Are you tired of meetings that go nowhere and dead-end conversations and chaotic planning sessions? Do you wonder if this can ever change?

Would you like to:

  • overcome barriers to change in your situation?
  • lead or manage your team or organisation more effectively in a complex and rapidly changing environment?
  • work effectively in partnership across teams, organisations, sectors, cultures?
  • help people to influence the decisions that affect them?
  • meet external requirements for participation and involvement?

Facilitation is a set of skills to be used in working with a group, enabling and supporting them to achieve their objectives in a way that involves and respects all contributions, builds ownership and releases the potential of the group and its members. It helps differentiate between process and content.

To support facilitators to be effective in their work, the International Association of Facilitators has developed sets of values and competencies to inform and guide good practice. ICA globally helped develop this guidance and fully supports their implementation.

You don’t have to be a “facilitator” in order to use facilitation methods and techniques. Many managers, elected and appointed leaders, educators, IT workers, researchers, consultants, etc. draw on the values, principles and practices of facilitation to engage more effectively and enrich the experience of colleagues, students, clients, participants.

Used over a period of time, facilitation can move beyond being a set of methods and techniques to being more transformative, reflecting a new way of working, developing a culture of participation in which diversity of voices, experiences and perspectives inform and influence decisions and ways forward; challenging top-down approaches, enriching democratic processes and promoting collaboration and partnership.

ICA:UK and the Technology of Participation (ToP)

ICA:UK and other ICA organisations worldwide have facilitation expertise based on more than 50 years of working with groups. ICA’s Technology of Participation (ToP) methods reflect the values, principles and practices learnt during that time, codified into transferable tools designed to:

  • actively involve all members of a group in decision making
  • maximise individuals’ commitment and engagement
  • build a team spirit that lasts
  • achieve consensus
  • articulate a shared vision
  • make plans that really happen

ICA:UK facilitation training courses

ICA:UK has now helped over 3,000 people gain the facilitation skills and facilitation methods they need to carry out effective meetings, run great workshops and help groups make decisions together. Find out more about our public and in-house training courses.

ICA:UK facilitation service

In addition to training others, ICA:UK offers a professional facilitation service, including both session and event design and delivery.  Enquire how we can help here.

More Resources

There is an increasing body of literature on facilitation, a growing database of methods which facilitators can choose from and growing evidence of the difference that facilitation can make.