Facilitator or Presenter: What s the Difference?

Facilitator or Presenter: What’s the Difference?

The purpose of learning facilitation is to guide the learners to agreed-upon destinations, which are the learning outcomes. As such, facilitating a learning experience is like being a guide on a jungle safari: You point people in the right direction, make suggestions, take steps to enhance the experience for the participants, and give guidance—but you don’t do it for them. In fact, you do it with them. It would be a poor safari guide who gives the participants a map, says, “Have a great trip,” and then sits back in a lawn chair to watch. The same is true of a learning facilitator.

One hallmark of true facilitation is that facilitators, to the extent possible, do not separate themselves from the learner audience; they are with the learners in the experience all the way. The facilitator is one of them, yet not one of them, and guides them to the learning destination.

The facilitator is responsible and accountable to the group; therefore, the facilitator’s role is one of earned trust and honor. Its a different role from a teacher/instructor/presenter in a classroom, where there is a clear and obvious separation between the learners and the presenter, and in which the presenter is positioned as an expert who knows all. The learners are merely passive recipients of the knowledge. The facilitator knows the subject area, absolutely, but more than that, the facilitator is concerned with helping the learners know and apply the subject matter. The facilitator’s goal is not simply to inform, but to equip the learners for self-development and growth, for continual learning about the subject to the point of mastery.

Three main characteristics differentiate facilitators from presenters: focus, control, and credibility. Each of these characteristics of facilitators is discussed in the sections that follow.

Focus

With facilitation, the focus is on the learner. When you observe both a presentation and a facilitated learning event, many obvious differences appear. One of the most important differences, however, is one that is not visible: the focus.

In a presentation, the focus is on the presenter. All the materials, the presenter’s behaviors, and the actions are centered on the presenter. The goals for the presentation are to cover the material and to showcase the presenter’s expertise and skill. Conversely, in a facilitated learning event, the focus is on the learner. All of the materials, the facilitator’s behaviors, and the activities are centered on helping the learners learn and apply the content. The goal here is simple and profound: Make the learning and application happen.

Control

Facilitators share control. A presenter presents information or content to the audience. A good presenter has excellent command of language and vocabulary, an engaging speaking style, and a command of the subject. By definition, an excellent

Basic Rule 2

Facilitation is learner-centered; presentations are presenter-centered.

presentation results in the audience being informed about the subject matter and taking away useful information.

Because the presentation centers on the presenter, that person is in control of the subject and how the audience engages with the subject (or not). The presenter decides when questions are allowed, and which questions to address. Most of the action is on the part of the presenter; the audience remains largely passive. By exercising this control, the presenter takes on full responsibility for the audience’s increase in knowledge. And, by simply presenting information to learners without providing opportunities for them to engage with it, practice it, apply it, and make it their own, the presenter is essentially handing over a map, saying “Have a great trip!” and letting the learners find the way on their own. There’s no guarantee that the learners will use the information or learn from it.

For a facilitator, content expertise and presentation skills are the threshold, the beginning, the proverbial foot in the door for a learning experience. Without these two ingredients, the potential facilitator is not even considered for the job. Effective facilitation, however, only begins with content expertise and presentation skills. An effective facilitator gives up much of the control of the content to the learner audience and shares responsibility for the learning with the learner audience. As the guide, the facilitator establishes the climate, learning structure, and flow of the learning.

The learners have a great deal of flexibility in asking and responding to questions, engaging the facilitator and peer learners in discussion, and applying the content to their jobs. Because control is jointly held between the facilitator and the learners, so, too, is accountability for learning. Not being passive, the learners have accountability to both learn and apply the content as the facilitator guides the learning and application.

As the learners gain more control, the facilitator must increasingly use listening, questioning, and coaching skills to build on the learners’ experiences as they engage and apply the content. Is this harder than being a presenter? You bet it is! Presentation occurs at the thinking level. Facilitation occurs at multiple levels: thinking, feeling, intuitive, physical, synergistic, and emotional—all of which the facilitator must respond to, keep track of, and invite learner involvement in as the learning event proceeds. And the paradox is, the more control that is given to the learners, the more real learning occurs.

Credibility

Facilitators derive credibility from more than subject matter expertise. Presenters gain (or lose) credibility in the minds of the audience from the content of the presentation, from their mastery of that content, and by their ability to relate the content to their relevant experience. The presenter’s ability to give examples, tell war stories, and answer questions from a strong background and experience results in “expert” credibility. But, what happens if a presenter doesn’t know the answer to a question? Or, when the presenter’s answer and the learner’s experiences aren’t in sync, and the learner rejects the answer? Credibility in the eyes of the audience is damaged or even disappears.

Whereas content expertise and control provide credibility for presenters, what facilitators do with these components is what creates credibility for them. Facilitator credibility derives from the ability to create and sustain a supportive learning environment and link the learning to the learners’ jobs. It comes from the facilitator’s interpersonal handling of the group process, keeping the spotlight on the learners. It comes from the ability to be flexible and adjust the content to the learners’ needs in the moment. It is how the facilitator engages the learners and helps them to self-discover the learning. It comes from the facilitator’s efforts to support the learning, rather than solely from the facilitator’s subject matter expertise.

In this way, when the facilitator is asked a question that he or she can’t answer (a rare event, of course!), he or she facilitates the group’s finding of the answer together, and by doing so, retains and even increases credibility. Alternatively, if the facilitator does not know the answer, he or she has the confidence to say, “I don’t know, but I’ll find out” without damaging credibility.

Noted

A facilitator focuses on the learners, whereas a presenter focuses on self and the content. A facilitator shares control of the session and the environment with the learners, but a presenter controls all facets. A facilitator derives credibility from subject matter expertise, presentation skills, interpersonal skills, questioning skills, management of the learning environment, sharing of ideas, flexibility, and linkage of learning to the learners’ experiences and jobs, while a presenter derives credibility solely from subject matter expertise and presentation skills.