Strengthening Your Facilitation Skills: Enhancing Your Impact as an Association Professional

Strengthening Your Facilitation Skills: Enhancing Your Impact as an Association Professional

Good facilitation skills help all parties in negotiations, building ideas and having effective discussions. Improving these skills is what this educational series, “Strengthen Your Facilitation Skills: Enhancing Your Impact as an Association Professional” aims to help you do. 

Facilitation skills can elevate quiet voices, seek new beneficial outcomes or harness creativity that leads to better results. Honing and applying focused facilitator skills will help you do all these things and more. 

Created by the Alliance Learning Collective*, this series will introduce you to the role and techniques of effective facilitation while arming you with opportunities to practice and hone these facilitation skills – including probing, bridging, synthesizing and reflective listening. What’s more is you’ll receive feedback on how you can improve. 

Over the course of the three-session series, participants will: 

• Gain an understanding of how to map out a facilitation process that helps a group work through common needs, such as brainstorming, problem-solving and consensus-building. 
• Create follow-up assignments in between sessions that expose you to opportunities to practice your facilitation skills and techniques in real-life settings, and 
• Share your experiences with peers to develop a richer learning experience.

These skills will help facilitate your long-term growth, grow your value to the organization and further the objectives of your team. 

Learning Objectives for Each 90-minute Module

Module 1 – Sept. 28, 2023 (1:30-3 p.m. Eastern; 10:30 a.m. to noon, Pacific)

• Understand the roles a facilitator performs.
• Navigate the dynamics of peer relationships and staff-volunteer/leader relationships when in a facilitator role.
• Hone key skills in the facilitation skill set.

Module 2 – October 12, 2023 (1:30-3 p.m. Eastern; 10:30 a.m. to noon, Pacific)

• Discover the basics of process design – taking a goal, need or outcome desired by a group, and designing a discussion to help them achieve it.
• Learn specific techniques/activities for facilitating different processes with groups, such as brainstorming, consensus-building and problem-solving

Module 3 - October 26, 2023 (1:30-3 p.m. Eastern; 10:30 a.m. to noon, Pacific)

• Become more comfortable managing group dynamics and creating a productive environment for group cohesion.
• Sharpen your reflective listening skills.
• Learn how to handle unanticipated situations as a facilitator, and how you can better prepare. 
• Set a path for your continued growth as a facilitator.

In preparation for this course, participants will be asked to:

• Complete a survey that will help the series facilitator better understand individual experiences with facilitation and interest in particular areas for improvement. 
• To gain the greatest benefits from this series, participants should consider where they might have opportunities between sessions to practice facilitation skills in real-life settings/situations and to gain more experiences they can share with their peers when the sessions reconvene.
   

ASA is a CAE Approved Provider. This program meets the requirements for fulfilling the professional development requirements to earn or maintain the Certified Association Executive credential. Every program that we offer which qualifies for CAE credit will clearly identify the number of CAE credits granted for full participation, and we will maintain records of your participation in accord with CAE policies. For more information about the CAE credential or Approved Provider program, please visit www.asaecenter.org/cae. As a CAE Approved Provider educational program related to the CAE exam content outline, the program may be applied for 1.5 credit toward your CAE application or renewal of professional development requirements for each session. (a maximum of 4.5 credits for attending all three sessions).

Note: This program is not endorsed, accredited, or affiliated with ASAE or the CAE program. Applicants may use any program that meets eligibility requirements in the specific time frame towards the exam application or renewal. There are no specific individual courses required as part of the applications – selection of eligible education is up to the applicant based on his/her needs.

Refund Policy: 
20 days out: 100%
19-10 days out: 50%
9-5 days out: 25%
4-0 days out: 0%

ASA regrets that refunds will not be given for no-shows. All requests for refund or exceptions to the cancellation/refund policy must be made in writing by the registrant to info@associationsocieties.org by October 31, 2023. After that time, no refund considerations will be made.