Fall 2026 Short Course: Virtual Facilitation Skills for River Restoration Professionals

Most professionals who convene groups and lead meetings do so as part of their job without formal training in facilitation. They manage agendas, keep time, and move through items. The result is often meetings that consume significant organizational resources while running the risk of not producing valuable insights, clear decisions, or high participant engagement.

This training in virtual facilitation, led by Maggie Chumbley of Lead Groups Better Inc., draws on more than a decade of professional facilitation experience in government, conservation, and environmental contexts to offer participants a clear and practical framework for leading groups well in virtual environments.

The emphasis of this course is on what works, and why. Participants will leave with a set of skills and tools they can apply immediately, grounded in an understanding of how groups actually think and make decisions together.

Instructor: Maggie Chumbley – Founder, Lead Groups Better, Inc.
Dates: Tuesdays & Thursdays September 15, 17, 22, 24 (10am–12pm Noon PT)
Location: Zoom
Pricing: $600

A virtual meeting is not an in-person meeting conducted on camera. It is a different medium, with different rules, different constraints on attention, and different opportunities for group engagement. Facilitators who treat it as a lesser version of an in-person experience will consistently underperform what the medium makes possible.

Virtual environments offer capabilities that in-person settings do not. Every participant has an internet connection and a keyboard. Ideas can be collected simultaneously and anonymously. Responses can be gathered from an entire group in the time it would take one person to speak. Structured written exchanges can surface thinking that would never emerge in live open discussion. These are not workarounds, but tools with genuine advantages, and many virtual meetings never use them.

At the same time, virtual environments place particular demands on attention that in-person settings do not. Managing that attention, designing sessions that work with it rather than against it, and keeping participants genuinely present and engaged requires a distinct skill set that we will explore. 

• Foundational facilitation skills for virtual environments – Core competencies for leading virtual sessions effectively, from routine team meetings to complex, multi-stakeholder processes.
• Purpose, clarity, and agenda design – Methods for clarifying session objectives and designing agendas that support genuine group engagement rather than simply organizing time.
• Facilitator awareness and attunement – Skills for reading group dynamics in real time, including what to attend to, how to adjust in the moment, and how to create conditions for productive thinking.
• High-leverage facilitation tools (Liberating Structures) –  Five to six practical structures that change how groups engage, distributing voice and attention in ways that conventional meeting formats do not. Each technique is demonstrated and practiced during the training.
• Adaptive facilitation for complex systems – Frameworks for working with groups navigating uncertainty, conflict, or situations where the path forward is not yet clear. Draws on systems thinking and complexity-informed facilitation practice.
• Managing group dynamics – Practical skills for navigating the situations that most often derail meetings, including dominant voices, disengagement, conflict, and difficult conversations.

Session 1 – Sept 15: The Virtual Meeting as a Distinct Medium
What makes virtual facilitation different, and how to use the medium’s unique advantages rather than work around them.

Session 2 – Sept 17: Design and Clarity
How to clarify purpose, build agendas that produce real outcomes, and match structure to context.

Session 3 – Sept 22: Attention, Dynamics, and Difficult Moments
Skills for keeping participants present and engaged, and for navigating the situations that most often derail meetings.

Session 4 – Sept 24: Complexity, Application, and Practice
Facilitation in uncertain and contested situations, plus hands-on application to sessions the sessions you are actually planning.

Four sessions, two hours each, delivered via Zoom. Sessions are spaced to allow participants to apply learning between meetings.

Four hours of office hours are included for individual coaching and meeting design support. Participants are encouraged to bring real sessions they are planning to office hours. Design support is available for any meeting or facilitated process, not only those related to training content.

Target Audience: River restoration professionals including public agencies, non-governmental organizations, designers, and funders. 

Recommended Prereqs: None

• https://www.liberatingstructures.com/ 
• Liberating Structures App: https://liberatingstructures.app/en/

Laptops required? Yes

Software to be loaded prior to class: Zoom – https://www.zoom.com