Ottawa Facilitator
Facilitated planning, leadership and team sessions for organizations across Ottawa and the National Capital Region.
We create sessions that are greater than the sum of their parts, guided by award-winning facilitators.
- 110,000+people facilitated globally
- Award-winningfacilitators
- Ottawa and Gatineauin 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
Ottawa & the NCR
Facilitation for Ottawa teams
Positive Impact facilitates strategic planning, leadership development, team retreats, and change management for organizations across Ottawa and the National Capital Region. Ottawa rooms are unusually well-briefed and unusually careful, and the careful part is the one that shapes how a session has to be designed.
We won't tell you we have an office on Sparks Street, because we don't. What we bring is the facilitation craft: someone neutral who owns the process so your people can own the content. If your footprint is wider than the NCR, our Ontario page covers multi-region work, and we have a separate page for Toronto.
What we do
The areas we're called in for most
Every engagement starts with your context. If your challenge isn't listed here, ask us anyway.
Strategic Planning
Planning against a mandate is its own discipline. We facilitate the process so a group is clear about what it can decide, what it can only recommend, and where its discretion actually sits, then spends the day on the part it controls.
Learn moreCommunication Training & COMS
Our own communication styles framework, giving teams a common language for how they each work. Useful where policy, programme and corporate functions have to agree and each is fluent in a different dialect of the same language.
Learn moreTeam Development & Team Building
Retreats, offsites and tailored sessions that build the trust and psychological safety strong teams depend on. Genuinely off-site matters here, because in the building people stay half-attached to whatever is moving that week.
Culture & Engagement
From vision and values work to culture shifts, we help turn shared purpose into commitments people live by, including in organizations working to priorities that were set somewhere above them.
Leadership Development & Executive Coaching
Hands-on coaching and development for managers and executives, often policy specialists or programme leads now managing the people doing the work they used to do themselves.
Corporate Training
Participant-led training designed around your people, with tools that stay useful long after the session ends. Delivered downtown, out at a campus, or across the river when that suits the group better.
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 being explicit about what is being written down and what is not, because in this town that question is already in the room whether anyone says it or not. Facilitator-guided, participant-led, and clear about the record from the start.
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 this group is actually authorized to settle.
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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 say the difficult thing in the session rather than in the hallway on the way out.
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 Ottawa 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 TouchAround the NCR
Where sessions happen, and why the venue is a real decision
The National Capital Region spans two provinces, and a fair number of teams here have people on both sides of the river. Where you meet is a smaller question than in most cities, but it isn't nothing.
| Area | Organizations based there | What to weigh |
|---|---|---|
| Centretown and the parliamentary precinct | Federal departments and central agencies, national associations, advocacy and policy organizations, law and government relations | In person, and walkable for most of the people you'd want in the room. The default, and usually the right one. |
| Tunney's Pasture, Confederation Heights and the campuses | Departmental headquarters and programme branches, scientific and regulatory bodies | In person. Worth choosing when the group is drawn from one department, since it saves an hour of collective travel. |
| Kanata and the west end | Technology, telecommunications, defence and aerospace, engineering firms | In person. Far easier by car than downtown and the obvious choice when most of the group already works out there. |
| Gatineau and the Quebec side | Federal departments with offices across the river, regional bodies, cultural institutions | In person. Straightforward for NCR teams, but check statutory holidays, since the two provinces do not always share them. |
| Kingston, Cornwall and eastern Ontario | Post-secondary and health, correctional and defence establishments, municipal bodies, manufacturing | In person, worth its own day rather than a side trip. About two hours from Ottawa, so treat it as a separate visit. |
| The Gatineau Hills and Wakefield | Offsite venues within about forty minutes of downtown | Multi-day. Close enough that a genuine offsite is practical, and far enough that people stop checking their inbox. |
A local detail that matters
Everyone in the room already knows the notes might be a record
Ottawa is the one market where a facilitator has to think about the record before thinking about the agenda. The Access to Information Act gives a right to records under the control of a government institution, and whether any particular set of notes qualifies is a question for the institution rather than for us. What matters in the room is simpler: the people in it already know the question exists.
So they are careful. A facilitator who reads that carefulness as disengagement, or tries to jolly the group out of it, misreads a room full of people behaving entirely sensibly. And a facilitator who fills a wall with flip charts without ever saying what happens to them afterwards has quietly made the group's decision for them about how frank to be.
We handle it by asking rather than assuming. Before the design is written we ask what is being captured, who holds it afterwards, and what your own ATIP or records people expect, then we build the day around that answer. In the room we say plainly which parts are being recorded and which are for thinking out loud, and we stick to it. Naming the boundary is what lets a careful group be candid inside it. Pretending the boundary isn't there is what keeps them quiet.
Featured Workshops
Each of these runs in person, virtually, or as a hybrid, and each is designed around the room you actually have rather than a generic one.
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.
It does something useful where policy, programme and corporate functions have to work together. Those groups are trained differently and use the same words to mean different things, so the friction gets read as obstruction when it is usually just translation.
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.
Planning against a mandate is its own discipline. We facilitate the process so a group is clear about what it can decide, what it can only recommend, and where its discretion actually sits, then spends the day on the part it controls rather than the part it doesn't.
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.
In an environment where disagreement is habitually routed upward rather than settled across, the second behaviour is usually the one that has quietly gone. Escalating is not resolving, and the difference shows in how much a team can settle itself. The five behaviours, trust, conflict, commitment, accountability and results, are all on the table.
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
For work in Ottawa we assign one lead facilitator who stays with you through the follow-up, rather than handing you to a different person each time. 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.
- Wider footprint Facilitation across Ontario Read the guide
- Market page Facilitation in Toronto Read the guide
- Getting ready How to prepare your team for a facilitated session Read the guide
- Honest advice When not to hire a facilitator, and what to do instead Read the guide
- Strategic planning Why organize a strategic planning session Read the guide
- Afterwards Keeping momentum after the session ends Read the guide
Frequently Asked Questions
Facilitation in Ottawa
Are your facilitators based in Ottawa?
No. Our facilitators travel to Ottawa for in-person work. We'd rather say that plainly than imply a local office we don't have. Arriving from outside also means we have no position in anyone's file and no history with anyone in the room, which in this town is often the more useful half of being an outsider.
What happens to the notes and flip charts from our session?
Whatever you decide, and we agree it before the design is written rather than after the session. We'll ask what is being captured, who holds it afterwards, and what your own ATIP or records people expect, then build the day around that answer. In the room we say plainly which parts are being recorded and which are for thinking out loud. We won't promise you that anything is off the record, because that call belongs to your institution and not to us.
Our group can advise but not decide. Is a facilitated session still worth it?
Yes, if the day is designed for that honestly. A group that can recommend but not approve should spend its time producing a clear recommendation with the trade-offs named, not performing a decision it can't make. We sort this in discovery: what this group can settle, what it can recommend, and what is already fixed above it. Sessions here often produce two outputs, the decisions taken and the advice going up with an owner attached.
Can you run a session for a group that spans Ontario and Quebec?
Yes, and it's routine in the National Capital Region. The practical things to check are statutory holidays, since the two provinces don't always share them, and whether anyone's participation depends on being able to work in French. We facilitate in English. If your session genuinely needs to run in French it needs a francophone facilitator, and we'll say so on the first call rather than take the booking.
What kinds of organizations do you work with here?
Leadership teams, boards, and departments across public, private, and non-profit organizations. In Ottawa that tends to mean federal departments and agencies, national associations and advocacy organizations, technology and telecommunications, defence and aerospace, post-secondary and health, municipal bodies, and the consulting and government relations firms working alongside them. Group size ranges from an executive team of eight to a leadership summit of sixty.
The group is polite but nothing gets said. Can facilitation change that?
Usually, and the fix is structural rather than a matter of encouragement. In an environment where disagreement habitually travels upward instead of across, people get very good at raising nothing in the room. We use written-first input so views are committed before anyone reads the room, small groups before plenary, and anonymous input for the questions nobody wants to own. What surfaces is generally already widely known and simply unsaid.
How far ahead should we book?
Six to eight weeks is comfortable for an in-person session. That window covers a proper discovery call, a session design built around your goals rather than a template, and any pre-work such as an anonymous survey or interviews. Public sector calendars have a strong rhythm around fiscal year end and reporting cycles, so tell us yours early and we'll design around it rather than against it.
What does our team actually walk away with?
A written summary with the decisions made, the commitments people made out loud, and who owns what by when, in whatever form you've agreed is appropriate. Most sessions also produce something structural, such as a plan on a page or an agreed set of priorities. The point is traction on Monday morning rather than a good feeling that fades by Wednesday. We can stay involved afterward if you want support keeping it alive.
Let's talk about your team
Tell us what you're working through and who needs to be in the room, and we'll tell you honestly whether facilitation is the right tool and what the session should look like.
Get in Touch
