A Course Review by Katie Sadler
Why sign up for a facilitation course? How is that going to help you progress in your career? These were the most common questions people asked me when I mentioned the course with Julia Alberga at the SDN Academy—and they were fair questions.
After watching the Community Voices session with Julia on the SDN LinkedIn channel, I became really interested in the course. She explained the impact that strong facilitation skills can have on your work and how focusing on developing them—just like we focus on other skills such as learning Figma or how to blueprint—can create a ripple effect, not just in our work but also within our teams and organisations.
To answer the question of why I chose to take the course with Julia, I reflected on all those moments—ones I’m sure everyone can relate to—when meetings (or a string of meetings) were filled with tension, misalignment, or things simply going wrong, causing fractures within the team. How do we navigate this? Sometimes well, sometimes with room for improvement!
I’ve been fortunate to have a career that can best be summed up as a continuous development of problem-solving skills. Most of the time, things don’t go as planned: unexpected curveballs arise, communication may be well-intended but poorly executed, or a host of other day-to-day challenges present opportunities to flex that facilitation muscle.
What’s funny is that whenever I share these anecdotes, I’m met with head nods, sighs, and laughter—because it’s so relatable. Really, I believe facilitation is the number one skill we can learn and continually improve to advance our careers. It helps us understand problems on a human level, connect with teams, and help teams connect with each other. It’s also an essential skill for those in management roles, as ensuring a team’s success requires more than just doing the work—it requires guiding and enabling others to do their best work, too.
Julia is a fantastic facilitator and teacher, encouraging each of us to be actively involved. She creates a truly open and collaborative environment, pushing us outside our comfort zones so we can get the most out of every session.
Highly recommend the course and Julia.
Get ready to dive deep into essential facilitation skills that will empower you to lead effective and engaging group sessions. Join us online!
Comments