Calgary Facilitation Services
Facilitated strategic planning, team development and change sessions for Calgary organizations.
We create sessions that are greater than the sum of their parts, guided by award-winning facilitators.
- 110,000+people facilitated globally
- Award-winningfacilitators
- In person or virtualin person, virtual or hybrid
We design sessions that leave teams with shared clarity, specific commitments, and the momentum to follow through.
Trusted by teams across the public, private and non-profit sectors
Calgary
Facilitation services for Calgary organizations
Most Calgary teams have already sat through a facilitated offsite. A fair number remember it as a pleasant day with flip charts, a photo of some sticky notes, and nothing that changed on the Monday. That experience is the thing a facilitation service has to answer for, so this page sets out how our sessions are designed, what happens in the room, and what you have in writing afterwards.
Sessions run half-day, full-day or multi-day, in person, virtually or as a hybrid, and every one is designed around your goals rather than pulled off a shelf. If what you’re weighing up is who would run it rather than what it involves, our Calgary facilitator page covers the people and how we assign them.
Session types
The sessions we run most often
Each runs half-day, full-day or multi-day, in person, virtually or as a hybrid.
Strategic planning sessions
Multi-year planning for boards, executive teams and departments. Built around scenario work, since planning in Calgary means planning against a cycle. The output is a set of priorities with owners and dates, not a document that gets filed.
Learn moreCOMS communication workshops
Our COMS communication styles assessment, delivered as a half-day or full-day workshop. Eight questions produce one grid the whole team can reference, plus practical ways to work through the misreads that keep recurring.
Learn moreLeadership offsites and retreats
Multi-day offsites for leadership groups, often in Kananaskis or Canmore. Structured so the social time and the working time each do their job, rather than one quietly eating the other.
Vision, values and culture
Vision, values and culture sessions that end in observable commitments rather than adjectives. If the output could be printed on a mug, we haven’t finished the session.
Change and restructuring
Change and restructuring sessions, run when the org chart has moved and the working relationships haven’t caught up. Designed to surface what people are actually worried about while it can still be acted on.
Board and governance sessions
Board and governance sessions, including annual planning and board effectiveness work. Shorter, tighter and built around the fact that directors are giving up a Saturday.
Every engagement we run is shaped around your team. Share what you’re working on and we’ll build the right session around it.
Share what you’re working onHow We Facilitate
Sessions that turn conversation into a plan your team can actually run with
There’s no prepared script. We guide the process, your team brings the expertise, and together we build toward a plan your people helped shape and will actually use.
Here that means a written pre-read, a designed agenda with timings that hold, structured input so the loudest voice doesn’t set the direction, and a decision log kept live in the room. Facilitator-guided, participant-led, and documented as it happens rather than reconstructed later.
Get in Touch
Why work with us
Three ways teams here engage a facilitator
Every engagement is customizable, but most start in one of these shapes.
Quarterly or monthly
Ongoing Partnership
A facilitator who gets to know your team over time, so trust deepens and development compounds instead of starting fresh each session. Mostly virtual, anchored by one or two in-person days a year.
Best for: making development a habit rather than a one-off.
Ask about a partnershipMulti-day, immersive
Multi-Day Offsite
Extended session for strategic planning, leadership development or a culture shift. When we’re flying east anyway, two days costs far less per day than one.
Best for: bigger decisions that need room to breathe.
Talk about an offsiteHalf-day to full-day
Single Workshop
A focused session built around one goal, whether that’s a decision, a kickoff, or a skill like communications or building trust and psychological safety.
Best for: teams that know exactly what they need to work through.
Ask about a workshop
How we facilitate
A clear path from first call to follow-through
Each engagement follows a similar path, and includes the same care, from your first call to the work that carries on after we fly home.
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Discovery
A call to understand your context, your goals, and what has to be true by the end of the day.
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Design
Customized session design, built around your team, not a template.
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Facilitation
An experienced facilitator in the room or online, and in the room the day before.
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Materials
Materials and tools your team can keep using afterward.
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Follow-up
A summary with commitments and clear next steps.
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Support
Optional support to help momentum carry past the session.
Why facilitation?
How a team works together shapes everything it creates.
$100 Million
is the yearly cost for big companies for staff being in pointless meetings.
65%
of senior managers say that meetings keep them from completing their own work.
58%
of Americans would rather go to a doctor’s appointment than attend a work meeting.
75%
of decision-makers feel that collaboration needs to be improved in their companies.
Forrester Research, 2021
Outcomes
What your team walks away with
Better decisions, made together
Decisions the whole room actually gets behind, instead of quiet disagreement that surfaces later in the parking lot.
Real buy-in
Because people helped shape the outcome, they leave genuinely invested in it, not just told what was decided.
Stronger team connection
The kind of trust and psychological safety that lets a group put the real disagreement on the table while there is still time in the agenda to work it through.
Action that sticks
Clear commitments and ownership that carry into Monday morning, not just good intentions on the day.
Fresh thinking and better ideas
Space for your team’s best thinking to surface, including ideas that might never have come up otherwise.
A record everyone can point at
A written summary of what was decided, who owns it, and by when. Useful when half the group has to brief a site that wasn’t in the room.
Client stories
Real teams, real outcomes
These aren’t all Calgary engagements, and we won’t pretend otherwise. They’re the kinds of sessions we run and the outcomes teams point to afterward.
What our clients say
It was a pleasure to work with Will and Positive Impact. I was both inspired and empowered to co-deliver a meaningful offsite. Their positive incite into leadership performance and emotional resilience gave me clear direction and tactical tools I could apply to my workplace right away. I thoroughly look forward to working with Will again.
– Haley Daniels
Olympian and Motivational Speaker
Thanks for your incredible support, kindness, professionalism, and realness.
It was my sincere pleasure and privilege to work with you on our event.
You are a unique and special human, and I’m grateful that our paths crossed on this project, and look forward to the next time.
– Shauna Grinke, MBA, CPHR
Vice President – People and CultureThe workshop was an incredibly valuable experience for our team — the facilitator created an open, engaging environment that encouraged honest discussion and collaboration. The content was thoughtfully tailored to our team’s specific goals, making the session both relevant and actionable. We’re excited to continue partnering with Positive Impact to build on the great momentum sparked in this session.
– Shannon Charbonneau
Account Director
Treetop Marketing and Promotion Inc.
I’m leaving our session with a sense of optimism that I haven’t had in a while. It was time extremely well spent! I am sure that we all feel much closer and more connected.
– Participant
MDA Geointelligence Engineering Leadership SummitThe environment that was created made me feel comfortable to participate and collaborate with my colleagues. It was very well organized. I liked the outcome of the brainstorm sessions and warmup activities.
– ParticipantThe level of engagement and pace of the training was excellent. Like the fact that this workshop was trainer-guided, but participants lead!
– ParticipantFantastic facilitating most importantly Will understood when to let us talk and when to corral us back on track. Excellent value this afternoon.
– Engagement Workshop Participant
100% Satisfaction Guarantee.
We stand behind the quality of our work with complete confidence. If you’re not fully satisfied with the results, we’ll make it right.
Your trust matters more to us, and our guarantee acknowledges our belief that you deserve to feel confident in every investment you make with us. That’s a standard we hold ourselves to, every time.
Ready to talk about your team?
Get in TouchWhat you get
What each format includes, and what you have afterwards
Every session is designed around your goals, but the shape of the engagement is usually one of these. The last column is the part worth reading, because it’s what still exists a month later.
| Format | What it includes | What you have afterwards |
|---|---|---|
| Half-day working session | Discovery call, a designed agenda, structured input so the room hears from everyone, and one facilitator holding the process | A written summary of what was decided and who owns what. Best when the group has one clear question to settle. |
| Full-day session | Everything above, plus pre-work such as an anonymous survey or short interviews, and enough time for the difficult part of the conversation | A summary, a decision log, and usually one structural output such as a plan on a page or an agreed set of priorities. |
| Multi-day offsite | Two or more days, often in Kananaskis or Canmore, with the social and working time each designed to do their own job | All of the above, plus 30, 60 and 90 day commitments with named owners. The output most likely to still be in use at the next planning cycle. |
| Virtual or hybrid session | Shorter blocks rather than a full day on screen, structured turn-taking, and small-group work sized so remote people aren’t outnumbered | The same written outputs. Usually the better choice for a single working question, and always cheaper, since no travel is involved. |
| Ongoing partnership | Quarterly or monthly sessions with the same lead facilitator, so context carries over instead of being rebuilt each time | A running record across sessions, and development that compounds rather than restarting. Usually mostly virtual with one or two in-person days a year. |
A local detail that matters
Why the last offsite produced nothing, and what we do differently
Calgary has a lot of people who have been facilitated before, so the scepticism is earned rather than lazy. The offsites that fail usually fail the same way. The day is well run and enjoyable, the group generates far more ideas than it can act on, nothing is prioritized because prioritizing means someone’s idea loses, and the whole thing is written up two weeks later by somebody who wasn’t in the room.
The failure isn’t the facilitation. It’s that the session was designed to generate rather than to decide, and nobody said out loud which of those it was meant to do.
So we design against it. Every session is built backwards from what has to be true at the end of the day, which means agreeing in discovery whether you’re exploring or deciding, and if it’s both, when the switch happens. The decision log is kept live in the room and read back before anyone leaves, so what’s written down is what people actually agreed rather than someone’s later recollection. Commitments get a name and a date attached in the room, because an unowned action is a wish. And the summary lands within a few days, while people still remember why they agreed to things.
Featured Workshops
Three of the sessions Calgary organizations ask for most, each available in any of the formats above.
COMS Communication Styles
COMS is our own communication styles assessment, grounded in research and facilitated by our team. It gives your people a shared way to talk about how they each work, so different styles become an advantage instead of a source of friction.
Delivered as a half-day or full-day workshop. Eight questions, one grid the whole team can reference afterwards, and practical ways to work through the misreads that keep recurring between the same two people.
Eight questions, one simple grid, and a reference the whole team can point at months later.
Learn more
Strategic Planning
This is where your team gets a real say in shaping and carrying out the organization’s direction, landing on initiatives that actually move forward.
Usually a full day or a two-day offsite, built around scenario work because planning here means planning against a cycle. The session ends with a short list the group will defend, not a long list it nodded at.
A strategic plan is a living, breathing document. We stay involved as it plays out over the following months and years.
Learn more
5 Dysfunctions of a Team
This session takes a good team and helps make it excellent. We draw on Patrick Lencioni’s well-known framework, approached through an appreciative inquiry lens that starts with what’s already working.
Usually a full day, and often the session that follows a planning day rather than precedes it. The five behaviours, trust, conflict, commitment, accountability and results, are worked through with your real situations rather than case studies, and the output is a set of agreed working commitments.
Your people walk away with shared language for how they work together, and a plan for moving forward that they built themselves.
Learn more
Our Core Team
Great content is only made better by great facilitators
Will Chambers
Founder & Facilitator
Award-winning facilitator and Founder of Positive Impact, with sessions delivered to tens of thousands of people. Will focuses on strategy, leadership, team dynamics and communication, turning concepts into clear, committed action.
More about Will
Lindsay Davis
Coach & Strategist
Award-winning coach and entrepreneurial guide, with experience spanning rural entrepreneurs in Africa to multimillion-dollar companies. Helps leaders focus on what matters most and build the resilience to anticipate challenges and move through them.
More about LindsayMichael Lorsch
Facilitator & Learning Consultant
Brings facilitation and learning design from theatre stages to executive boardrooms, including in-house work with lululemon. Blends mindfulness, relationship systems and human-centred design to keep people at the centre of every session.
More about Michael
Jason Maraschiello
Coach & Facilitator
Certified life and corporate coach, mindfulness and meditation teacher. Uses mindfulness and effective communication to help people set manageable goals, find work-life balance and build the support to follow through.
More about Jason
Every session is led by one of the facilitators below, who runs the discovery, the design, the day itself and the follow-up. More on how we assign them is on our Calgary facilitator page. Beyond the core team, we draw on a wider network of facilitators and subject-matter experts, matched to the goals, sector, and people of each engagement.
Before you book
Worth reading first
Six pieces that answer the questions most teams have before a first session.
- The people Who would run your Calgary session Read the guide
- Getting ready How to prepare your team for a facilitated session Read the guide
- Afterwards Keeping momentum after the session ends Read the guide
- Measurement How to measure the success of a facilitation session Read the guide
- Hybrid sessions Making mixed in-person and remote sessions work Read the guide
- Strategic planning Why organize a strategic planning session Read the guide
Frequently Asked Questions
How our Calgary sessions work
What actually happens in a facilitated session?
A designed agenda with timings that hold, run by one facilitator whose only job is the process. Most sessions move through the same shape: framing what has to be true by the end, structured input so the room hears from everyone before the loudest voice sets direction, small-group work, then a plenary where decisions get made and written down as they happen. The decision log is read back before anyone leaves, so what’s recorded is what people actually agreed.
How long should our session be?
Half a day suits a group with one clear question to settle. A full day is right when there’s pre-work involved and the difficult part of the conversation needs room to breathe. Multi-day offsites are for planning and culture work where the group needs to get somewhere it can’t reach in eight hours. If you’re unsure, describe the outcome you need and we’ll tell you which one it takes, including if the answer is less than you were planning to book.
What do we actually have in writing afterwards?
A written summary with the decisions made, the commitments people made out loud, and who owns what by when. Most sessions also produce something structural: a plan on a page, an agreed set of priorities, or shared language for how the team communicates. Multi-day sessions usually add 30, 60 and 90 day commitments with named owners. It lands within a few days, while people still remember why they agreed to things.
Can you run it virtually or as a hybrid?
Yes, and for a single working question that’s often the better choice as well as the cheaper one. Virtual sessions are designed as shorter blocks rather than a full day on screen, with more structured turn-taking than an in-person day needs. For hybrid we size the small-group work so remote participants aren’t outnumbered in every breakout, which is the failure mode that quietly makes people stop contributing.
We had an offsite that produced nothing. What would be different?
Most likely the session was designed to generate rather than to decide, and nobody said which. Generating ideas is easy and enjoyable; choosing between them means someone’s idea loses, which groups avoid unless the design makes them choose. So we agree in discovery whether you’re exploring or deciding, and if it’s both, when the switch happens. Commitments get a name and a date attached in the room, because an unowned action is a wish.
Do you bring the content or do we?
You do. We guide the process and never the content, which is the actual definition of facilitation and the thing that separates it from consulting. Your team knows the business, the market and the history. Our job is to build the conditions where that knowledge gets used, and to stop the session drifting toward whatever is most comfortable to discuss.
What preparation is involved on our side?
A discovery call, and then usually some pre-work. That might be an anonymous survey, a handful of short interviews, or simply a pre-read so nobody spends the first hour getting oriented. The heavier the pre-work, the more the session day can spend on the difficult conversation rather than on context. We’ll tell you what’s worth doing and what isn’t for the outcome you’ve described.
How far ahead should we book?
Six to eight weeks is comfortable for an in-person session. That window covers the discovery call, a session design built around your goals rather than a template, and the pre-work. Mountain venues for multi-day offsites book up considerably further out, so if you want Kananaskis or Canmore in a specific month, start earlier. Virtual sessions can move faster.
Let’s talk about your team
Tell us what you’re working through and what has to be true by the end of the day, and we’ll tell you honestly whether facilitation is the right tool and how the session would be designed and what it would produce.
Get in Touch
