Facilitation Courses



Desiree Paulsen has been conducting Facilitation skills courses for many years from local to global  and she also offers this to organisations as an in-house option. See below for course descriptions - the basic course is for new facilitators (Developmental Facilitation Skills) and the advanced course is for more experienced facilitators who want to hone their skills and learn new tools.

 Developmental Facilitation Skills
"You are your own best tool".

This course is essential for anyone working with groups. It will help you build a strong but flexible foundation for work in the civil society or public sector. ‘Developmental’ facilitation is an approach to working with groups from the ‘inside - out’. As a facilitator you will learn ‘You are your own best tool’ as you help groups to sense, surface and appreciate what is living inside and what is trying to emerge. You will learn ways to help each individual and the group to engage with its own will. Most importantly you will develop yourself as the starting point to facilitate the learning and development of others.

Who is this course for?
This course is for anyone working with groups; whether you call yourself a facilitator, trainer, practitioner, manager, supervisor... You may be working in a civil society organisation, the public sector or a corporate environment. It is for anyone who facilitates training courses, workshops, chairs meetings or manages change processes. It is suitable for newcomers who will bring their fresh new eyes to the content and seasoned facilitators who would like to invigorate and question their practice.

The Course Approach
A facilitated action learning approach is used to ground the course material in practice, and form the basis for further learning and improved practice. The programme emphasises a participative, shared learning experience with a creative design. Inputs are drawn from participants own experience and potential practice.  Role-plays, right-brain exercises, story-telling, active listening, feedback guidelines, strategic questions and personal development exercises are some of the activities used to balance and complement the more thinking oriented processes of learning.

Course Objectives.
  • A conceptual understanding of developmental facilitation, principles of design and facilitation.
  • Experience, learn and practice the core methods and skills of a developmental approach to facilitation. 
  • Understanding group roles and theory and how they develop. 
  • Using creative and artistic activities in learning processes.
  • How to use spaces, resources and technology to support group process and facilitation. 
  • Mini-facilitation practice session.

  Advanced Facilitation Course
Working with complexity and diversity in groups  

Is it just our imagination or are groups becoming more complex and diverse? Do people feel more comfortable bringing more of their whole selves into the room? Is it a result of democracy and a more integrated society? Whatever it is imagination or not, we are required to deal with whoever and whatever shows up in the room when we facilitate groups.

This need not be seen as a challenge but something which needs to be managed.  In this course we explore the concept of complexity in more depth and how to harness and embrace diversity so that we allow it to enrich groups and enhance the learning experience for all.  Facilitators will develop the skills for reading group process, knowing when to intervene and how to intervene in ways that contribute to a positive learning experience for participants.  This course offers an opportunity to develop skills and sensitivities for working with complexity and will look at the role of the facilitator in facilitating structured training courses or programmes and ‘emergent unfolding processes’.

Who is the course for?
This course is for facilitators, trainers, practitioners, leaders and managers who want to deepen their practice and enhance their facilitation skills so that they become more conscious of how they can embrace diversity and work with complexity.

The Course Approach
The course works with an emergent approach using a core programme but allows for participants’ key questions and challenges around facilitation to shape the process so that the course is responsive to the needs of the group.  We will work with an experiential approach that uses the Action Learning / Experiential Learning Cycle as its core framework.

Course Objectives
  • Understanding and practicing facilitation as a developmental / systemic/ emergent approach 
  • How to work with groups as complex living systems (Complexity Theories and Living Systems Thinking) and embracing diversity
  • Exploration into group theory, group dynamics and group roles and the impact of these on group process







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