Facilitation and Training

For over 20 years, I have worked in the corporate world as a highly skilled, experienced and sought after facilitator, group leader and trainer.

Facilitation and training are not the same thing, but they are often thought of as drawing from similar skill sets, which they do to a degree.

I believe facilitation has more in common with coaching, and training has more in common with presenting and speaking. But they do often draw from the same pot of skills.

Facilitation is a “full body” profession, where the facilitator brings their mind, heart and soul to the craft of facilitating a workshop or event. One of my favourite quotes about the craft that is facilitation is “Technique is what you use until the facilitator turns up“.

As founder and director of my own firm, I worked with a wide range of organizations and across different industries including finance and banking, professional services and accounting, IT and software, insurance firms, pharmaceutical houses, universities and arts councils. I’ve worked with hospitals and health departments, mining companies and telecommunications.

Here’s what Katherine Hirsh, one of the world’s leading thought leaders and authors on psychological type, shared about my facilitation talents:

“If there were stars in the sidewalk in Hollywood for the field of facilitation, Jill would have one of them! She attends to every aspect of the participant experience, from a welcoming atmosphere to the final debrief. Her greatest gift is for leading people to see their potential and then construct a plan to fulfill it. Hire Jill and watch as amazing things happen.”

My clients have been a veritable who’s who of the corporate world including Macquarie Bank, KPMG, Deloitte, JB Were, Morgan Stanley, Westpac Bank, Commonwealth Bank, IBM, Baker & Mackenzie, Phillips Fox, Allens Arthur Robinson, McCullough Robertson and the Australia Council. To name a few of the organizations I had the great pleasure of calling my clients.

During my career, I facilitated workshops in Australia, New Zealand, the Asian region, Canada, the United States and Europe. My workshops were often rated the most powerful and impactful at conference events, among dozens (sometimes hundreds) of sessions.

I was fortunate enough to have many successful client engagements that ran over many months or years, and some clients stayed with me for over a decade.

Here’s what one of my long-term clients, Jayson Bricknell of BT Financial Group (previously of Macquarie Group) had to say about my facilitation talents:

“Jill is a fantastic facilitator.  I’m always happy to recommend Jill to anyone because she has facilitated many successful sessions for me.  By example, she facilitated a Team Behaviours Day that was a great success and in particular, the team loved the positive reinforcement activity Jill ran at the end of the session – they still refer to this as one of the best team days they have participated in and Jill’s facilitation on the day is the primary reason for this.”

My most successful client engagement was the design and delivery of a unique Leadership Development program for senior managers and directors for a global professional services firm. This program ran for over 5 years and was booked out 12 months in advance by a hard-to-impress audience who rated it the most popular program out of a curriculum of nearly 100 programs.

I can support you and your organisation by designing an innovative and impactful facilitated workshop around key themes, such as leadership, communication, understanding self and others, working with differences, wellness, better teaming, and so on.  The themes we can create a creative and relevant workshop around are almost endless – Contact me today to start the conversation about your workshop.

I can also support you and your team in developing exceptional facilitation and training skills, no matter the audience or content area. Contact me today to arrange your customized program in facilitation and training!