Pre-Conference Workshops

Build confidence, self-awareness and practical skill for real-world facilitation. Designed for people who are asked to facilitate groups and want to do so with greater confidence, self-awareness and skill. This workshop focuses on real-world facilitation challenges, including tension, silence, strong personalities, competing views and complex group dynamics. You'll explore the facilitator's role, how to work with power in the room, and how to balance task, process and relationships.

• Greater confidence in real-world facilitation
• Practical tools for participation, dynamics and hot moments
• Clearer personal facilitation principles

Your facilitators

Nancy Nuñez

Nancy is an Associate at the Groupwork Centre and a passionate, skilled facilitator with a deep commitment to harnessing the power of groups to drive meaningful change, working across community, First Nations, government and corporate settings in Australia and internationally, including Europe, Africa, the Middle East, the Caribbean and the Pacific. Her expertise spans conflict resolution, strategic planning, collaborative decision-making and community engagement, grounded in a belief that the best work happens when people bring their whole selves to the table.

Sarah Norton

Sarah Norton is an Associate at the Groupwork Centre, working as a facilitator and educator. Her style is lively, engaging and participatory, creating spaces where people feel heard and diverse perspectives are explored to find practical, wise ways forward. A committed practitioner of trauma-informed facilitation and an Assistant Director of Psychodrama, Sarah brings a grounded, compassionate presence built on more than 20 years' experience across environmental management, education and community consultation in the UK and Australia.

Sue Langley runs every activity for a reason, with the science underneath it. In 25 years of facilitating she has learned to read what is happening in the brains in the room, and to choose what to do about it. This full day is where she shows you how.

You lead groups and you know your craft. This day is the layer underneath it: why groups engage, decide and commit, drawn from neuroscience, emotional intelligence and positive psychology, and turned into tangible tools you can use with your next group.

• A set of moves you can run the next day, each with the science that makes it work
• Ways to read the emotions in a room and respond with intent
• Sharper judgement in the moment, and the language to guide a group towards what matters

Your facilitator

Sue Langley

Sue Langley is the Founder and CEO of the Langley Group and creator of the world's first government-recognised Diploma of Positive Psychology and Wellbeing. A speaker, master trainer and global advisor on the neuroscience of emotional intelligence and positive psychology at work, she holds a Master's degree in the Neuroscience of Leadership and has taught leaders across six continents to turn brain science into tools they can use immediately. She was the emotional intelligence expert on the ABC TV series Redesign My Brain.

🎙 Listen to the podcast episode with Sue →

High-impact activities that drive real outcomes. This highly practical workshop focuses on how to use experiential activities to create meaningful outcomes. You'll experience, practise and deconstruct high-impact activities, learning how to frame them professionally, sequence them for impact and debrief them in ways that connect to communication, collaboration, leadership and accountability.

• A toolkit of 20+ ready-to-use activities
• Stronger confidence facilitating off-script
• Clear design principles for experiential learning

Your facilitator

Michelle Cummings

Michelle Cummings, M.S., is the Big Wheel and founder of Training Wheels, a known leader in the team building field, and Co-Founder, CEO and Chief Creative Officer for Personify Leadership, a global leadership development course. An accomplished author and sought-after speaker and consultant in leadership, team building and experiential learning, Michelle has created a wide variety of facilitation, debriefing and team building activities that have collectively changed the way trainers and educators work. She's one of North America's most sought-after experiential facilitators.

🎙 Listen to the podcast episode with Michelle →