Workshop Facilitation to Engage and Grow Teams and Groups

Snelgrove & Associates’ extensive workshop facilitation capabilities allow us to co-create and deliver workshops that have a lasting, positive impact for organisations.

We work with organisations that appreciate how critical staff engagement is for their success and who genuinely want to work in a new, authentic way toward their goals. Our focus on engagement is driven by compelling evidence of the link between engagement, productivity, and staff retention.

Our workshop facilitation elevates organisations and their team members, by way of conversations, to a place where participants know and feel they are genuinely contributing to shared success.

The benefits for you of our way of working

Our approach is to co-create workshops with you that truly speak to and engage with staff, and which reflect the systems and culture of your organisation and its teams. Co-creation is an efficient workshop facilitation process, as it cuts through unwieldy politics and agendas, and gets to the heart of matters such as barriers to effective engagement.

Through crafted exercises, we encourage trust among participants, which stimulates the free flow of ideas, and robust, crucial conversations that take place within the workshop space. Workshop participants and facilitators “think out loud” in authentic and courageous ways that tap into their wisdom and deeper motivations.

“I have worked with Toni on a number of occasions including facilitation processes, delivery of workshops and the development/delivery of AUT’s EMERGE programme. What I particularly find fascinating with Toni is how she is able to bring the abstract into understandable ideas in the way human beings interact and relate with each other. This has given our staff a better insight into how they see things either with their peers or within themselves. Toni is delightful to work with and she always makes sure that what she delivers is in alignment to what AUT is seeking. I highly recommend Toni and her services.”

– Therese Walkinshaw, HR Portfolio Director, Auckland University of Technology

Sustained results

These co-created conversations, modelled at the workshop, achieve results that are sustained long after the workshop has finished, and continue through to the workplace. For example, agreed guidelines for engagement, tested by workshop participants, can be applied outside the workshop with sustainable results such as reduced fear and increased trust.

This deeper, more authentic approach isn’t “touchy-feely” – it just makes good business sense.

Types of workshops we facilitate

The types of workshops we most often facilitate are those whose leaders require an elegant path to get from A to B through engagement and consensus.

Tackling the big issues

Some of the major issues or topics we have facilitated for organisations include:

Effecting a culture change to become more customer-centric
Ensuring a merger is a merger rather than a takeover of culture
An organisation-wide revitalisation
Applying “breakthrough thinking” to address a problem.

Key workshop conversations might include:

It’s a new business year, so where does attention need to be focused?
A new minister is on board with different emphases, policies, and procedures. What are the implications for senior team members?
It’s crazy out there! We review the senior team’s goals based on the situation, and establish new rules for engagement and associated leadership behaviours.
Getting traction on the organisational vision, including identifying and overcoming hurdles and creating action plans with momentum.
As a senior team, reviewing the success measures for culture shift and deciding next steps.
As a senior team, learning a new approach/skill, mindfulness, for example.
Celebrating wins as an organisation.
Farewelling the CEO and welcoming in another.

How we provide you with a great workshop

Snelgrove and Associates’ workshop facilitation skills are the outcome of almost 20 years’ experience as trainers and facilitators. We meticulously co-create and deliver workshops that align with your strategic agenda to become a high-performing organisation that creates value for its major stakeholders. This is achieved by thoroughly familiarising ourselves with your objectives, needs, and the talents and uniqueness of your staff.

We’ll work with you to set clear intentions and measurable workshop outcomes based on a robust needs analysis.

Priming your participants is often part of the pre-workshop process. This might include conversations designed to challenge participants to speak candidly, confidential employee focus group sessions, and one-on-one conversations. This is not manipulation – it’s an open conversation, requiring the facilitator to have a genuine motivation for discovering what is possible.

“Toni has facilitated several management away days and team-based workshops over the years. She is adept at creating a safe space and helps to skillfully navigate our way through challenging topics in a candid and fruitful way. These workshops resulted in enhanced relationships as well as robust and agreed strategies for the future. They also featured fun and celebration and an increased appreciation for the individual and complementary strengths we brought to the team.”

– Monica Briggs, former General Manager of Auckland Regional Public Health Service (ARPHS)

We bring an advanced tool-kit to our workshops

We employ cutting-edge tools, techniques, and exercises to enhance your workshops. For example, Toni Snelgrove is trained and experienced in:

Conversational Intelligence® (Toni is becoming credentialed)
“Being Influential” tools using the smarts of the Keller Influence Indicator from Karen Keller, PhD
Designing creative exercises with fun, meaning and substance, based on the smarts of Auckland-based Wade Jackson and his company Improv Bandits
Facilitation Techniques from the Manukau Institute of Technology’s six-month Facilitation Skills learning programme
Instructional Design Techniques for programme and workshop design, through Bright*Star Training.

If you and your colleagues have asked yourselves how you can use workshops to cut through unnecessary politics and agendas to enhance staff engagement, then get in touch with us.