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Facilitation Skills

Yesterday, I had a privilege of attending a lecture by Dr. Simon Priest on facilitation organized by the good OELT.

The title of the session said, How to Design better experiential training programs, though I read it as How to design better training programs. The event even had a Graphic Facilitation alongside.

But more important was what I learnt about facilitation skills. Even though the context of Dr. Priest was about experiential learning, what he said would be useful to practically any type of training.  His classification of experiential learning types was an eye-opener (and how people mix one for the other or ask for one type of session and expect the results of another session, and the level of facilitators required for each of them). As was the way he expounded many a 'facilitation skill'. And the techniques used to generate the appropriate response. Perhaps many of us know this intuitively, but knowing the technique is a great thing (As I have learnt across different situations over the past many years - technique and intuition are not at all mutually exclusive as some people make it out to be. Indeed technique sharpens intuition, is my view and there is no way to learn something new and practice it than by technique).

Facilitation skills, like Consulting skills is probably the most misused word in the training industry. A lot of people talk, deliver sessions, preach, but I suppose, very few facilitate.

But what were those things he said ?

 That, well, will be a separate post, when I get around to learning them :-)

 
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