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
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Will this prepare me for face-to-face, virtual, or hybrid facilitation?The course is designed to prepare you for all three modalities. Though the sessions will be held in a virtual setting, we will learn techniques that equip you to masterfully facilitate in-room, online, or hybrid workshops.
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Where will the training be held?All sessions will be live and hosted on Zoom.
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How much does it cost?The full-year MTO Facilitator Academy experience, including the 12-week intensive and the 9-months of optional wraparound support, is $3500 (USD), which is collected upon registration for the program. This is an introductory price good only through the remainder of 2024!
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What is the advantage of cohort-based learning?Cohort-based learning is a collaborative approach where a small, intact group of learners learn together. Besides being proven as a highly effective learning modality in and of itself, the cohort model allows us to practice facilitation techniques with our colleagues, simulating the real world. It also provides a small, safe, connected community of practice whose members usually opt into being a support system for each other after the Academy finishes.
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What is the “Video Critique” you are offering?One of the ongoing wrap-around services offered to learners in month 4-12 of the program is a video critique. This involves sending Dennis a 10 - to 20-minute recording of yourself facilitating a workshop. Dennis will review the recording and send you written feedback on what you are doing well and where you might improve.
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Is it possible to schedule an intact group at my company?Absolutely! Fill out the contact form below to setup time to discuss this with Dennis.
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How much time should I allot?For the initial 12 weeks, you will need to allot 3 hours for the learning sessions, and around 2 hours for in-between exercises, most of which involve practice in meetings you would have already been leading. In months 4-12, you can literally allot as much or as little as you want to in accessing optional 1:1 coaching, live webinars, recommended reading, and video critiques.
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How experienced do I need to be in facilitation?You don’t have to have any experience as a facilitator to take part in the Academy. You DO need to have opportunities to facilitate in the future, so that you can apply the skills soon after learning them. If you are already an experienced facilitator, I promise you will also take away new capabilities that will enable you to level up your skills.
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Who is the Facilitator Academy for?Anyone who needs to lead others in meetings and workshops where many people must collaborate effectively to solve a problem, build a strategy, design a product or service, improve a process, launch a program, or build a high-performing team... in other words, anyone who needs to orchestrate collaboration to create a better, transformed future.
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What if I can’t attend all of the sessions?All sessions will be recorded for you to access offline, should you have to miss a session.
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Are scholarships available?We understand that not everyone who could benefit from this program has the means to pay for it. We reserve a limited number of seats for anonymous scholarships in each cohort. If this is something you are interested in, fill out the contact form below to setup time to discuss this with Dennis.
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Will I work one-on-one with Dennis?Yes. This is one of the unique value propositions of the course. You will learn directly from a facilitator with the accumulated wisdom of 25 years of practice, self-study, and learning from successes and failures! Dennis will meet with you one-on-one before the course, teach the course live with you and your cohort, and coach you one-on-one afterward.
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Will I receive a certification?Yes! You will receive a certification of completion at the end of the 12-week intensive learning phase of the program. At the end of the full year, if you participate in at least 5 of the scheduled events (1:1 coaching calls, live webinars, AMA show and tell sessions, video critique) and can demonstrate you have put the skills to use in at least three workshops, you will receive a diploma that certifies you as a Many-to-One “Facilitation Maestro”.
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Are there prerequisites?There are no prerequisites, but we do ask that you have an onboarding one-on-one with Dennis, so that he can understand your specific context and learning objectives. This will help prepare you to get the most out of the experience while allowing Dennis to tailor your learning experience.
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.