There appear to be more and more opportunities to attend conferences with increasingly glossy advertising. But for those who attend the actual experience rarely lives up to expectations. Most conferences prove to be passive and sometimes dull events with no more imagination than a string of speakers. With our working lives fast paced, highly interactive and challenging there are few of us who find listening passively to a succession of speakers to be an effective way of learning.

We bring considerable experience in designing conferences and workshops for national and international events that deliver memorable and relevant learning experiences for the participants and which makes the best use of contributors and speakers.

Why you need a facilitator

Everyone has at some point in their working life come out of a meeting feeling it was a waste of time. Indeed its surprising how many of us feel this on a routine basis. The urgent driving out the important, the more vocal dominating the more reflective but quieter participants or simply too many people with a lot to say but no decisions – these are typical problems that many groups and organizations experience.

Using a facilitator is a way of changing the dynamic, enabling everyone to participate fully. It helps you achieve things that could not even be considered in a normal office meeting, gets people out of routine behaviours and offers independent challenge to assumptions and ways of working. An independent facilitator has no pre-conceived expectations, vested interests or points to score – their role is simply to help you get the best use of your valuable time and the skills and experience of all the participants.

We facilitate group meetings and workshops and design processes and agendas to achieve previously agreed outcomes. We combine flexible and responsive approaches to handling interpersonal issues with a strong focus on delivery with an added pinch of humour and fun where appropriate. With our quick mastery of new contexts and organisational dynamics we look beyond what is said and can be seen to explore other things that may be going on which are not voiced. Loop2 are skilled in identifying and interpreting group difficulties, resolving conflicts, enabling people to negotiate and move faster to agreed solutions than they thought possible. We are particularly skilled at working with complex problems with inter-related strands, helping participants to identify the wood from the trees or the important and relevant from the interesting and distracting.

We offer high end facilitation to small or very large groups. Our skills include handling complex and high risk group dynamics, dealing with disruptive, disengaged or dominant individuals and situations where there are risks of high levels of conflict. Loop2 brings high levels of experience in designing group processes that maximize opportunities for dialogue, learning, negotiation or participation. Even great facilitation can fail if the design of the group process is not right.

We can provide facilitation support to a wide range of situations and circumstances which include:

• Board, Executive or senior team awaydays
• Reviews of team effectiveness
• Strategic and business planning
• Development of strategic alliances and partnering
• Reviews of complex problems or impasses