Certificate in Facilitative Practice
Bring the coaching stance to the groups you lead.
A program for experienced leaders who already convene groups and want those groups to think harder and decide more clearly. You learn to design sessions a group can trust, to hand the work to the group, and to act on what you notice as it happens.
A good facilitator takes a group somewhere ordinary meetings cannot go.
A coaching relationship creates a space where a client can reflect at greater depth and find their own insight. Groups can reach a space like that too. With a good facilitator, people think and feel at greater depth and arrive at ideas that were not available to them before.
Facilitation, as SPARC teaches it, is the coaching stance applied to a group. The facilitator does not work harder than the group. The group drives, and the facilitator holds the structure around it. The one real difference from coaching is that your attention has to take in the whole group and the individuals in it at the same time.
The program is facilitated the way it teaches. You experience each practice before it is named, and you practice it on real work.
The one rule the program teaches above all others: reach for an element or a tool when the group asks for it.
Leaders who already convene groups.
Participants bring experience. Many of them already run meetings well. The program builds on what they do and gives it a design, a set of principles, and a shared language.
The program begins with you.
Everything a facilitator does rests on a chain. Each link makes the next one possible.
Before the first session, each participant completes the Grounding and Foundations profiles, and CliftonStrengths® where it is not already held, and meets individually with SPARC faculty to debrief them. That debrief is the start of the practice.
What lets a facilitator get out of the way.
Each principle is introduced, worked in small groups, and then drawn out together, so you leave with the lesson named as well as experienced.
Six facilitative elements, as one worked design.
You learn a complete session design built from six elements. Each is demonstrated once, done well, and then practiced. It is one design among many, and as your practice grows you swap in other elements and the design becomes yours.
These have no set order. You reach for one when the group needs it.
- Naming what is happening, and handing it to the group to solve
- Holding silence past the point where it is comfortable
- Moving among small groups with light, targeted interventions
- Making sure every voice is heard before the group moves on
- Choosing what to capture on the board, and noticing whose words you mark
- Lifting a constraint to get the thinking unstuck
Two formats, the same program.
Both formats carry the same content in about sixteen contact hours. The sessions are never back to back. The time between them is part of the design: you run what you learned in your own meetings and bring back what happened.
- Two rounds of live practice in your own meetings
- Day three: peer Action Learning Sets on the sessions you have designed
- Each participant runs a segment of their own session
- You design a real session on day two and run it in the gap
- The half day works on what actually happened
- Peer Action Learning Sets on the sessions you led
For in-house programs, the choice turns on one question: will each participant have a real meeting to lead between sessions? We help you decide when we scope the program.
Learning that continues once the program ends.
An honest account of what changes.
Participants receive SPARC's certificate of completion in the Certificate in Facilitative Practice. It is SPARC's own program, and no outside body accredits it.
Taught by facilitators who have led institutions.
Frequently asked questions.
Who is the certificate for?
Experienced leaders who convene groups: teams, committees, boards, task forces and planning groups. Participants do not need facilitation training, and most already run meetings well. The program builds on that experience.
Can individuals enroll?
Open cohorts are coming. Leave your details through the brochure form and we will tell you when dates are set. Organizations can bring the program in-house now.
What does it cost?
$995 per participant, including the assessments and an individual debrief, in cohorts of 8 to 12. For an in-house program, start a conversation with us and we will scope the format and schedule with you.
Why are there assessments?
The program rests on self-awareness. Before the first session, each participant completes the Grounding and Foundations profiles, and CliftonStrengths where it is not already held, and debriefs them individually with SPARC faculty. You return to your results at the end of the program, against what you now know about yourself facilitating.
Is the certificate accredited?
No. It is a SPARC program, and the certificate is SPARC's certificate of completion. No outside body accredits it.
Where does the approach come from?
It draws on SPARC's coaching practice and on established facilitation traditions, including Sam Kaner's work on participatory decision-making, Roger Schwarz's mutual learning model, Terry Borton's "what, so what, now what," David Cooperrider's Appreciative Inquiry, and the Interaction Institute for Social Change.
Bring this practice to the groups you lead.
In-house cohorts are available now. Open cohorts are coming soon.
The non-Gallup information you are receiving has not been approved and is not sanctioned or endorsed by Gallup in any way. Opinions, views and interpretations of CliftonStrengths, Clifton Youth StrengthsExplorer or BP10 results are solely the beliefs of SPARC LLC. Dr. Mathew Johnson and Dr. Shannon O'Neill are Gallup-Certified CliftonStrengths Coaches. CliftonStrengths®, StrengthsFinder®, and Gallup® are registered trademarks of Gallup, Inc.