strategic facilitation

Mark Ellwood shows teams how to improve their results through structured facilitation.

Working with boards, community groups, and businesses. Mark's philosophy is that in any size group, from 2 people to 200, every single participant brings wisdom. The collective wisdom can be channeled to form a consensus.  There are no wrong answers – discussion aims to find the best possible solution.

Mark uses a number of proprietary techniques to foster discussion and create action steps for immediate implementation.    Mark is an ideal facilitator for:

• Strategic planning
• Community consultations
• Town hall meetings
• Corporate retreats
• Issues management
• Mission and vision setting
• Focused conversations
• Break out sessions
• ​Board governance training
• Brainstorming
• Identifying and overcoming hurdles
• Creating action plans
• Project management 
• Building  teamwork

If you want a day off for your staff to climb ropes, toss water balloons, shoot paint balls, or learn to juggle, they'll certainly have fun and get to know each other better. We don't do those. 

On the other hand, if you want a training day that explores the practical aspects of how teams can collaborate better, then Mark Ellwood's "Terrific Teams" is just for you. Mark's innovative, experiential exercises delve into project management, team strategies, goal setting, handling interruptions, and managing non-value added tasks. And they're fun, too. 

The key in Mark's insightful debriefing style. Hi inspires teams to discover what works after engaging in a team building task. Teams will go away enlightened, with practical ideas on how they can improve. (And they have a bit of fun, too.)

During this session, teams engage in a practical task with a deadline. Afterwards, Mark facilitates on the following topics:

• Exploring different leadership styles
• Goal setting
• Determining a strategy
• Managing deadlines
• Dealing with administrative requirements
• Project management
• Assimilating new team members
• Clarifying roles
• Communicating well

Mark also shows teams how to develop a "Team Charter." It is an agreement about what they value and how they will work together day to day. 

Are you juggling priorities at breakneck speed? Putting out fires that won’t go away?  It’s time to regain control. Mark Ellwood's practical workshops give you simple techniques for tackling your tasks and becoming more pro-active. 

You’ll stop managing urgent day-to-day crises and start planning for the long-term. You’ll learn about goal setting, daily planning and  overcoming procrastination.  

Mark conducts a series of engaging, practical and fun learning  modules  that allow participants to deal with real-life issues they're facing.  The results is more time for top priority activities. 

Mark Ellwood was a national champion in effective speaking with the Canada Jaycees, and a world runner up with Jaycees International. He coached four other national champions and a world champion. He has also competed in Toastmaster events. In collaboration with MITACS, he taught masters and PhD. students originally from 62 countries in dozens of courses at Canadian universities.  

Mark brings a breadth of experience, having conducted dozens of media interviews, spoken at conferences, taught courses, and even performed stand-up comedy. 

He gives students the chance to learn presentation techniques in an environment that is exciting, creative, supportive, and fun.