Intro to Facilitation

Get a taste for Facilitation

In this fun, fast-paced, hands-on intro session, you’ll sharpen your facilitation skills through practice and peer feedback. Erik and Douglas will lead you through various virtual facilitation methods, teaching why and how they work.

You’ll practice tips and tricks so you can incorporate these jedi techniques into everyday virtual meetings like a pro. You’ll end the workshop with a new way of looking at facilitating workshops online and the confidence to approach it with renewed energy and optimism. It’s not just about a bigger toolbox, but developing internal resources that you can draw on to be a master facilitator.

Also, make sure to stick around to the very end for giveaways.

If you are ready to purchase a ticket to the summit or learn more, you can check out the official summit page on our calendar.

Date

January 6, 2022

Time

3pm - 4pm CT​

Location

Live Online

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Interested in a private cohort for your team?

What to expect

WHAT TO EXPECT

Facilitators lead and guide teams through important virtual and in-person gatherings (think: “lockdowns,” working sessions, strategic meetings, etc.) to achieve better outcomes. They are skilled at developing focused agendas, leading collaborative activities, remaining impartial, and keeping participants on task. Even if you are not a professional facilitator, many of us have to play the role of facilitator at key moments in our day-to-day work. Here’s your chance to learn tools to do it more successfully.

What You'll Learn

Keeping virtual meeting participants engaged requires more than an agenda. We will coach you how to leverage new paradigms like virtual liberating structures, sensemaking, capturing virtual room intelligence, how to pivot when virtual challenges come your way, and drafting the correct narratives as the backbone of your agenda. Lastly, we will show you how to capture feedback so that each member in the meeting is leveling up.

How You'll Learn

The class will be activity-based with facilitation simulations and collaborative sessions. You’ll have the chance to try new facilitation approaches and frameworks in a safe space. We won’t just talk at you — you’ll learn through doing, work with other participants, and get feedback. There will be plenty of time for Q&A, so you can learn from our experience running hundreds of workshops at some of the world’s largest enterprises.

Agenda

Deep Work Session 1

Advanced Fundamentals

Deep Work Session 2

Visual Synthesis

Deep Work Session 3

Addressing Dysfunction

Deep Work Session 4

Meeting Systems

Who Should Attend

Professional Facilitators

Who want to hone their virtual facilitation craft.

Scrum Masters

Seeking to improve virtual planning, grooming, and retro sessions.

Design Thinkers

Looking to add new tools and concepts to your virtual tool belt .

Leaders

Coming to the realization that facilitated leadership in the virtual landscape is the future.

Key Takeaways

Your unique mix of strengths and weaknesses

Simple virtual tools to transform everyday meetings

Strategies to address meeting dysfunction

A personalized plan for your meeting culture

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Erik Skogsberg

Erik believes that a deep empathy and caring, rooted in human-centered design, systems thinking, and futures thinking best supports partners in finding their solutions. Erik is passionate about supporting clients imagining innovative approaches to complex organizational challenges.

​Trained as an educator, designer, researcher, and change agent, he brings significant teaching, design, mentoring, professional learning and development, organizational change, and research experiences from across secondary, higher education, non-profit, and industry contexts. Whether working with individuals, teams, or organizations, he helps people design lasting growth and innovation. Prior to working with Voltage Control, he co-founded Michigan State University’s Hub for Innovation in Learning and Technology, an internal design consultancy focused on learning experience design, innovation, and organizational transformation.

He earned his B.A. in English Literature from Western Washington University, M.A.T. in Secondary English Education from Brown University, and Ph.D. from Michigan State University in Curriculum, Instruction, and Teacher Education.

Douglas Ferguson

Douglas Ferguson is an entrepreneur and human-centered technologist with over 20 years of experience. He is Founder and President of Voltage Control, an Austin-based facilitation agency that specializes in helping teams work better together through participatory decision making and design inspired facilitation techniques. He has helped transform teams from U.S. SOCOM, the Air Force, Adobe, Dropbox, Fidelity, Vrbo, Liberty Mutual, Humana, and SAIC.

Douglas is a thought leader and master facilitator of Design Sprints, Innovation Workshops, Team Alignment Workshops, Transformations, Meeting Systems, and Culture Workshops. He is also the author of three books: Beyond the Prototype, How to Remix Anything (co-authored), and Start Within (co-authored).

Motivated by a mission to rid the world of horrible meetings and offer meaningful meetings in their place, Voltage Control is calling upon fellow facilitators to transform meeting and innovation culture. From free weekly community meetups to Control the Room–the annual facilitator summit, Voltage Control is building a community of facilitators to change the world.
What People Are Saying

"Anyone that can construct a sequence of conversations to lead others is a metaskill. Anyone who participates in meetings or owns an agenda would benefit from this. It is a whirlwind, but you are among others who are in charge of making an impact. This is a practical, hands-on deep dive for managers, entrepreneurs, and leaders who can change their culture by leading meetings like a pro."

Mark T.

HEAD OF SERVICES FOR MURAL

"I realized my entire role is facilitation. I have to do a lot of lateral influencing. So I use these skills even if it is not a super-structured workshop. Our product team has micro meetings all the time, and these methods help us get the most of those moments. My team can lean on me to facilitate. You will redesign the way you have conversations. I can’t believe every college student doesn’t have to take a class like this. This is how you collaborate. It is the underpinning of the future of work."

Savannah C.

PRODUCT DESIGNER @ TAILWIND

Apply for a Diversity Scholarship

A key part of our mission is to support diverse facilitators from different methodologies, backgrounds, races, genders, sexual orientations, cultures, and ages. If you are a part of, or serve, a traditionally underrepresented group and feel that this scholarship would allow you to amplify this mission, please apply now.

Photo Disclaimer

Please note that photographs, video & audio recordings will be taken throughout this event. These will be used by Voltage Control for marketing and publicity in our publications, on our website and in social media, or in any third-party publication. Please contact us via email if you have any concerns or if you wish to be exempted from this activity.​

The Books

Bring Your Ideas to Life

Innovation can seem complex or reserved for the exceptional. But we believe innovation is for everyone. We’ve set out to illuminate a path for you to generate bold ideas, visualize and share them, overcome obstacles, and turn them into reality. Our books are equal parts guidebook and stories from years of experience helping companies adopt an innovation mindset and culture. They’re practical & actionable, so you can get started now. We hope they’ll help you on your journey to realizing your biggest, boldest ideas.

Learn More