70+ Training Tips for Facilitators
Key Takeaways
- Great facilitation starts before the session begins. Understand your audience and create a welcoming, interactive learning environment tailored to them.
- Active participation leads to better learning. Thoughtful questions and activities help learners stay engaged and remember what they've learned.
- The best facilitators never stop improving. Seek feedback, experiment with new techniques, and continuously refine your approach to create more meaningful learning experiences.
We’ve been in the learning business a long time, and want to offer you this collection of our favorite training ideas and tips. Whether you're leading your first workshop or have years of facilitation experience, there's always room to refine your approach. The training tips below cover every stage of the facilitation process—from preparing for your audience and creating a welcoming environment to increasing engagement, managing group dynamics, and helping learners turn insights into lasting behavior change.
Short on time? Skip right to our 25 top quick tips.
Prepare before the session
Get background info on the group—and use it
Understanding who will be in the room helps you tailor your facilitation to their needs. Before your session, learn as much as you can about participants' backgrounds, experience, relationships, goals, and current challenges. Is this training part of a regular process, such as onboarding, or were you called in because the team is in conflict? Use this knowledge when making decisions about how much time to spend on various topics, what kinds of engagement activities to plan, etc.
Find out how much they already know about your topic
Is your group already familiar with DiSC, or whatever your topic is? Or will the concepts be totally new? Find out and adjust your training to their knowledge level to avoid boredom or confusion. For a group of mixed experience, think about how you can get people on the same page before diving in.
Hold pre-session one-on-ones
For small-group training events, schedule a 15-minute video chat with each learner in advance of the training. Meeting folks, even briefly, allows you to tailor your approach to that specific group of people. It also gives learners a chance to share any concerns or anxieties they have about the training.
Consider assigning pre-session work
Get learners thinking before your session so you can hit the ground running. For example, have them write down answers to questions like “What is the team doing well?” or “What are some recent examples of conflict on the team?”
If you leading a DiSC training and distributing profile reports ahead of time, have learners mark places in the profile where they thought aha! (this really hit home), hmm… (I’m not so sure about this), or whoa (this stopped me in my tracks).
Some personality types (hi, C and S styles!) prefer putting their thoughts together before a conversation, rather than being asked for immediate reactions. Pre-session work can help them feel more confident sharing their thoughts with the group.
Use your meeting invite to get people thinking
In your meeting invitation email, consider including a few questions for learners to ponder beforehand, above the link to the training space.
Stay organized with checklists
There are many large and small details to remember when planning a training session. Set yourself up for success by developing a thorough checklist you can adapt for every training. Your checklist will be personal to you, but if you’re running a DiSC training, you can adapt our sample DiSC facilitation checklist.
Plan your session to appeal to different personality types
Present your content in a mixture of styles. For example: group activities to appeal to social i-style people, time to reflect before sharing for S types, data or skills acquisition opportunities for C-style people, and independent or goal-oriented projects for D types.
Embrace accessibility-first design
If you're building a training program, incorporate accessibility from the start. Don't treat accessibility features as stage-two add-ons, or choose to think about them only if you receive requests. Baking in accessibility right from the start future-proofs your program, shows your training is welcoming to everyone, and likely makes the whole program stronger for all participants. There are many resources on making your events accessible such as this checklist from Cornell University.
Create psychological safety from the start
Make room for social connection
Set up a virtual lobby or other social space for learners to use before training and during breaks. Consider having discussion prompts up to help people connect.
Play welcome music
Play music while waiting for people to arrive to the training and during breaks—something to set a fun and relaxed tone and welcome learners.
Have learners pronounce their own names
Introductions should include learners pronouncing their names for the group. This is better than you guessing at pronunciation, avoiding addressing people by name because you’re not sure, or only asking for clarification from learners whose names are outside the ones common in your culture.
Set ground rules
Do you want participants to hold their questions or shout them out as they come up? Will you send follow-up documents or should everyone take notes? When will the breaks be? Set your ground rules upfront so people can focus on the content of your presentation.
Onboard learners to your platform
Don’t assume everyone knows the ins and outs of your video conferencing platform. Take a few minutes to “onboard” learners and make everyone comfortable with its features. You can make a game out of it, playing Pictionary on the whiteboard or having people raise their hands to answer trivia. Point out any accessibility features, such as live captioning.
Review the learning objectives
People can be anxious or skeptical about team-building or soft skills workshops. Be clear about why the training is happening and what tangible outcomes you’re seeking. Give learners some facts about the model or content you’re using and where they can find research to support it.
Let people know when breaks will be
Communicate your schedule up front, including breaks. If people don’t know when breaks are coming, they’ll take their own breaks or lose focus rather than knowing they only have to focus for another, say, 10 minutes.
Tell people what resources they’ll receive afterward
It's common to get the question, “Will you send the slides out afterward?” People want to know whether they need to take detailed notes during the session, or whether they can focus on your presentation and listening to their peers. Tell learners what follow-up resources they’ll get, such as notes, recordings, slides, etc.
Try “pair and share” icebreakers
Toward the start of each training session, take a few minutes to split people into pairs and give them a discussion prompt. This gets everyone talking, priming them to be more engaged once they return to the larger group.
Keep participants engaged and make the learning stick
Ask better questions
Use open and closed questions intentionally
Closed questions help confirm understanding or keep a session moving, while open-ended questions encourage discussion, reflection, and deeper learning. Choosing the right type of question can make conversations more productive.
Could your statement be a question?
Learners remember concepts better when they’re involved in discussing them, rather than just listening. Look for opportunities to ask your learners questions.
Let the group respond first
When someone asks a question, get responses from the group before you share your own response. If they said what you would have, thank the group and move on.
Review, react, relate, decide
For effective debriefing after an activity or session, ask learners a series of questions to review (What did you notice?), react (How did you feel?), relate (How does this apply to the real world?), and decide (What will be your next steps?).
I used to think ___. Now I think ___.
Try this activity to encourage reflection at the end of a session. Ask learners to fill in the blanks: “I used to think ___. Now I think ___.” For example, a learner might say something like, I used to think social time with coworkers was a waste of productive time. Now I know how that time contributes to the cohesion of the group and helps us work effectively with each other.
Give people a minute to write before responding
If you’re training a group reluctant to engage in discussion, you may need to adjust your approach. One option is to ask people to write down their responses to a question, then ask someone to share. This can encourage participation from people who don’t like to respond off the cuff.
Bracket your questions with silence
Pause before a question to give listeners time to focus. Pause after a question to give listeners the space to consider it and formulate a response.
Use interactive activities
Chatstorm
When asking a question in a virtual training, whether icebreaker or content-related, try the chatstorm method on occasion: Have learners type their answers in chat but hold off on hitting send. Ask for a signal from each learner that they are ready, then have everyone hit send at the same time. This method can help avoid groupthink and ensure that each person gets to answer.
Camera polls
Have learners turn their cameras off, then turn them on in response to a prompt. For example, read a series of statements, and if the statement applies to you, turn your camera on.
Idea from Training magazine
Brainwriting > brainstorming
Organizational psychologist Adam Grant says good ideas are lost through brainstorming, where people “bite their tongues due to conformity pressure, noise, and ego threat.” If you want the group to generate ideas, try “brainwriting” instead: give folks a few minutes to write down their ideas separately, then get back together to share and assess.
Engage the right side of the brain
Activate different parts of your learners’ brains by asking them to draw or be creative in another way. For example, ask them to draw what it feels like to stretch to the style opposite theirs, then have people share their drawings.
Emojis on a stick
Facilitator Robin Kellogg led our DiSCprofile.com team through a fully virtual Five Behaviors training. Beforehand, she mailed us all emojis on a stick and a dry erase speech bubble with marker. At the training, we decided what each emoji meant (heart = love it, flower = I have questions, star = let’s remember this idea). Holding the emojis up during our discussions was a fun, tactile way to keep us engaged and share reactions without derailing the conversation. Because of the novelty, it felt more interactive than using the reactions within our virtual meeting platform.
I like, I wish, I wonder
This is a prompt you can use during sessions to gather feedback on team processes. Make three columns on a whiteboard: I like, I wish, and I wonder. Have each learner make one sticky note for each column, articulating what they like about how the team is working, what they wish for the team, and a question they wonder about.
Idea from Facilitator School
Be ready with energizers
Develop a collection of 2- to 3-minute meeting energizers you enjoy. These are activities meant to reinvigorate a group that is losing energy. Keep a list of your favorite energizers close at hand so you can pick one when your training needs a spark. For example, a quick round of Simon Says works in both virtual and in-person settings and gets people moving and laughing.
Invite participation every 3-5 minutes
This is especially important for virtual trainings, and can just take a few moments. Some ideas: polls, type in chat, whiteboards, verbal sharing, small groups, activities, trivia questions, quizzes, pace feedback, raise hand, thumbs up/down, reactions, etc.
Design learning that actually sticks
Give learners note-taking handouts with prompts
They’ll be primed to listen for key concepts if they are filling out the sheet during the session.
Have learners teach each other
Have you heard of the “protégé effect”? It's the proven phenomenon that people learn material more thoroughly when they expect to teach it to someone else. One of the most effective ways to reinforce learning is to have learners explain ideas to each other. Teaching a concept requires participants to organize their thoughts, identify gaps in their understanding, and communicate information clearly—all of which deepen learning.
Remember the power of storytelling
Use analogies and stories to help learners understand and remember concepts. How can you connect this new idea to something familiar?
Use “dual coding” to present info both visually and verbally
Learning science research shows that the concept of learning styles (e.g., visual learners vs. verbal learners) is less helpful than a “dual coding” approach. This just means presenting both words and images for your key concepts. The images aren’t “for” visual learners, and the words are “for” verbal learners; everyone learns better when information is reinforced in this way. Just be sure the images are relevant to the language. Otherwise you risk cognitive overload.
Prime for engagement
Before delivering new content, ask questions or conduct a poll on the topic. Prime learners for active engagement, not just passive listening.
Mine for confusion in different ways
Not all learners will speak up verbally when you ask, “Any questions?” Try putting up a whiteboard and asking learners to type which topics are fuzziest for them. Others can add stars or checkmarks if they agree.
Show progress
Return often to the agenda. Learners focus better when they know how much has been covered and how much is left.
Manage group dynamics
Be ready to make conflict productive
In training sessions, conflict can arise due to differences in communication styles and opinions. Instead of immediately shutting it down, practice techniques to turn the conflict into a productive discussion. When managed well, conflict can be quite useful for teams, leading to deeper trust. Introduce the concept of the conflict continuum to teams who are conflict-averse or clashing in destructive ways.
ELMO (Enough, Let’s Move On)
When setting ground rules at the beginning of a session, you can propose that anyone can say “ELMO” if a discussion has gone on longer than productive, or if someone is lost on a tangent. When handled in a playful way, it can be an effective shorthand to manage over-participators and keep the conversation focused.
Keep the learning personal
Remember to use names. A simple but powerful tip is to acknowledge each learner by name and respond to each of their questions and comments. Make their participation count.
Provide breakout groups with clarity
Whether you’re in person or online, give small groups clear, concrete instructions so they understand what to bring back to the large group discussion. Should each group designate a notetaker? How should the whiteboard be used? You can pop into each breakout room/group to provide guidance and make sure learners are on task. You may want to ask a question, do some coaching, or prod the group to deepen its discussion.
Facilitate great virtual sessions
Know your platform inside and out
Familiarize yourself with both the hosting platform (e.g., Zoom, Teams, Meet, Webex, etc.) as well as any engagement technology (e.g., Mentimeter, Slido, MURAL) you're using. Know your tools' maximum capacity and associated costs. What interactivity tools does it provide (e.g., chat, video sharing, polls, breakout rooms, whiteboards, etc.) and which will you be able to use? How many people can be visible in a gallery view of the group? You want to make sure you’re maximizing all the technology offers. And the better you know your tools, the more you can focus on your content.
Test everything out in advance
Family and friends make great guinea pigs. Encourage participants to test things on their end in advance, as well.
Have a producer or assistant
If possible, have someone who can focus on the technology and answering chats from learners so you can just focus on facilitating. Virtual facilitation often goes more smoothly with an additional person who can help with technological problems, monitor engagement, and communicate with learners during the session so you can concentrate on conveying the content. If you’re using a platform with more sophisticated tools, the assistant can also help you with polls, whiteboards, and timers.
Use a large font size on your slides
Learners may be participating using phones or other smaller screens. Make sure your slides are easily readable at smaller sizes. This is a good opportunity to make your slides less wordy; if learners are reading, they’re not listening.
Enable live captioning
Up your accessibility by enabling automated or manual captioning for your training, or showing learners how they can do so themselves. Here’s info on live captioning on Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Webex, Slack, and Zoho.
Use timed slides in breakout rooms
Make sure participants can see the question or prompt, so they know what to discuss in small group breakouts. To guide the conversation even more, use timed slides that advance to the next question after a set amount of time.
Log in with a second device
You won’t have to ask if your video, poll, or presentation is working; you’ll be able to see what your learners are seeing. And if your main device gets disconnected or fails in some way, you might still be able to interact from your second device. For example, you might be able to use your phone to leave a chat message to your learners (and producer) telling them you’re logging back in. Or that second device can become your alternative option for facilitation.
Have a fall-back plan
Know what you’ll do if your internet goes out or participants drop off. Have a low-tech backup plan if advanced features (e.g., breakout rooms, whiteboards, polls) are not working.
Look into the camera
Make learners feel your attention by looking into the camera. Some facilitators place a photo of loved ones or some other happy image behind/near their camera so they're more likely to smile and focus when looking at their camera.
Adjust your expectations for nonverbal feedback
You won’t get the same kind of immediate feedback from learners in a virtual space that you do in person—and it’s okay. You less likely to catch the heads nodding, the smiles, the confused faces that you’re used to getting in the classroom. While this lack of visual cues can make it feel like the learners aren’t excited or engaged, it’s not necessarily a sign that things are going wrong. Just make sure you stay engaged with the learners and keep your energy high.
End strong—and extend the learning
Honor the “first five, last five”
When designing your training session, pay special attention to the first and last five minutes. People will likely remember the first and last things you say better than any other part of the training (it's called the serial-position effect). Plan a learner interaction or other engaging event right at the top, and leave time at the end to summarize main concepts and clarify any next steps.
Don’t cheat the ending
The last minutes of a training are crucial to how learners will remember their experience. Don’t get so behind you end up rushing this important moment. Rush something else if you have to, but keep the ending sacred so you can deliver your well-thought-out closer.
Top three goals for the days ahead
Before ending your training, ask learners to name their goals for the days or weeks ahead. Have learners vote on their top three group goals and provide those to the group’s leader. Suggest additional training you could provide or resources for the leader.
Create a post-training follow-up document
The trouble with following up by emailing your slide deck is that, if your slides follow best practices for learner engagement, they won't have a lot of text on them. If the slides alone don't provide the details learners will want, you can either include your notes with the slides or create a post-training follow-up document formatted for reading and reference that has the same info you covered. Of course, if you're using Everything DiSC on Catalyst, you may just need to point learners to the right section for the info they need.
Connect learners with accountability partners
Before the training session is over, connect pairs of learners to serve as accountability partners for each other in the coming weeks. Give the pairs a few minutes during the training to schedule one or two check-in conversations with each other. Make sure they add the check-ins to their calendars right then!
During these conversations, the learners will discuss with each other how they are progressing on the goals they articulated during the training session. Having to report progress to a peer like this makes it more likely a learner will take action on their stated goals. It also gives team members an opportunity to support each other.
Ask, “May I observe your next meeting?”
Gauge the impact of a team training by sitting in on their next meeting, if they don’t mind. Are they falling back into old patterns? Can you help them apply what they learned in training?
Keep the whiteboard alive
If you have collaborated on a whiteboard—brainstorming, learner comments, notetaking, etc.—save and share the board after the training, or make it a living document. Return to it in future meetings or trainings to discuss group progress.
Use post-training meetings to continue growth
Leverage regularly scheduled meetings to keep momentum going. You as the facilitator don’t even have to be there. Discussion questions can be asked by a manager or any team member. These questions can be answered quickly; another meeting can be called to address the issues further if needed. Facilitators might also want to ask the team to come up with questions for each day or week until their next session. Or, see 30+ team-building questions for after a training.
Keep improving as a facilitator
Stay curious
No matter how long you've been leading trainings, stay curious about your learners. When you approach each session like there’s still something to learn, you remain present and adaptable. Participants feel that energy. When you ask questions with real interest—rather than relying on assumptions or routines—you create space for discovery, not just delivery. That curiosity can spark new insights, uncover hidden challenges, and make each session more engaging and relevant for everyone in the room.
Use evaluations for continuous improvement
Beware of relying only on your own sense of how well a training went. Your comfort or enjoyment might indicate that it went well, but it’s also possible that no real learning occurred. A good evaluation is an essential tool to use for your own learning and success. Consider a three-part evaluation process: deciding what you’re going to measure, measuring it, then adjusting the product based on the results.
Evaluate with “I like, I wish, I wonder”
We mentioned this prompt above as a way to engage learners in discussions, but you can also use it to evaluate your training session. For example, a learner might respond:
- I like that we had breakout rooms for each style.
- I wish that we had been able to think through some of the big discussion topics in advance.
- I wonder if there is a way we can make DiSC more visible in our weekly meetings.
Gather testimonials
Leave a space for testimonials at the end of your post-training evaluation survey. If you want to use them on your website or another public forum, request permission.
Understand your personal facilitation style
Each DiSC style has strengths and challenges when it comes to facilitation. Do you know yours? We all have blind spots about our own tendencies—they come so naturally to us that we are unable to see them from an outside perspective. When facilitating, your DiSC style can show up in your pace, energy, and approach to group activities. Take a look at our facilitation tips for each type:
Learn from other trainers, facilitators, and coaches
There are as many ways to facilitate a training session as there are facilitators. There's always a new perspective or new ideas to consider. Connect with other DiSC practitioners by reaching out to your own networks, or join the Everything DiSC Users Group on LinkedIn or the DiSC Practitioners and Fans group on Facebook.
DiSC-specific tips
Ask people to add their DiSC style to their display name
Tell them how, and demonstrate with your own. If people are joining from different locations, it can be nice to include that as well. For example: Avery Harris-Gray (SC) – New York
Encourage DiSC style video backgrounds
Simple: just send your learners this collection of DiSC backgrounds!
Where’s your dot?
On a virtual whiteboard, ask learners to place their initials on a DiSC circle.
Discuss the team’s style as well as individuals’
Teams don’t often examine their team personality or style. Yet, it influences how the team communicates and prioritizes tasks. Take time to explore the group culture of teams you’re training.
Tailor your icebreaker question to the content
Instead of selecting a general icebreaker, tailor your icebreaker question to the goals and content of the training. Here are suggested icebreakers for each Everything DiSC application:
- Workplace:
- What characteristic do you wih you had more of?
- What is the most common misconception people have about you?
- What characteristic do you most admire in other people?
- Productive Conflict: What’s the first word that comes to mind when you think about conflict?
- Agile EQ: What traits define an emotionally intelligent person?
- Management: Think about the best manager you’ve ever had. What words best describe that person?
- Work of Leaders: What is the most important responsibility of a leader?
- Sales: Describe a selling experience with a customer who had a much different personality than you. (Or, a time you were the customer in this situation.)
Start with a workplace culture poll
Rather than an icebreaker, you can start with a poll, such as:
When you think of your ideal workplace culture, which is more important to you?
- Collaboration: having lots of opportunities to collaborate and get to know coworkers
- Space: having a lot of autonomy and space to work independently
Would you rather be part of a workplace that…
- Makes decisions quickly
- Takes time to think through decisions
Remember there are 12 DiSC styles
When possible, discuss all 12 styles, not just D, i, S, and C. A Di-style and DC-style person, for example, can have very different personalities.
Bonus: 25 quick facilitation tips
Don’t have time for everything above? Here are our 25 favorite tips for trainers, short and sweet:
- Get background info on your group so you can tailor your training.
- Put questions to consider or tease your content in your meeting invite.
- Develop a checklist you can use to prepare for each training.
- Design for accessibility right from the start.
- Set up space and time for social connection.
- Set ground rules (Should they hold questions or shout them out? When are breaks?, etc.)
- Tell people what materials they’ll get after the training.
- Try pair-and-share icebreakers.
- Know when to use open vs. closed questions.
- When someone asks a question, invite the group respond first.
- Give people a minute to jot down their thoughts before responding to a discussion question.
- Try the chatstorm method (everyone hits send on their answer at the same time).
- Try camera polls (turn your camera on when the statement applies to you).
- Include both visual and verbal content, and use both the right side and the left side of the brain.
- Be ready with short meeting energizers for groups losing energy.
- Provide breakout groups with clarity (like, even more than you think you need to).
- Have learners teach each other.
- Use analogies and storytelling to make learning stick.
- Mine for confusion in various ways.
- Return to the agenda often and show progress.
- Test out everything in advance and have a fall-back plan.
- Pay special attention to how you spend the first five and last five minutes of a training session.
- Create a post-training document that serves learning better than just sharing your slide deck.
- Use “I like, I wish, I wonder” for discussions and evaluations.
- Understand your own facilitation style, including blind spots, strengths, and natural pace.
As you continue developing your facilitation skills, don't feel like you need to master every technique at once. Try one or two new approaches in your next session, reflect on what worked, and keep building your toolkit over time. Small improvements can have a lasting impact on your learners' engagement and your confidence.
If you’re facilitating DiSC sessions, the best way to gain confidence (and credentials) is through the Everything DiSC Certification course.
Posted 08/03/2026, Last Updated 08/20/2026
