“Leading Innovation ’n Collaboration through Facilitation”

The FoCuSeD™ Facilitator Academy - 4-Days

1st Holistic Structured Facilitation Technique

“Our flagship FoCuSeD™ Facilitator Academy, is endorsed by the IAF as an IAF Endorsed™ Comprehensive Programme.”

 “This class provides state-of-the-art in structured facilitation methodology.”

  • You MUST develop Essential People (“Soft”) Skills to succeed…
  • I’ll help you develop them…
  • Trainer: Gary Rush, IAF CPF | Emeritus
  • Let me, an IAF CPF | Emeritus, share my 40+ years of experience.  
  • I Don’t Just Provide Instruction – I inspire… 
  • Are you a Scrum Master?  This will help you hold more effective stand-up, retrospective, and backlog prioritizing meetings.
  • Are you a Project Manager?  This will help you gather better requirements and hold more effective project meetings.
  • Are you an aspiring leader?  This will help develop the necessary essential ‘soft’ skills to become an effective servant leader.
  • In my FoCuSeD™ Facilitation classes, I provide you with content and then we discuss, practice, and relate it to your work and life. 
  • You bring your concerns, your past experiences, and your questions.  I keep my classes small so that I have time to devote to you.  
  • My highly interactive class teaches you not only “how to”; it also teaches you to understand the "why" so that you can perform effectively.  
  • I want you to continue learning and developing your new skills, so I provide you with a comprehensive reference manual that reinforces what I teach, and you learn.  
  • Do you want stronger “soft” skills?

In our class students practice 40% of the class time and receive comprehensive assessments from the instructor.

This class is available publicly, on-site, and as a virtual class anywhere in the world.  Please contact Gary for additional information, and scheduling.

Course Details

The FoCuSeD™ Facilitator Academy covers situations encompassing all types of workshops/meetings.  It covers effective Facilitator skills and tools necessary to facilitate any situation in business and in life.

  • What is Facilitation? What’s the history? When is it used?
  • What do Facilitators do? How does this fit with your job?
  • How do you deal with people – the good, the bad, and the ugly?
  • How do you manage conflict and make it productive?
  • Where do diversity, inclusivity, and thinking/learning styles fit?
  • How do you design a Holistic Process?
  • How do you build an effective Annotated Agenda?
  • How do you fit facilitated workshops/meetings into projects using different methods – e.g., Waterfall, Agile, etc.?
  • How do you structure facilitated workshops/meetings for a variety of business situations?
  • How do you facilitate in both an in-person environment as well as a virtual environment.
  • How do you fit facilitated workshops/meetings into any situation in business and in life?

Course Objectives

The FoCuSeD™ Facilitator Academy is designed so that the students will be able to:

  • Perform as effective FoCuSeD™ Facilitators immediately upon completion.
  • Demonstrate an understanding of FoCuSeD™, its components and processes.
  • Know “how to” incorporate their new skills and tools to enhance their job skills.
  • Facilitate a variety of workshops/meetings – including Strategic Planning, Project Planning, Process Modeling, Data Modeling, business requirements, etc.
  • Demonstrate a level of proficiency in basic facilitation skills.
  • Use effective FoCuSeD™ Facilitator skills in business and in life.
  • Understand the IAF Core Facilitator Competencies and what they need to learn to achieve them.

Each Student Receives

  • PDF version of the FoCuSeD™ Facilitator Guide by Gary Rush, IAF CPF | E – a radical departure from previous work.  A comprehensive reference manual in which Gary shares his step-by-step process so that students can replicate his practices.  

Some Key Features of the 600+ page manual are:

  • Comprehensive Facilitator tools.
  • Cookbook Processes fully described using an Annotated Agenda format.
  • Our unique FoCuSeD™ Holistic Parallel Process Development – this critical process enables the Facilitator to seamlessly integrate the workshop/meeting process to build a product parallel to the emotional group cycle.
  • Class handouts with agenda and exercises.
  • Confidential assessment – feedback from the instructor
  • A class Certificate of Completion.  You will learn what it takes to become certified by the International Association of Facilitators (IAF) as a Certified™ Professional Facilitator (CPF).

Consulting Support


Each student is invited to contact Gary Rush, IAF CPF | M for advice on agendas or issues they encounter in workshops – regardless of how many years ago they attended the class

Contact Gary

Interested in an On-Site Class for your organization?  With 5 or more attendees, we can bring our class to you…

What students are saying…

“Thank you again for such a great class.  I leaned a ton and really valued the time in class.” - Melissa, Texas Department of Agriculture

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