Facilitation is an essential leadership competency. Facilitative leaders take a step back and nurture collaboration, capacity, and commitment with employees, colleagues, and stakeholders. With effective facilitation, groups can work together to assess a situation, analyze information, create a plan, and make group decisions that stick. The results of facilitative leadership are engaged participants, stronger teams, and efficient collaboration.
In this workshop we explore the qualities, values, and benefits of facilitative leadership. Participants will learn techniques for facilitating meetings that are designed to activate the power of the group: including the focused conversation method of facilitating group discussion and decision-making and the carousel method of synthesizing ideas. Throughout, we will discuss common barriers to facilitative leadership and how to overcome them.
Participants will leave with instructions and further resources for each of the techniques presented.
Note: This workshop is typically offered as one session; however, to try and reach more people we're experimenting with an evening time slot and splitting the content over two evenings. The workshops will take place on April 8 and 13 from 6:30 - 8 p.m. each day.
Event Details
This event will have AI captions via Zoom’s transcription function. Please note that these captions are automatically generated by the computer software and may not always accurately transcribe what is said. If you need professional captioning, or have another accessibility accommodation, please
email MCN’s program assistant with your request at least two weeks prior to the start of the event. Although we will attempt to meet all accessibility requests, late request may not be fulfilled.
This event is presented in partnership with the Kentucky Nonprofit Network and Maine Association of Nonprofits. KNN and MANP members can register at the MCN member rate with instructions provided by their respective state association.
Visit the Events and Registration FAQ page or
contact MCN's help desk for questions about registering.
Speaker Information
Sarah Cohn is a principal consultant at Aurora Consulting. She helps her clients discern their audience’s needs; think about their roles and opportunities as departments, organizations and within broader networks; and build their internal capacity to measure the impact of their organizations and programs. In her experience, complex collaborations with diverse partners succeed when they build in time for listening and honest reflection. She sees her clients as the content experts and herself as the facilitator of nuanced conversations.
Al Onkka is principal consultant at Aurora Consulting. Al is experienced in promoting data-based decision making and organizational learning having worked in the field of evaluation since 2009. Al uses, and builds the capacity of others to use, an evaluative lens to help organizations develop, understand, and improve at the programmatic and organizational level. Al has a master’s degree in evaluation studies from the University of Minnesota’s Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy and Development and is a member of the Minnesota Evaluation Association’s board of directors.