Ned_Ruete
10-17-2008, 03:18 PM
Julie wrote:
> As a facilitator my task is to manage process and I am not involved in the content;
> I won't be affected by it after the session (unless I'm facilitating my own work group
> which has its own special challenges).
As a facilitator, I am not involved in the content of the output, but
I am involved in the form of the output. I design the process to help
the visioning group get a vision, the lessons learned group to get
lessons learned, the strategic planning group get a strategic plan,
and the root cause group get a root cause.
As a facilitator of learning events, I design the process so that a
group gets their combined knowledge out and converts it to shared
learning. I design the process so that a group that wants to learn
facilitation shares knowledge and experience of group process and
turns it into learnings on facilitation, a group that wants to learn
how to create a respectful workplace shares their exprience with
harassment and knowledge of how to deal with it and turns it into
learning, etc. I may offer a few models that provide frameworks for
people to hang their learnings on, but I do that in facilitation, too.
Jon Jenkins likes to give the counterexample of learning to fly an
airplane, but in most management and business training there is so
much more than any of us can ever learn that the idea is not to impart
"all knowledge" but to raise the level of conversation about a topic.
One of the most troublesome things I have run up against are
facilitators who went to a "talking heads" facilitation class that
purported to thoroughly cover the the content. They come away thinking
1) that they know all there is to know about facilitation and 2) that
anyone who claims to be a facilitator must know exactly what they
know. Some of my goals in doing learning events rather than training
are to let people know that we all have usefull information and
experience, that there is more than one way to skin a cat, that there
is no "exhaustive treatment" of complex management and business
subjects, and that you never stop learning.
Some other goals are to provide a space where they learn what they need, not what I think they need, and to make the learnings more lasting by involving them in creating them.
What do others think?
Ned Ruete
East Lyme, CT USA
> As a facilitator my task is to manage process and I am not involved in the content;
> I won't be affected by it after the session (unless I'm facilitating my own work group
> which has its own special challenges).
As a facilitator, I am not involved in the content of the output, but
I am involved in the form of the output. I design the process to help
the visioning group get a vision, the lessons learned group to get
lessons learned, the strategic planning group get a strategic plan,
and the root cause group get a root cause.
As a facilitator of learning events, I design the process so that a
group gets their combined knowledge out and converts it to shared
learning. I design the process so that a group that wants to learn
facilitation shares knowledge and experience of group process and
turns it into learnings on facilitation, a group that wants to learn
how to create a respectful workplace shares their exprience with
harassment and knowledge of how to deal with it and turns it into
learning, etc. I may offer a few models that provide frameworks for
people to hang their learnings on, but I do that in facilitation, too.
Jon Jenkins likes to give the counterexample of learning to fly an
airplane, but in most management and business training there is so
much more than any of us can ever learn that the idea is not to impart
"all knowledge" but to raise the level of conversation about a topic.
One of the most troublesome things I have run up against are
facilitators who went to a "talking heads" facilitation class that
purported to thoroughly cover the the content. They come away thinking
1) that they know all there is to know about facilitation and 2) that
anyone who claims to be a facilitator must know exactly what they
know. Some of my goals in doing learning events rather than training
are to let people know that we all have usefull information and
experience, that there is more than one way to skin a cat, that there
is no "exhaustive treatment" of complex management and business
subjects, and that you never stop learning.
Some other goals are to provide a space where they learn what they need, not what I think they need, and to make the learnings more lasting by involving them in creating them.
What do others think?
Ned Ruete
East Lyme, CT USA