Learning Facilitator & Client Consultant

Location: Home-based in the UK – London, Manchester or Leeds - with regular travel across the UK and internationally as required.
Salary: £38,000 - £43,000 per annum, depending on experience
Contract: Permanent, full-time
Working pattern: We offer a fully flexible working environment
Annual leave: 25 days of annual leave per annum, plus 3 additional days over Christmas
Additional Benefits: Comprehensive Employee Assistance Programme (EAP)

The role

We are looking for an experienced Learning Facilitator & Client Consultant to join the Common Purpose team.

This is a role for someone who loves people, ideas and learning, and who can work with a client to understand what they need, help shape the right learning experience, facilitate it brilliantly, and connect what happens in the programme to what needs to change afterwards.

Our programmes are experiential. Participants learn by encountering different people and perspectives, exploring real situations, having conversations that may challenge their assumptions, reflecting and reframing based on what they have experienced, and considering what it means for them and their organisation. You will be involved across that journey: from understanding the client and shaping the design, through to creating the conditions for powerful learning and helping participants and clients translate that learning into practice.

The facilitator is at the heart of making that learning happen. But this is not simply a delivery role.

You will need more than strong presentation or group-management skills. You will need to understand how people learn, how to design meaningful experiences, and how to turn those experiences into insight and action. You will need to be comfortable exploring a client's learning need, contributing to programme design, working with colleagues and clients to shape an experience, and identifying what will make the programme valuable beyond the room.

You will also need to know when to provide structure and when to get out of the way; when to challenge and when to listen; when a group needs energy and when it needs space to think. And you will need to stay curious about what happens after the programme - what participants do differently, what clients need to see change, and how our work can contribute to that.

You will work with an extraordinary range of people — from young professionals to senior leaders and C-suite executives — across different sectors, generations, cultures and contexts. You will need to connect quickly with all of them, while being equally confident in a conversation about a client's needs, a programme design, or the impact we are trying to achieve.

One day you might be helping a client make sense of a complex organisational challenge and shaping an experience around it. The next, you might be facilitating a conversation between people who have never met. Another day might involve an immersive experience outside the classroom, followed by a conversation that helps participants understand what they have seen, what it means for their own practice and what they will do differently as a result.

You will bring the personality to connect with people, the facilitation craft to hold a room, the learning and design expertise to create meaningful experiences, and the client consultancy skills to connect those experiences to real organisational needs and impact.

What you’ll be doing

• Working with clients to understand their learning needs – asking the right questions, challenging assumptions where appropriate and translating organisational needs into meaningful learning experiences
• Contributing to learning design and proposals, helping shape programme journeys, learning objectives, activities and approaches that respond to client needs
• Designing and curating learning experiences – shaping programme journeys and identifying the ideas, perspectives, organisations, places and contributors that will make them distinctive and purposeful
• Sourcing and working with contributors – building relationships with interesting people and organisations, briefing them effectively and drawing out their contribution before, during and after programmes
• Contributing confidently to client pitches - explaining the thinking behind our approach and helping clients understand how experiential learning can address their needs
• Facilitating Common Purpose programmes - both in person and online, taking ownership of the quality of the learning experience
• Creating the conditions for experiential learning – building trust, encouraging participation and creating the right balance of safety, challenge and curiosity
• Bringing learning to life - through questioning, discussion, activities, reflection and interaction with expert subject matter contributors
• Reading and responding to the room - adapting activities, pace, questions and approach according to what the group needs
• Preparing, reviewing and improving delivery – developing facilitation plans and materials, contributing to team briefings and debriefs, and sharing learning and practice with colleagues

What you’ll bring

We are looking for someone who combines excellent facilitation skills with a strong understanding of how people learn.

You will be a confident and experienced facilitator, but you will also be curious about what makes a learning experience work. You will understand that great facilitation is not about delivering content; it is about designing and creating the conditions in which people can learn through experience, reflection, conversation and challenge.

You will bring:

• Strong facilitation experience – ideally five years or more of facilitating groups, learning experiences or programmes
• Understanding of experiential learning and pedagogy – you know how people learn through experience, reflection, dialogue, challenge and application
• Learning design capability – you can see how individual experiences and activities contribute to a wider learning journey and can design with the participant experience in mind
• Learning consultancy skills – you are comfortable exploring a client’s needs, asking probing questions, challenging a brief and helping shape the problem before jumping to a solution
• Client confidence – you are comfortable presenting ideas, contributing to pitches and speaking credibly with clients and senior stakeholders
• Energy, curiosity and external orientation –
  you are naturally interested in people, ideas and the world around you, and enjoy discovering perspectives and experiences that bring learning to life
• Strong interpersonal and group skills – you can read a room, listen well, ask powerful questions and bring different voices into the conversation
• Confidence with challenge and complexity – you can facilitate difficult conversations, navigate difference and create productive discomfort without losing trust
• Adaptability and judgement – you can work with a plan while knowing when to change it, improvise or take a conversation somewhere unexpected
• A reflective approach to your own practice – you actively seek feedback, learn from experience and are interested in continually improving how you facilitate, design and consult

All applicants must also

• Have excellent written English, oral communication and interpersonal skills
• Be confident facilitating both in person and online
• Be comfortable working independently while also contributing actively to a collaborative team
• Be able to manage a varied workload, multiple programmes and competing priorities in a fast-paced environment
• Be willing and able to travel within the Uk and globally for programme delivery, including occasional early mornings, evenings and short periods away from home
• Be confident and proficient in the use of Microsoft Office, Zoom and other digital collaboration tools
• Be committed to Common Purpose’s independent and non-aligned approach to programme experiences
• Be able to demonstrate your facilitation experience. This might include examples of programmes you have facilitated, participant or client feedback, testimonials, recordings of your facilitation, qualifications or other evidence of your practice

What we offer

• Purpose – the opportunity to work on programmes designed to create meaningful change for individuals, organisations and communities
• Variety – exposure to different sectors, generations, cultures, organisations and perspectives through your work
• Growth – continual development of your facilitation practice, alongside access to internal learning and development opportunities
• Responsibility – meaningful ownership of programme delivery from the outset
• Flexibility – a remote-first and flexible working environment
• A global network – the opportunity to work with colleagues, participants and partners across different countries and contexts

About Common Purpose

Common Purpose is a global non-profit organisation that develops people to navigate the complexity, influence and competing interests that shape the world around them.

Our work is built around three disciplines:

1. Navigating complexity – sensing, interpreting and acting on what is changing in the world.
2. Navigating influence – staying accountable to the consequences of the power you hold.
3. Navigating legitimacy – having, and granting others, the ground and courage to challenge across boundaries that are not theirs to control.

We bring these disciplines to life through experiential learning. Participants encounter different perspectives, enter unfamiliar environments, engage with people and organisations beyond their usual experience, and work through real questions and situations. Our programmes create the conditions for people to test their assumptions, understand the consequences of their decisions and develop the confidence to act differently.

We bring together people from different sectors, backgrounds, generations and perspectives. Our facilitators play a critical role in creating the experiences and conversations through which this learning happens.

Over 90,000 professionals and nearly 75,000 students worldwide have taken part in Common Purpose programmes.

Next Steps

If you are an experienced facilitator who enjoys working with people, navigating complexity and creating learning experiences that stay with participants long after a programme ends, we would love to hear from you.

Please send us your CV and a cover letter explaining why you are interested in the role and what you would bring to Common Purpose.

We particularly welcome evidence of your facilitation practice, such as participant or client testimonials, examples of programmes you have delivered, relevant qualifications or a recording of you facilitating.

Common Purpose is an equal opportunities employer. We welcome applications from people from all backgrounds and will consider candidates based on the relevance of their skills, experience and potential.

If you have any access requirements during the recruitment process, please contact us at hr@commonpurpose.org.