Is this for you?

• You lead or support meetings — as a project manager, board member, community organizer, or team lead — and want them to actually work.
  
• You've felt a meeting slide into tension, disengagement, or a power struggle, and wished you'd known what to do.
  
• You want to support a group in making real decisions together, whether that group is fully collective or works within a hierarchy.
  
• You're looking for practical tools, not just theory — something you can use in your very next meeting.
  
• You facilitate any kind of group process — workshops, circles, retreats, classes — and want tools that go beyond meetings alone.

If any of that sounds like you, you're at the right place.

Why this matters

Meetings are where a group's capacity to work together gets built — or drained. They're where alignment happens, or where resentment and conflict quietly accumulates instead. Good meetings lower frustration, foster real connection, and build the trust groups need to make decisions together. Bad meetings do the opposite: disengagement, slow-burning conflict, power struggles that never get named.

Most of us were never taught how to run a meeting people actually want to be in. This workshop is about changing that — making meetings more meaningful, more human, and yes, even pleasant.

Approach

This workshop draws on:

• Group Facilitation Methods
• NVC-based decision making (Convergent Facilitation)
• The Sociocracy meeting model
• Applied improvisation — using play and interactivity to build presence and responsiveness

The day, roughly

Morning — grounding the fundamentals

• The role of the facilitator
• Meeting structure: how to prepare an efficient meeting
• Positions vs. interests vs. needs
• Creating conditions for real listening

Afternoon — working with what's alive in the room

• Tools for building trust and bringing connection into the space
• Reading the room and tracking what's happening beneath the surface
• Navigating tension and power dynamics: how to de-escalate

Throughout the day: practice, play, and real examples — not just theory.

This workshop centers consent-based decision making. That said, it's designed to be useful even if you work within a hierarchical structure — many groups blend hierarchy with collective decision-making on specific matters, and we'll explore how facilitation applies across that whole spectrum, not just in fully horizontal groups.

Your facilitator

Myriam Verzat is a CNVC-certified trainer, facilitator, and mediator with over 12 years of experience. She has facilitated in high-stakes, emotionally charged environments where clarity and calm are essential.

Her practice spans NVC trainings from 2 hours to 10-day intensives, as well as meetings, mediation, strategic planning, and dialogue circles. Across all of it, she uses Nonviolent Communication to create spaces where everybody's needs matter — even in the most tense or complex situations.

Myriam also brings a background in dance and theatre facilitation to her work, drawing on embodiment and play to help groups access connection and honest expression that words alone don't always reach.

www.myriamverzat.com

Where?

At driftwood cohousing, 2137 Chesterfield Ave, North Vancouver, BC V7M 2P7

Pricing

Note: Reconnect provides receipts for professional development.