What will you learn?
Define the value proposition of a well-designed, well-facilitated workshop and articulate it to a potential “client”. Understand the role and mindset of the effective facilitator and what it looks like when done well (and not well.) Establish principles for the art of gathering in your context.
01 Explain the “Why?” of Facilitation
Discover and hone workshop outcomes. Choose the right framework and processes. Build an agenda and run of show that will deliver the outcomes and withstand the unexpected. Learn how to use online tools to support the design process.
02 Design the Blueprint
Create a physical space that inspires collaboration and engagement.
Open with an irresistible hook. Connect participants to purpose and to
each other from the outset. Create and maintain psychological safety that ensures all participants feel seen, understood, and appreciated.
03 Create the Container
Help the group make sense of their current situation and “feel the
problem” they are there to solve. Create a pool of shared understanding, reconciling multiple versions of the truth. Visualize data in digestible and palpable ways. Convert context into a “beautiful question” to be answered in the workshop.
04 Align on Context
Build a prompt that inspires creative ideas. Choose the right process for ideation that is friendly to both introverts and extroverts. Identify themes. Characterize ideas to understand their risk, reward, feasibility, and impact. Use artificial intelligence to supplement the ideation process.
05 Generate Possibilities
06 Choose the Mighty Few
Usher the group through “the groan zone” and deftly navigate
disagreement. Find a third way between conflicting opinions. Execute
repeatable processes to ruthlessly prioritize to find the “best” ideas to
pursue. Avoid cognitive biases that can impair good decision-making. test for commitment.
Design safe-to-fail experiments. Agree on how to measure and monitor success. Build a plan with corresponding roles for implementation. Close the session with a memorable moment of connection and inspiration.
07 Plan for Success
Listen actively using the 5A’s. Read the room and inject energy as
needed. Ply the never-fail methods to prevent multi-tasking, mind-
wandering, and nodding off. Command the room with your physical and verbal presence. Articulate your unique facilitation style.
08 Maintain Engagement
Ask the perfect questions to probe, clarify, connect, redirect, and provoke innovative thinking.
09 Ply the Art of the Question
Scan the group for behaviors that impede strong collaboration. Diagnose the root cause of the behavior, informed by brain science and our understanding of what makes humans tick. Intervene with firmness while retaining psychological safety and the group’s momentum.
10 Manage Group Dynamics
Understand your personal triggers and the underlying beliefs that feed them. Observe your emotional state, especially in situations where the group is questioning you. Redirect and reclaim command of your emotions when triggered so that you can return to serving the group over yourself.
11 Command Your Emotions
Transform your
Part I: Learning the Playbook
The Academy begins with a 12-week immersion in the playbook of masterful facilitation
✓ Onboarding one-on-one
✓ Weekly three-hour, live learning sessions led by Dennis
✓ Optional weekly “4th-hour” Q/A and coaching session
✓ In-between exercises to practice the skills each week
✓ Handbook with tips, tools, frameworks, and templates
Part II: Putting it Into Practice
The Academy continues with 9 months of deep support to turn the skills into habits
✓ Live one-on-one coaching sessions with Dennis
✓ Video critiques of your facilitation in action
✓ Monthly live skill-building webinars
✓ Quarterly, live AMA and show-and-tell sessions with alumni
✓ A diploma certifying you as a MTO “Facilitation Maestro”
What is it?
The MTO Facilitator Academy is an immersive, interactive, personalized learning experience. You will master the step-by-step playbook for designing and leading collaborative meetings and workshops that deliver amazing results every time. To ensure the learning sticks there are two phases to the program with a surge of learning followed by months of deep wraparound support.
Who is it for?
Leader
HR or OD Professional
Chief of Staff
Designer
Program or Project Manager
Trainer
Product Manager
Consultant
What will you learn?
The Facilitator Academy will teach you how to design and lead workshops that create transformational results. The skills, frameworks, tools, and techniques you learn will equip you to gracefully tame the gnarliest problems, personalities, debates, dysfunctions, and unexpected wrenches in the spokes.
You won’t just learn recipes, you will learn the “why” behind what makes them work. You will practice in a safe, supportive environment until the skills have become second-nature habits for you. When you graduate, you will confidently orchestrate rooms full of disparate motives and ideas and turn them into agreements that last because everyone is committed to them. And you will do that without wasting a minute of precious time.
In short, you will become a “Facilitation Maestro” ready to change the world through masterful facilitation.
Define the value proposition of a well-designed, well-facilitated workshop and articulate it to a potential “client”. Understand the role and mindset of the effective facilitator and what it looks like when done well (and not well.) Establish principles for the art of gathering in your context.
Discover and hone workshop outcomes. Choose the right framework and processes. Build an agenda and run of show that will deliver the outcomes and withstand the unexpected. Learn how to use online tools to support the design process.
Create a physical space that inspires collaboration and engagement. Open with an irresistible hook. Connect participants to purpose and to each other from the outset. Create and maintain psychological safety that ensures all participants feel seen, understood, and appreciated.
Help the group make sense of their current situation and “feel the problem” they are there to solve. Create a pool of shared understanding, reconciling multiple versions of the truth. Visualize data in digestible and palpable ways. Convert context into a “beautiful question” to be answered in the workshop.
Build a prompt that inspires creative ideas. Choose the right process for ideation that is friendly to both introverts and extroverts. Identify themes. Characterize ideas to understand their risk, reward, feasibility, and impact. Use artificial intelligence to supplement the ideation process.
Usher the group through “the groan zone” and deftly navigate disagreement. Find a third way between conflicting opinions. Execute repeatable processes to ruthlessly prioritize to find the “best” ideas to pursue. Avoid cognitive biases that can impair good decision-making. Test for commitment.
Design safe-to-fail experiments. Agree on how to measure and monitor success. Build a plan with corresponding roles for implementation. Close the session with a memorable moment of connection and inspiration.
Listen actively using the 3A’s. Read the room and inject energy as needed. Ply the never-fail methods to prevent multi-tasking, mind-wandering, and nodding off. Command the room with your physical and verbal presence. Articulate your unique facilitation style.
Ask the perfect questions to probe, clarify, connect, redirect, and provoke innovative thinking.
Scan the group for behaviors that impede strong collaboration. Diagnose the root cause of the behavior, informed by brain science and our understanding of what makes humans tick. Intervene with firmness while retaining psychological safety and the group’s momentum.
Understand your personal triggers and the underlying beliefs that feed them. Observe your emotional state, especially in situations where the group is questioning you. Redirect and reclaim command of your emotions when triggered so that you can return to serving the group over yourself.
Define the value proposition of a well-designed, well-facilitated workshop and articulate it to a potential “client”. Understand the role and mindset of the effective facilitator and what it looks like when done well (and not well.) Establish principles for the art of gathering in your context.
01 Explain the “Why?” of Facilitation
Discover and hone workshop outcomes. Choose the right framework and processes. Build an agenda and run of show that will deliver the outcomes and withstand the unexpected. Learn how to use online tools to support the design process.
02 Design the Blueprint
Create a physical space that inspires collaboration and engagement.
Open with an irresistible hook. Connect participants to purpose and to each other from the outset. Create and maintain psychological safety that ensures all participants feel seen, understood, and appreciated.
03 Create the Container
Help the group make sense of their current situation and “feel theproblem” they are there to solve. Create a pool of shared understanding, reconciling multiple versions of the truth. Visualize data in digestible and palpable ways. Convert context into a “beautiful question” to be answered in the workshop.
04 Align on Context
Build a prompt that inspires creative ideas. Choose the right process for ideation that is friendly to both introverts and extroverts. Identify themes. Characterize ideas to understand their risk, reward, feasibility, and impact. Use artificial intelligence to supplement the ideation process.
05 Generate Possibilities
What will you learn?
Usher the group through “the groan zone” and deftly navigatedisagreement. Find a third way between conflicting opinions. Executerepeatable processes to ruthlessly prioritize to find the “best” ideas topursue. Avoid cognitive biases that can impair good decision-making. test for commitment.
06 Choose the Mighty Few
Design safe-to-fail experiments. Agree on how to measure and monitor success. Build a plan with corresponding roles for implementation. Close the session with a memorable moment of connection and inspiration.
07 Plan for Success
Listen actively using the 5A’s. Read the room and inject energy as
needed. Ply the never-fail methods to prevent multi-tasking, mind-
wandering, and nodding off. Command the room with your physical and verbal presence. Articulate your unique facilitation style.
08 Maintain Engagement
Ask the perfect questions to probe, clarify, connect, redirect, and provoke innovative thinking.
09 Ply the Art of the Question
Scan the group for behaviors that impede strong collaboration. Diagnose the root cause of the behavior, informed by brain science and our understanding of what makes humans tick. Intervene with firmness while retaining psychological safety and the group’s momentum.
10 Manage Group Dynamics
Understand your personal triggers and the underlying beliefs that feed them. Observe your emotional state, especially in situations where the group is questioning you. Redirect and reclaim command of your emotions when triggered so that you can return to serving the group over yourself.
11 Command Your Emotions
About the Instructor
Hi! I’m Dennis. For over 25 years now, I have made it my life’s work to create the conditions for groups to collaborate effectively, able to engage in productive, inclusive,generative, and impactful conversations that matter. I have facilitated well over 1000 workshops, across 14 countries, with some of the most famous companiesin the world. In that time, I have come to believe that facilitation is perhaps the most important skill a person can possess in business and in life. People who master the art and science of facilitation are better leaders, better designers, better planners, better makers, better partners, better friends, and better citizens. And in a world of complexity, polarization, and blinding change, don’t we need all of those “betters” now more than ever? I believe we do! So, I am equipping a legion of collaboration maestros who are skilled up and fired up to change the world through masterful facilitation. I would be honored to have you join me inthis work!
Hi! I’m Dennis. For over 25 years now, I have made it my life’s work to create the conditions for groups to collaborate effectively, able to engage in productive, inclusive, generative, and impactful conversations that matter. I have facilitated well over 1000 workshops, across 14 countries, with some of the most famous companies in the world. In that time, I have come to believe that facilitation is perhaps the most important skill a person can possess in business and in life. People who master the art and science of facilitation are better leaders, better designers, better planners, better makers, better partners, better friends, and better citizens. And in a world of complexity, polarization, and blinding change, don’t we need all of those “betters” now more than ever? I believe we do! So, I am equipping a legion of collaboration maestros who are skilled up and fired up to change the world through masterful facilitation. I would be honored to have you join me in this work!
About the Instructor
1000+
Workshops facilitated
50+
Client companies
1000+
Faciltiators trained
25 Years
Facilitation experience
98%
Student satisfaction score
1000+
Workshops facilitated
50+
Client
companies
25 Years
Facilitation experience
1000+
Facilitators
trained
98%
Student
satisfaction score
I want to know more!
Hi! I’m Dennis.