Certification

Help teams decide their culture — out loud, together.

The Certified Facilitators Programme builds the skill to run the above / below-the-line method with any team — including the rooms where the disagreement is the point and someone has to hold it.

Next cohort 4–5 November 2026 · Two days, in person · Auckland
Become a certified facilitatorSee what's included

What you'll learn

  • Run the full above / below-the-line method with confidence
  • Hold a room in productive silence
  • Turn disagreement into the most valuable part of the session
  • Adapt the method for teams of 8 or 260

Who it's for

  • Leaders and people & culture teams
  • Independent facilitators and consultants
  • Coaches building a culture practice
  • Anyone running the method more than once

What you get

  • Certification and facilitator materials
  • The self-marketing kit — seal, badge, banner, capability sheet
  • Access to the practitioner community
  • Wholesale pricing on decks
  • A certificate of completion

The hardest skill in this method isn't running the exercise. It's not rescuing the room.

Anyone can deal out cards and ask a group to sort them. What certification builds is the judgement underneath: knowing when a silence is productive and when it's stuck, how to ask the two questions without steering the answer, and what to do when a team lands on a behaviour that quietly indicts the person running the session.

The moment a facilitator supplies the answer, the session stops being the team's. Certification is mostly about learning not to.

A facilitator working the room — cards down, the group deciding together
Certification runs on real material, not role-play — you learn by holding the room.

How it runs

You work the method on real material rather than role-play. You'll run sessions, be run through sessions, and spend most of the time on the parts that go wrong — the stuck card, the dominant voice, the leader who wants to correct their team, the group that agrees far too quickly.

Options

Two ways to certify.

Both give you the same programme and the same credential, for $1,500 + GST. The commercial option adds $500 + GST a year — for practitioners running sessions for clients who want wholesale pricing and to be found. Either way you join a practitioner group that genuinely shapes how the method develops.

Certification
$1,500 + GST

For leaders and in-house teams running the method with their own people.

  • The full programme
  • Certificate of completion
  • Facilitator materials and guides
  • The self-marketing kit — seal, badge, banner, capability sheet
  • Access to the practitioner community
Enquire
Commercial
Certification + Commercial
$1,500 + GST
+ $500 + GST per year

For facilitators and consultants running sessions for clients.

  • Everything in Certification
  • The commercial licence, renewed annually
  • Wholesale pricing on every deck you buy
  • Listed on this site in the facilitator directory, with enquiries routed to you
Enquire

Common questions

Before you enrol.

Do I need to be certified to use the deck?

No. The deck ships with a User Guide and Companion Guide, and plenty of leaders run it themselves with their own team. Certification is for people running it repeatedly, at scale, or commercially.

Is the methodology fixed, or does it still change?

It still changes. The card set, the exercises, and the way the method is taught have all been revised because of things practitioners noticed in their own sessions — a card that kept producing the wrong conversation, an exercise that worked better in a different order, a question that opened rooms up faster than the one we were using. Certified practitioners are expected to push back, and there's a quarterly call and a running question log where that happens. It isn't a democracy, and not every suggestion lands — but the method you're taught is one that other practitioners have already shaped.

What's the difference between the two options?

The programme is identical, and so is the $1,500 fee. For $500 + GST a year on top, the commercial option adds wholesale deck pricing and a listing in the facilitator directory on this site, with enquiries routed to you. It's for practitioners who'll be selling sessions — the wholesale margin alone tends to cover the fee. The self-marketing kit — seal, badge, LinkedIn banner and capability sheet — comes with certification either way.

What does it cost, and is it a one-off?

The programme is $1,500 + GST — a one-off. If you take the commercial option, that adds $500 + GST per year, which covers your wholesale pricing, your directory listing and the use of the Certified Facilitator mark. Your certification itself doesn't expire; the commercial licence renews annually.

Do I get leads from the directory?

The directory routes enquiries directly to you. It's the reason the listing exists — a name on a page is worth little; an enquiry in your inbox is worth a great deal.

When's the next cohort?

The next cohort runs 4–5 November 2026 — a two-day, in-person programme in Auckland. Get in touch to secure a place. Our founding cohort — the Foundation Members — certified in May 2026.

Get started

Join the next cohort.

Next cohort: 4–5 November 2026 · Two days, in person · Auckland · $1,500 + GST, with an optional commercial licence for +$500 + GST/yr. Tell us a little about the teams you work with and we'll send you the full details and reserve your place.

Become a certified facilitator Talk to us about certification

Where to next

Know what you're certifying in.