Good meetings are not the only thing a strong community needs, but bad meetings can ensure your community never gets off the ground, or lives in a constant state of struggle. This is your chance to learn from one of the movement’s best facilitators!

Good facilitators can make all the difference in our mission work, whether that is public advocacy, creating residential communities, or running a good staff or Board meeting. This training is designed to hone the skills of anyone who wants to be an agent of change: better outcomes, more cooperation and fun, and deeper inclusion in the process. 

Core topics and skills of this training include:

• Understanding the role of facilitator
• Deep listening and reflection skills
• Creating and tracking agendas, and road mapping the arc of an issue
• Working with emotions, intuition and conflict productively
• Top 10 most useful formats, and why variation is justice work
• Keeping meetings moving without leaving anyone behind
• Facilitator’s Presence
• Building just and cooperative culture, and equalizing power
• Identifying who is privileged by various facilitation choices
• Building community through good meetings
• Public meetings facilitation
• Guerrilla consensus-building strategies

Required text (included in the piece of the training) is The Cooperative Culture Handbook by Yana Ludwig and Karen Gimnig, which includes 52 exercises to build collective skills and have great meetings.

Each session will include time to debrief a facilitation experience and/or hear Yana’s advice on sticky real-life situations the students will bring. Participants in the greater Seattle area will have the option of doing the Facilitator’s Presence session in person with Yana.

Yana has been a professional facilitator, trainer and consultant for 16 years and is the co-author of The Cooperative Culture Handbook. She is the Executive Director of Leadership Eastside, and serves on the Board of Directors of the Foundation for Intentional Community. 

Details: Eight 2-hour sessions, every other Tuesday January 25-May 3, 2022 3-5pm Pacific, 6-8pm Eastern time. 

Cost is on a structured sliding scale, from $950-$1,250 with discounts of $100/person for groups of 2 or more who take the training together. Limited financial assistance for BIPOC folks is available.

USE THE PARTNER CODE: FICFacilitates for $50 off your tuition, and we will also donate $50 to FIC!

Questions? jen@leadershipeastside.com or register here.