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Facilitation Leadership Lab

5 Weeks

·

Cohort-based Course

Accelerate your career, unlock your organization’s potential, and build better worlds with proven facilitation skills. 

Hosted by

Kate Krontiris and Charley Johnson

Facilitators for groups like Google, USAID, The Omidyar Group, GWU +

Course overview

🔮 A well-facilitated gathering might feel like magic — it’s not.

A well-facilitated gathering is the difference between stuck organizations and thriving ones. We’ve all been in gatherings that lack purpose, focus on the wrong issue(s), fail to address engrained group dynamics, become hijacked by conflict and difficult personalities, and where old patterns prevent future thinking. By the end of this five-week, live, online course, you’ll be able to identify the real challenge at hand, navigate complex group dynamics and difficult conversations to help the group realize their purpose, and help the group push the boundaries on what’s possible, building better worlds. 


The Facilitation Leadership Lab is a live, online, cohort-based course for rising and established leaders who want to sharpen their facilitation skills in order to unlock their organization’s potential, accelerate their career path, or grow their consulting practice. You’ll practice these skills and frameworks in a simulated, lab-like environment, and receive personalized feedback, 1:1 coaching, and access to a peer-learning community.


A well-facilitated gathering isn't magic -- but it can alter the course of your career, turn stuck organizations into thriving ones, and change how power functions in a system.


Enroll today! We will be offering different prices depending on when you register:


- $750 if you register before April 10.

- $1,000 if you register from April 10 through April 24.

- $1,500 if you register from April 25 through May 18.


*There is a special offer of $750 per person for groups of three or more people, regardless of the registration date.

🤔 Who is this course for?

01

Rising or established leaders who want to level up their facilitation skills and transform their organization

02

Coaches and consultants who want to grow their practice with proven facilitation tools and frameworks.

03

Sick of bad processes preventing your organization or community from achieving its goals? This is for you!

What you’ll get out of this course

Actionable facilitation tools and frameworks.

You’ll learn proven facilitation tools and key concepts like agenda setting, active listening, reframing and reflecting, conflict de-escalation, managing challenging principals, and world-building.

Improve your craft through guided practice, peer learning, and personalized feedback. 

A successful facilitation requires more than a rubric — it is an embodied craft that requires practice in dynamic contexts. You’ll practice these tools and frameworks in a simulated, lab-like environment, and receive personalized feedback, and 1:1 coaching.

Join the Facilitation Leadership Lab peer-learning community.

Facilitating change in organizations is hard, often lonely work. Leaders need peers to learn from and with. This course is your passport to a thriving peer-learning community and privileged access and discounts to future offerings from the instructors. 

What people are saying

        Kate is an effective facilitator with the patience and energy needed to support a room full of people to connect and engage in meaningful work.  I found her to be a great communicator and very skilled at observing the needs of participants in ways that promote deeper participation.
Sarita G.

Sarita G.

Vice President of US Programs, Ford Foundation
        “Charley is an accomplished, next-generation facilitator and strategist who builds generative connections across sectors, topics, ideas, and people with different perspectives and backgrounds. He is simply an incredible partner for empowering communities to make progress against complex problems."
Colin Maclay

Colin Maclay

Executive Director of USC Annenberg Innovation Lab
        Kate has led several impactful workshops for the Google Social Impact team including a 2-day session with a leading group of researchers & practitioners in the civic tech field. Kate is a master facilitator whose infectious energy & passion helps groups align on strategic opportunities that build on the strengths of the participants & organization.
John Webb

John Webb

UX Research Lead, Google Search Social Responsibility
        As a facilitator, Charley skillfully pulls out diverse perspectives and comfortably navigates areas of strategic divergence. If you want help coalescing around a new future direction or change agenda, he is your guy!" 
Priya Vora

Priya Vora

Managing Director, Digital Impact Alliance
        “Kate's brilliance lies in her ability to simultaneously make every participant feel heard, seen, and valued without compromising the group's ability to drive effectively towards a result.” 
Zac Hill

Zac Hill

Zac Hill, COO Office of American Possibilities 
        Charley's strategic thinking, high EQ, deep listening skills, and ability to ask incisive questions help cut to the heart of complex and challenging group dynamics, while moving the group toward impact. He's a special facilitator and I highly recommend this course."
Nick Martin

Nick Martin

CEO, TechChange
        Kate has been a fabulous thought partner, designer, and facilitator of some of the most challenging and important gatherings I’ve been a part of. With a massive EQ and capacity for deep listening and adaptation, she manages to attend to difficult power dynamics and make everyone feel heard without delaying or watering down hard choices."
Paige N.

Paige N.

Describing work with Kate for a global philanthropic organization

Meet your instructors

Kate Krontiris

Kate Krontiris

Kate’s work as a facilitator, researcher, and organizational strategist has addressed a variety of public challenges, often with an intersection of technology. As an organizational development strategist, Kate has over 20 years of facilitation, mediation, and conflict resolution experience. She specializes in qualitative methodologies, including ethnography, user research, and design research. Applications have included organizational strategy, product design, policy recommendation, and programmatic design.


Kate has served as a consultant to Google, Facebook, the Trusted Elections Fund, Luminate, Mobius Executive Leadership, and the Make the Breast Pump Not Suck Project, among others. Kate also served as a consulting user researcher for the U.S. Digital Service within the Executive Office of President Barack Obama.


Kate is a graduate of Columbia University, where she received a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology. She holds a Masters in Public Policy from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and an MBA from MIT’s Sloan School of Management.

Charley Johnson

Charley Johnson

Charley is a writer, teacher, and facilitator who works at the intersection of technology and social change. He founded Untangled, a newsletter and podcast on technology, people, and power, and teaches at George Washington University on related topics.*


Charley has spent much of his career facilitating multi-stakeholder collaborations. He currently leads the Public Technology Leadership Collaborative, a new peer-learning collective of scholars, researchers, and government leaders committed to addressing the social and cultural implications of data and technology. Before that, he led the Disinformation Action Lab at Data & Society, which won the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public inaugural ‘Award for Excellence’ for its multi-stakeholder work on the 2020 Census. Once upon a time, he co-founded and ultimately led the Center for Digital Development at the U.S. Agency for International Development.


He’s graduate of the University of Washington (Go Huskies!) and the Harvard Kennedy School. Most importantly, he’s an obnoxiously proud uncle.


*This is a personal project and is not affiliated with Data & Society Research Institute or George Washington University.

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✏️ Course syllabus

01

Week 1: Setting the agenda

You’ll learn techniques and frameworks for everything that needs to take place before the gathering: building trusted relationships between the facilitator and participants, identifying the core group challenge, determining the purpose and ideal outcome(s) of the gathering, and setting the agenda.

02

Week 2: Holding the space

You’ll learn the skills — active listening, reframing and reflecting, addressing conflict, generating movement, and closing — to hold the space necessary for a successful gathering. 

03

Week 3: Building understanding across difference

You’ll cultivate the interpersonal practices — building an awareness of one’s intersectional identity and personal conflict orientation — as well as key skills like managing challenging principals to navigate complex facilitations and difficult conversations. 

04

Week 4: Visioning & world-building

This session takes us from facilitating a gathering in the room to solving a problem in the world. You’ll learn skills and frameworks for diagnosing the present problem, building utopias and dystopias, and piloting strategies to help organizations think beyond their current reality and build a collective vision for the future.

05

Week 5: Demo day

Demo day is an opportunity for participants to share the facilitation you led — what you did, what you learned, what questions you’re still puzzling through — and receive personalized and peer feedback. Participants will also have the chance to co-create the Facilitation Leadership Lab peer-learning community that will launch following the course. 

📅 Course schedule

2-4 hours per week
  • May 21 - June 18, 2023

    Sundays from 3:00 - 4:30 pm EST

    Week 1: May 21, 3:00 - 4:30 pm EST

    Week 2: May 28, 3:00 - 4:30 pm EST

    Week 3: June 4, 3:00 - 4:30 pm EST

    Week 4: June 11, 3:00 - 4:30 pm EST

    Week 5: June 18, 3:00 - 4:30 pm EST

  • ‘Homework’

    1-2 hours per week (optional)

    In between each session participants will be given ‘homework’ that they can use to practice the skills they’re learning, deepen their understanding of the frameworks, and apply them in the context of their gathering.

Learning is better with cohorts

Learning is better with cohorts

Practice in a lab environment

Facilitation is an embodied craft that requires practice in dynamic contexts. Apply your new skills and frameworks via interactive exercises, and receive personalized feedback.

Peer-Learning Community

This course is your passport to a thriving peer-learning community that will continue after the course comes to a close. 

1:1 Coaching

Get input or feedback on a complex facilitation you’re preparing. Or debrief one that you just led! 

Workbook

Access the Facilitation Leadership Lab ‘workbook,’ a set of tools, frameworks, and templates that you can use during and after the course to support your ongoing facilitation work.  

⁉️ Frequently Asked Questions

What happens if I can’t make a live session?
I work full-time, what is the expected time commitment?
What’s the refund policy?
I have a different question - who can I email?
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