the elements of T/VM facilitation using a simple, well-organized, and proven experiential approach. This book is for anyone who would like to facilitate, manage, teach, mediate, coach, counsel, or direct any group using teleconferences in their business. ==> preview

The Facilitator's Checklist Collection. Running a group can get complicated and there's lots to forget. These handy checklists can really help refresh your memory and add to your effectiveness in no time.

This ebook contains over 25 Checklists on many aspects of facilitation such as agenda development, intervention, participation, processing, etc. ==> preview

The Facilitation Models Collection. A good model that fits your style of leadership and your particular situation can be priceless. It's like finding a map you've been searching for and finally finding it.

This 30-page collection contains 20 models on practically every aspect of group facilitation including decision-making, communication, intervention, teamwork, training, and more. ==> preview

The Facilitator Questions Collection. This 35-page collection contains 20 sets of questions grouped according to the many themes upon which groups typically focus. Use these lists in preparation for working with a group or use them as catalysts for the development of your own questions.

Getting Full Participation ebook. This Facilitator Guide explores Getting Full Participation more completely than any other document we've seen.

- No fluff! This guide is practical, easy to read, with ideas and actions you can use right away.
- Includes a full training license so that you can teach this material to others.
- Includes tools and perspectives that will help your group members understand what it means to participate fully.
- Illustrated 25-page guide will help you to drill down deep and master the art of facilitating Full Participation in any situation.
- This information-packed guide is a must to include in your personal Facilitator's Toolkit.
- Includes 3 bonuses including an audio portion that answers real world problems in getting Full Participation from group members.

Intervene With Confidence ebook. According to our readers, and in our own experience, Group "Intervention" is one of the most challenging skills to develop as a facilitator. So, we are especially pleased to announce the release of our second Facilitator Guides for Group Intervention.

- "Intervene With Confidence" is practical, easy to read, with models, tips, and strategies you can use right away.
- Includes an audio portion that answers real world problems around Intervention.
- Includes models that will help you decide when and when not to Intervene, how deep to Intervene, and how to Intervene gracefully.
- Illustrated 33-page guide will help you to drill down deep and master the art of Intervention in any situation.
- This information-packed guide is a must to include in your personal Facilitator's Toolkit.

Becoming a Learning Facilitator ebook. 55-page ebook packed with useful models, strategies, and approaches to enlivening your approach to teaching and training based on an Integral Learning Model.
- Learning Content. Explores the context and scope of learning content.
- The Learning Facilitator. Explores role distinctions, making the shift from director to guide, core values of the learning facilitator, getting full participation, and a trainer self-assessment.
- Learning Models. Examines 8 different learning models to help round out the delivery of learning based on perspectives and learning styles.
- Learning Culture. Explores the elements required to develop a "Learning Culture."
- Learning Strategies. Examines 4 different learning strategies: the Kolb Learning Cycle, Instruction Events, Socratic Method, and Open Space Technology.

The Portable Article Bank. For Facilitators, Trainers, Teachers, Coaches, Leaders, and Consultants. This ebook contains the top 50 issues of the Master Facilitator Journal. Engaging content you're used to receiving in the Journal, polished and formatted into the form of publishable articles. Articles contain resources such as a useful book or website that pertains to the content, examples, and action steps to take to improve your facilitation skills.

- Use articles as handouts to educate and empower teammates with tools to improve communication, team cooperation, meeting, and problem solving skills.
- Useful content for facilitation and leadership training.
- Use as content and backup for public speaking, workshops, and seminars.
- Use as reference resource for your own facilitation skill development.
- Use as engaging content for your website.
- Licensing option provides you a new revenue source.

Master Worker Ebooklet. No matter what field you're in or select in the future, there are foundational skills, also known as "core competencies," that, once in place, position you to learn about and to excel in anything you choose. This ebook offers tips on the following 16 "core" competencies that best position you for success in the workplace:
- Customer Service And Public Relations
- Basic Business Principles
- Workplace Standards/Requirements
- Problem-Solving/Decision-Making
- Responsibility
- Project And Time Management
- Teamwork
- Motivation
- Integrity
- Respect For Others
- Listening
- Writing
- Public Speaking
- Conflict Resolution
- Self Esteem
- Stress Management

The Authentic Marketer ebook. A marketing approach for personal growth business owners based on the following five empowering frameworks whose primary focus is on the inner workings of you, the marketer :

- Poise: Relating From Your Authentic Self. "As Within So Without," as you work with your Inner Self, your outer world changes profoundly.

- Path: Following Your Natural Attractions. You'll recognize your path by the feeling you get when you're on it and when you're not.

- Purposeful Creation: Making Stuff Up. When we combine the action of making stuff up with the intention to be authentic, we give birth to the best of what we have to offer.

- Perseverance: Mastering The Energy of Money. The relationship between marketing and making money is crucial to your persevering on the Authentic Marketing Path.

- Practice: Operating Within Authentic Marketing Frameworks. This involves integrating and practicing the Authentic Marketing Frameworks as a new personal operating system.

Partner Products

Meeting Mentor Software Tool from Mindsights

Successful Teams …  Need Successful Meetings. MindSights Meeting Mentor empowers any meeting leader with professional facilitation skills to run successful meetings, every time.    

The Growing Need for Quality Meetings

Patrick Lencioni, author of the popular book Death by Meeting says; “As more of what people do takes place in teams, meetings become the setting in which the really important work gets done. Team and organizational success is becoming more dependant on the quality of its meetings.”

The Meeting Productivity Crisis

The book “How to Make Meeting Work” was written by Michael Doyle over 40 years ago. Yet, current studies still show up to 30% of meetings are unproductive. This equates to over $11 billion dollars of lost US productivity each year.  So what’s the solution?

The Meeting Productivity Solution

Running effective meeting can be very difficult.  But as professional meeting facilitators knows, the critical success factor is NOT about preparing an Agenda but about running the meeting as a Process and elevating meeting participants thinking effectiveness. Skilled meeting leaders do this by using four facilitation skills:

1. Finding the right 2-3 critical questions to ask meeting participants.
2. Bringing the right “cognitive” tools to the meeting.
3. Clearly identifying the meeting purpose and outcomes.
4. Facilitating meeting process and flow.

The Answer: MindSights Meeting Mentor (MMM)  See Demo

MMM emulates how skilled meeting leaders function and empowers any meeting leader with these same facilitation skills needed to run successful meetings – every time.

This unique self-mentoring software product can benefit you in the following ways.

1. Help the skilled meeting leader find the right questions to ask and tools to use
2. Facilitate the novice meeting leader through the entire process to planning and delivering great meetings.
3. Jump-start any meeting leaders planning with pre-developed meetings.
4. Use MMM “as is” or customize to fit your meeting.

Click here for a demo

Ready to try it?

The regular price for the Meeting Mentor is $99.95.
We're offering this product at FacilitatorU for only $79



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Expert Interview Library

This section contains a collection of one-hour pre-recorded teleclasses on a variety of facilitation and related topics available in either Real Audio, Compact Disk, or MP3 formats. Each program comes complete with written notes and other bonuses. Click on the title to view details for each program below.

	Using Your Inner Wisdom as Facilitator. Featuring Penney Peirce, Author of the "Intuitive Way," and professional "expert intuitive." Featuring acclaimed author Penney Peirce, author, speaker, and professional intuitive.
	How to Design Winning Workshops and Seminars. "10 Questions Every Facilitator Should Answer Before Designing Their Next Workshop." Featuring Marg Wall, M.Ed., Adult Educator, Learning Specialist.
	Present, But Not Accounted For. Specific Strategies to Build Curiosity, Commitment and Collaboration. Featuring Susan Wilson, Facilitator, Speaker, Author and Founder of Executive Strategies, Inc.
	The 5 P's of Guided Imagery. Learn this multifaceted and powerful tool that you can use not only with your clients, but with yourself. Featuring Ellen Britt, Ed.D., speaker, trainer, and co-founder of Primal Waters.
	The Art of Improv in Facilitation. Learn to use humor and improvisational theater techniques as facilitation tools. Featuring Izzy Gesell, speaker, author, trainer and expert in Improv Theater Techniques.
	Igniting Self-Expression Through Open Space Technology. Learn this process to capture knowledge, experience, and innovation in your organization. Featuring Judi Richardson, Facilitator, Speaker, Author and Trainer.
	Dynamic Facilitation. Reaching Consensus on Impossible Problems--Tools for a New Cooperacy. Featuring Jim Rough, Consultant, Speaker, Seminar Leader and Author.
	Think Like a Global Leader. Understand how political, cultural, and sustainability issues affect teams, organizations, and their leaders. Featuring Hannah Wilder, PhD., Cross Cultural Executive Coach, Author, President of Advantara Executive Development Worldwide, Inc. and Global Executive Coach Training Institute.
	In Conversation with the Field. Shedding light on consciousness as cause. Featuring Philip Golabuk, Author, Trainer and founder of the Field Center and creator of the Field Center Curriculum.
	Facilitating Collective Intelligence. How to facilitate and harness the larger capacities of groups. Featuring Tom Atlee, author, democracy innovator, and founder of the Co-Intelligence Institute.
	Humor, an Essential Ingredient for All Good Facilitators. What is humor and how to use it to your advantage as a facilitator. Featuring Ann Fry, Author, Speaker, Trainer and Founder of HumorU.com.
	The Business of Facilitation. Keys to marketing and pricing facilitation services and outcomes while living a balanced life. Featuring Bev Lutz and Cheryl Kartes, Facilitators, Trainers, and Consultants.
	A "Behind the Scenes" Look at FacilitatorU.com. A 90-minute teleclass for the "would-be" Infopreneur explaining the nuts and bolts of building an Internet business. Featuring Steve Davis, Founder of FacilitatorU.com.
	7 Simple Rules For Producing Remarkable Projects. Keys to facilitating the design, management, and commitment to projects that inspire and surpass expectations. Featuring Michael Port, Author, Speaker, and Trainer.
	Facilitators' Secret Power: Three Hidden Levels of Facilitator Influence. Explore the hidden dynamics available to facilitators to get through” more powerfully to those whom you lead . Featuring Bill Bauman, Trainer, Speaker, and Motivator.
	Defusing Explosions: What to do with anger and conflict in groups. Learn how to constructively deal with those most difficult times when things get hairy in groups. Featuring Dee Kelsey and Pam Plumb, Authors, Facilitators, and Trainers.
	Creating Safety and Trust in Your Groups: A Transformative New Approach to Working With Resistance. Learn how honoring resistance can help move your groups forward. Featuring Alyce Barry, Certified Shadow Work Group Facilitator and Coach.
	Introduction to Emotional Freedom and Healing: a revolutionary approach to transforming and eliminating challenges and blocks for you and your clients. An introduction to Emotional Freedom Modalities, as well as an opportunity to experience the power of this work using your own personal issues. Featuring Richard Ross, a transformational mentor, coach, spiritual counselor, and facilitator of personal healing.
	I'm Sorry. What's Your Name Again? Foolproof Techniques to Remembering People's Names. Here's an opportunity to spend an hour with an expert in this area and learn what it takes to remember people's names once and for all. Featuring Tom Weber, national memory trainer, author, and speaker.
	Influencing Change in Groups and Individuals. Discover how change is in your best interest. Learn ideas that will help both you and those you work with to become more flexible and open to change. Featuring Kevin Eikenberry, facilitator, trainer, author, and speaker.
	Leverage Your "Relational Presence" for Masterful Group Leadership. The Introverts answer to public speaking and group presence. Featuring Lee Glickstein, author, speaker, trainer, and founder of BeHeard Now Training.
	The Mindful Facilitator...Cultivating Professional Presence Through Mindfulness. Practical strategies for recognizing and working with the attachments that pull us away from being fully present and in service to our groups. Featuring Doug Silsbee, Executive Coach, Consultant, and Author of the Mindful Coach.
	Nine Views of the World...Bringing the Wisdom of the Enneagram to Facilitation. How the Enneagram defines the nine different ways of viewing and reacting to the world. Featuring Valerie Atkin, founder of Wells Street Consulting
	Tapping into Emotional Intelligence and Stress Management to Enhance Leader Performance...how Emotional Intelligence, stress management and successful facilitation skills can combine to form a three-legged stool to enhance your performance as a facilitator. Featuring Dr. Dick Thompson, founder of High Performing Systems, Inc.
	Facilitating Egos ...how to get the "know it alls" onboard. If you've worked with groups for very long, you've run into the participant who knows it all and just can't follow anyone else's lead. There are effective ways to work with big egos without spoiling the party. Listen to this one-hour interview featuring Dr. Eileen Dowse, Certified Master Facilitator, Speaker, Author and Founder of Human Dynamics.
	A Visionary approach to accessing collective consciousness ... The Vistar Method of Communication® (VMC) is an Evolutionary Meeting Structure for accessing the unlimited potential of the Creative Source using four simple rules and a structure that are easy to learn. Very quickly one can learn to guide meetings and engage in the energetic movement of group intention, which lead to ever deepening and enriching levels of meaning and true connection. It's about energy, it's about clarity, it's about moving toward unity, beyond the quagmires and barriers experienced in normal group communication in businesses, in families, certainly on the world stage...even the United Nations!
	Project Nature Connect... Transforming disorders into well being through reconnecting with nature. Interview with Dr. Michael J. Cohen, Project Nature Connect.

Master Facilitator Journal Archives

Over 190+ past issues of the Master Facilitator Journal. A new issue is added weekly to this Searchable database. Only $29 per year or about 50 cents per issue.
Click here to view samples and more info...

Free Sample Collection!

Seniors of Organizational Development

   Try this selection for free. Just click on the picture to the right to download. This collection offers brief articles by (and in one case, about) senior consultants who have been gurus for consultants in the field of OD. Billie Alban, Dick and Emily Axelrod, Geoff Bellman, Peter Block, Barbara Bunker, Kathie Dannemille, and Bob Tannenbaum all discuss issues important to their consulting.

Coaching Tools

The Foundations of Coaching

The coaching profession has its foundations in sports coaching, counseling, behavioral sciences, consulting, and more. These five authors explore the beginnings and rise of this discipline. Anyone who coaches should read these articles, and may want to share some of them with clients as well.
More detail / order...

Coaching Tools

In this issue, you’ll find six articles that provide a wealth of tools you will use again and again in your coaching. The authors are seasoned and successful coaches who share the learnings of years of experience. What gets in the way of developing new habits? What are some specific skills the best coaches use well? What are the steps in coaching emotional intelligence? They’re all here. More detail / order...

Leadership

Developing Leaders in a New Century

In this collection, we open with an article describing a complete program that combines a number of new and classic methods, followed by articles that highlight some of the methods and leadership characteristics that are being emphasized today: inclusion, appreciative inquiry, sustainability. And we close with an overview of the state of the art in leadership development methods. More detail / order...

Leading Organizational Change

In this collection, six authors provide important strategies for leading change in any organization. Share these four articles with partners in change management to help develop a consistent philosophy and style. Share them with clients to help clients understand their part in the change process.
More detail / order...

Managing in a New World

In this collection, six authors offer perspectives on management issues in an information economy populated by a new breed of worker. Share these insights with any leader who is working to improve the way they, and their organization, manage the people of the new millennium.
More detail / order...

New Leaders — The First 100 Days

This issue offers five important articles for the new leader, focusing on the priorities and skills needed in the first few months of tenure in a new position. Share it with leaders at all levels as they begin a new challenge.
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Non-Profit Consulting

Consulting With Non-profits

If you are consulting for non-profits, or considering it, this issue has important lessons from people whove been doing it for years. There’s information on how non-profits operate, their values, processes and priorities, what clients want, and how some non-profits deal with problems. There’s also guidance on how and why to use an interim executive director, and some advice for new and potential board members. More detail / order...

Strategic Consulting With Non-profits

This issue provides a variety of perspectives on doing strategic work with nonprofit organizations. There’s an article on how to run a strategic planning retreat. Or as an alternative to developing ‘the plan,’ we offer an article on how to teach the board to think strategically. There’s an article on what non-profit clients look for in a consultant, and one on how to address that gap between board ideas and staff action. Plus ideas from an international panel of consultants on working with non-profits using Future Search. More detail / order...

Project Management

Project Management

This issue focuses on resources for project managers — helping them plan for success in all their projects. Two of the articles focus on planning skills for managers of technical projects. The other three are applicable to all kinds of projects, including organizational change efforts. You’ll find these compact two-page articles will be powerful aids in training as well. More detail / order...

Consulting Tools

Organizational Diagnosis Models and Methods

This issue offers five articles that describe models and methods used by organizational and management consultants who want to understand client organizations. From hints to make needs analysis interviews and feedback meetings more effective, to overviews of systems models, these methods help consultants effectively identify the important dynamics and priority issues. More detail / order...

Adapting Appreciative Inquiry

This issue focuses on Appreciative Inquiry, a popular design for group work that while not ignoring problems, uses the positive as a focus for action. The methods (or for some, more a tao, a way of working) are based on work done by David Cooperrider and others at Case Western Reserve University in the 1980s. AI is being adapted for many uses; authors outline a spectrum of the adaptations here. More detail / order...

Consulting Skills: Twelve Articles

This issue offers a dozen thought-provoking articles that describe models, methods and issues in organizational consulting. Topics include thoughtful lessons from the field, models for discovery, diagnosis and handling resistance, hints on interviews and data feedback, a light hearted but helpful look at some problem clients with solution ideas, and a discussion of some common ethical issues, and more. More detail / order...

Marketing

Strategic Marketing For Professionals

Here are five articles that overview marketing for professionals who provides intangible services. These articles offer ideas that help you design the strategy for your business. Use them to lay a foundation for your marketing effort, to provide an infusion of ideas and energy, or to get a few new hints that will provide a big payoff. More detail / order...

Marketing on a Budget

This issue offers ideas and tools for effective marketing that won’t drain the budget. The authors offer clever and creative twists on traditional strategies like networking, press releases, and mailing. And you’ll find a packet of great new ideas as well. These are ideas you can use at any stage in building your business, and energy generators for your marketing anytime.
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Whole System Change

Principles of Whole-System Change

Whole-system change involves getting the entire system — a 20 person department, a 2500-person division, or representatives of an entire community — into one room for long enough to have a shared understanding of history, priorities and actions needed. It is changing the way organizational change is done. These articles explain the underlying principles of these methods. More detail / order...

Organizational Change

Tools for Organization Change

This collection offers seven articles providing a variety of tools used by consultants involved in organizational change. These tools include models like Weisbord’s Six Boxes and Bridges Transition Model, a process-change model, a communication plan for change projects, and some ideas for ways to mark important transitions. More detail / order...

Teams

Working With Teams

In this issue we bring you six articles on all aspects of teams, from the processes teams use to solve problems, to ground rules for task teams, to the critical success factors for virtual teams.
More detail / order...

e.commerce coaching and consulting for personal growth professionals

Get the guidance and support you need to present yourself and your products in the Internet arena.

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