The Essence of Facilitation | 29 June – 3 July 2026 | Sydney, Australia

Stage 2-Advanced Facilitator Program

“Learn to recognise what a group needs and introduce it in real time—so you can confidently shape engagement, trust, and outcomes as they unfold.”

The Essence of Facilitation is an experiential training course for anyone wanting to deepen their facilitation practice and for facilitators and leaders seeking to create more effective collaboration within teams and groups.

You can run a session. But what do you do when the room shifts?

At its core, this course addresses a very real and widely felt gap: many people are asked to facilitate groups, but very few are trained to work with what is actually happening in the room in real time. Most rely on agendas, tools, or personality—and when things go off track (which they inevitably do), they don’t know what to do in the moment.

People who are seeking facilitation skills experience a combination of the following:

They can run a plan but struggle to read the room. When energy drops, conflict surfaces, or participation becomes uneven, they sense something is wrong but can’t clearly identify what it is.

They lack the confidence to intervene in real time. Even when they notice an issue—low trust, lack of clarity, disengagement—they hesitate or default to safe behaviours like moving on, over-talking, or sticking rigidly to the agenda.

They often feel personally responsible for group dysfunction, without having a practical framework to diagnose what’s missing in the interaction itself.

There is also a deeper frustration: they want to create meaningful, engaging, and authentic group experiences, but instead end up managing logistics rather than shaping dynamics.

In short, the pain is not a lack of tools—it’s a lack of situational awareness and in-the-moment capability.

This course equips facilitators with the ability to read group dynamics as they happen and to intervene skillfully in the moment. Rather than relying on tools or agendas alone, participants learn how to identify what is missing in a group’s interaction—and generate it—creating the conditions for trust, clarity, and authentic engagement.

Who this course is for

This programme is designed for facilitators who:

Already have foundational facilitation experience (Stage 1 or equivalent)
Want to work more confidently in live, dynamic group settings
Are ready to move beyond tools and frameworks into moment-to-moment responsiveness
Want to deepen their presence, timing, and impact

This is an advanced, experiential program for meeting professionals who facilitate work that matters — senior leaders, facilitators, coaches, trainers, and consultants. It's designed for people who already know how to design and run a session and who want to develop the situational awareness and in-the-moment skills that distinguish a good facilitator from an exceptional one.

What you will learn to do

Over five days of immersive practice, you will develop a diagnostic lens for group dynamics — a way to recognise, in real time, whether a group needs more clarity of purpose, deeper trust, sharper listening, completion, or another essential element.

You will leave able to:

Read the room with precision — naming what is happening beneath the surface
Recognise what a group needs in the moment, even under pressure
Intervene skilfully and confidently while the group is in action
Generate the conditions for trust, clarity, and authentic engagement — rather than hoping they emerge
Shift from facilitating activities to shaping experiences

We call this practice distinguishing — noticing what is present, sensing what is missing, and bringing in what is needed. It is the heart of advanced facilitation, and it can be learned.

The essential elements we work with

The course is built around eight core elements of effective group interaction. You will practise recognising each, sensing when one is missing, and generating it in real time:

Purpose and culture
Safety and trust
Being With
Powerful listening and speaking
Intentionality
Power-with
Integrity
Truthfulness
Emotional competence
Intuition
Affirmations
Completion

These are the building blocks of authentic community and collaborative work. Master them, and you stop relying on tools and techniques — you start working directly with what is alive in the room.

Course Foundation

The course is based on The Essence of Facilitation: Being in Action in Groups by Dale Hunter, Anne Bailey and Bill Taylor. A digital copy is provided to all participants.

The Essence of Facilitation is Stage 2 of Zenergy's Diploma of Facilitation and builds on Stage 1: The Art of Facilitation.

On completion, participants receive a certificate confirming 40 hours of facilitation training.

Class size is limited to twelve.

For Diploma students, this course can be attended as part of the required Master Class module. Please use the form below to speak with one of our trainers.

Details

Monday 29 June - Friday 3 July 2026 · Sydney, Australia (in-person)

The Essence of Facilitation training course involves active participation in:

a pre-course conversation with one of our trainers (~30 min)
5 x full-day practice sessions (7-8 hours per day) + individual session preparation (~30min per day)
a post-course debrief with one of our trainers (~3o min).

Venue: In Kelly Street, Ultimo, Sydney Centre

Timings: Monday - Thursday: 9:30 am - 5:30 pm and Friday: 9:30 am - 2:00 pm

Investment

Course fees sustain our trainers and enable Zenergy Global to continue supporting whole-people co-operating in a sustainable world:

AUD 2,800 exc. GST (corporate and government)
AUD 1,400 exc. GST (reviewer - someone who has completed the course previously)

A 10% EARLY BIRD for registrations and payments received by 1 June 2026

If finances are a barrier to attending, please get in touch with us to discuss other options.

Cost includes:

The Essence of Facilitation by Dale Hunter et. al.
Course Manual
5 days of experiential training and coaching
Certificate of Attendance
Morning and Afternoon Tea

Trainers

Simone Maus is an experienced facilitator, coach, and facilitation-skills trainer who has worked in government, corporate, and community sectors over the last two decades. She is the founder of Collective Insight, a company that helps businesses and governments create more sustainable ways of working together on our planet. Her vision is to awaken humanity to the powerful resource of collective intelligence, which can be accessed through skilful facilitation and collaborative ways of working.

She is a Director of Zenergy Global Australia and has been a trainer with Zenergy Global since 2013. Simone is active with the Australasian Facilitators Network (AFN) and delivers Zenergy programs worldwide. Simone has also been a partner and organisational culture architect with The Zone since 2012. There, she facilitates significant organisational culture interventions and team alignment workshops worldwide.

Dr Stephen Thorpe is a Director of Zenergy with a focus on teamwork and technology. He specialises in enhancing team performance in IT and agile project management, data science, and collective intelligence.

Stephen is a Senior Lecturer Above the Bar at the Auckland University of Technology. He leads the innovative Master of IT Project Management that he co-created and lectures on team facilitation, digital transformation and change management, and IT project management, and supervises students undertaking a range of project management, agile, and team-related research projects. He has an agile mindset, takes a team approach to challenges, focuses on alignment, and is constantly building a culture of success. With a background in group facilitation, user-centred design, and technology, he integrates technology and collaboration to implement strategy-aligned initiatives.

The Essence of Facilitation | 29 June – 3 July 2026 | Sydney, Australia | In Person