Course Badge
Back to results
Certified Agile Facilitator™ Badge

Certified Agile Facilitator™

Taught by: Joel Bancroft-Connors
The Gorilla Coach
Join Joel Bancroft-Connors, The Gorilla Coach, for a hands-on dive into Agile facilitation over four focused half-days. Gain practical tools, sharpen your instincts, and lead groups with confidence in workshops, meetings, or sprints.
Joel Bancroft-Connors Trainer Photo
Back to results
 16 hours |
 Start Sep 21, 2026 UTC
Early bird pricing

Course details


Location

person icon

Online


Discounts

discount tag icon

Price increases to $895 after 09/07/2026

Schedule Details

Monday, September 21 | 3:00 PM - 7:00 PM UTC
Tuesday, September 22 | 3:00 PM - 7:00 PM UTC
Wednesday, September 23 | 3:00 PM - 7:00 PM UTC
Thursday, September 24 | 3:00 PM - 7:00 PM UTC

Max number of students: 18
This Course Is Guaranteed To Run

Skilled facilitation builds decisions that actually stick, breaks down the communication barriers that slow teams down, and gets a room aligned on what matters.

Being a trained facilitator goes beyond running meetings. It gives you the tools to open real dialogue, draw out different perspectives, and turn a room's energy into something the team can act on. If you're ready to learn facilitation in an engaging, hands-on way, picking up practices you can use the next day, this course is for you. Years of facilitating in virtual rooms taught us what actually works there, and how to avoid Zoom fatigue while still doing real work.

Learn the principles and practices of facilitation

A great facilitator can:

  • Help a group reach outcomes that turn into real, actionable results
  • Guide collaborative decision-making through deep democracy
  • Create a safe environment through open dialogue
  • Keep conversations focused and moving without losing energy
  • Recognize and respond to what a group actually needs in the moment

You can't learn these skills from a book, and death by PowerPoint is no way to build complex facilitation skills. You'll learn facilitation by doing it. Short presentations cover the concepts, and immersive exercises let you practice in real group dynamics.

Four half-days, not two marathon days.
Mon–Thu, 11am–3pm Eastern (8am–12pm Pacific). It's a deliberate choice, less cognitive overload, more room for the material to land. Every hour includes a fixed ten-minute break you can count on.

Want to see different time zones? Use this link to open a time zone converter in a new tab.

Here's what students say

"The Agile Facilitator Course taught by Joel Bancroft-Connors was an excellent experience that deepened my ability to lead collaborative, outcome-focused sessions with confidence. It provided practical tools for creating psychological safety, managing group dynamics, and facilitating meaningful conversations, skills I now use daily to help teams navigate complexity and achieve alignment."
— TrustPilot review, October 2025
"Being in the class with Joel as the main facilitator was excellent, his knowledge and experience in facilitation will be invaluable in the projects I am currently seeing."
— TrustPilot review, March 2026
"Joel created a multi-day engaging experience where theory was perfectly mixed with practical application. I highly recommend Joel as a trainer for any needs."
— TrustPilot review, July 2025
"The course was an engaging and highly practical experience. Joel's teaching style is both insightful and approachable, blending his teachings with hands-on activities that reinforce core facilitation techniques."
— TrustPilot review, March 2025
"Joel was an incredible instructor!"
— TrustPilot review, October 2023

In this course, you will

  • Discover what a facilitator is and what a facilitator does
  • Define and practice the three orientations of a facilitator
  • Understand why neutrality, inclusion, and safety matter, and how to hold them
  • Examine team dynamics and how teams develop
  • Learn to facilitate through conflict instead of around it
  • Apply what you've learned in real exercises, not hypotheticals

Facilitation is part skill, part art, and part mindset. A facilitator leads a team through a decision-making session where the goal is to walk out with an actionable plan, whether that's a brainstorm, a Scrum retrospective, or a room full of leaders doing quarterly planning. The job is the same: build an environment where creativity, honesty, and collaboration can actually happen.

What you'll get from this course

  • Scrum Alliance Certification in Agile Facilitation (CAF)
  • Automatic renewal of any existing Scrum Alliance certifications you hold
  • 14 PMI professional development units
  • Two-year Scrum Alliance membership, including members-only content, programs, and events
  • Digital copies of all training materials
  • The confidence to put these skills to work right away

Your instructor

Joel Bancroft-Connors Joel is a Certified Scrum Trainer, Certified Team Coach, and PMP, whose mission is building more sustainable companies for a better world. He's known as the Gorilla Coach for his reputation for helping teams and organizations face the uncomfortable problem no one wants to name, the gorilla in the room, and deal with it directly. Unlike many agile trainers who come up through a purely technical background, Joel spent years in customer service, QA, product management, and project management before he ever entered the agile world, and he brings that full delivery lens to facilitation and coaching. Beyond the classroom, Joel builds practical tools for the same problems he teaches, including the Friction Audit assessment and the Sprint in the Life series. He takes a deliberately practical approach to AI: a tool you use with intention, not a blanket thrown over a problem to make it look solved. Outside of work, he lives on several acres in the Pacific Northwest, where some project always needs his attention.

What this course covers

Across four half-days, we'll move through six core modules, each one building toward practical, usable facilitation skill.

  1. Introduction to Facilitation — What facilitation is, why it matters, and the different roles a facilitator plays. You'll explore the core skills that separate real facilitation from just running a meeting.
  2. Facilitation Tools and Techniques — Practical methods for brainstorming, decision-making, problem-solving, and building consensus, tools you can use in your next meeting.
  3. Communication and Active Listening — Building the communication skills that create open, respectful dialogue, and learning to hear what a group actually needs, not just what it says.
  4. Group Dynamics and Conflict Resolution — Understanding how groups behave under pressure, and gaining the skills to de-escalate tension, facilitate hard conversations, and keep a room productive.
  5. Facilitation Ethics and Professionalism — Confidentiality, impartiality, and handling difficult situations with the judgment a professional facilitator needs.
  6. Facilitating Virtual Meetings — Engaging participants, using technology well, and overcoming the real challenges of facilitating distributed teams.

Who should take this course?

Anyone who wants to help their team or organization deliver value sustainably can benefit from learning to facilitate well.

Facilitation isn't a niche skill. Break it into its parts, active listening, conflict resolution, building alignment, reading a room, and you'll find it running through nearly every skill employers say they can't find enough of. The 2024 Skills in the New World of Work report from Scrum Alliance and the Business Agility Institute found Communication cited by 62% of employers, with negotiation, conflict resolution, and emotional intelligence close behind, all core components of facilitation, even when the job posting never uses the word.

Specifically, this course is valuable for:

  • Project and Program Managers who want stakeholder meetings that end in decisions, not status updates
  • Product Owners and Product Managers who want to collaborate more effectively with stakeholders to shape product strategy
  • Scrum Masters looking to strengthen their ability to help teams deliver value
  • Agile Coaches deepening their facilitation practice
  • Leaders and managers who want to run a room with more confidence and less friction

If you want to help your organization move from friction to flow, these are skills worth having. Facilitation done well creates a room where every voice is heard and engaged.

Discounts available

We offer several discounts to help make this course affordable for you.

Unemployment discount — Verified unemployed individuals can contact us for a 50% course discount.
New college graduates — Looking to build your skills right out of school? We offer a discount for new graduates.
Military, active duty and veteran — We thank you for your service and offer a discount to our classes for you.
First responders, state, and local government — We recognize your importance to our world and want to make space for you in our workshops.

For all discounts, contact us at [email protected].

Reviews

4.85 out of 5.0 stars
rating icon showing 4.85 stars. (41 ratings) TrustPilot logo

More courses by Joel

course badge Certified Agile Facilitator™
Where & when
  • Mon Aug 17 - 20, 2026
  • 3:00 PM UTC
  • Live Online
course badge Certified Agile Facilitator™
Where & when
  • Mon Oct 26 - 29, 2026
  • 3:00 PM UTC
  • Live Online
course badge Certified Agile Facilitator™
Where & when
  • Mon Nov 16 - 19, 2026
  • 11:00 PM UTC
  • Live Online