Roles of a Facilitator

Facilitators wear many hats during the course of a learning event, and all these hats are critical to supporting an effective learning experience. An apt analogy might be director of a play or movie: The director orchestrates everything that happens, from what the actors say and do down to minute details of set design. These elements interact to support the goal of telling a story.

By the same token, all the roles facilitators fill and all the things facilitators do interact to support one goal: learning. While wearing these many hats, facilitators are also in charge of both the task (learning and applying knowledge and skills) and the process (how the learning and applying happen) of learning experiences. Each role described in the sections that follow focuses on managing a task or process.

Basic Rule 5

Facilitate both the task and process of learning experiences.

Leader of the Group

Everything you say and do focuses on helping participants learn. As leader, you create and sustain the environment so that interaction with you and other participants motivates them to acquire new knowledge and skills that you and others possess. Your role is to help participants learn and apply the new knowledge and skills to their jobs.

In this leader role, the facilitator is in charge of leading both the task and the process aspects of learning. In the process area, facilitators:

• lead how the group of learners interacts

• support the learning of the group

• help learners apply the new knowledge and skills to their jobs.

A facilitator encourages group cohesiveness and direction throughout the participation process. The facilitator must manage the group involvement process, ensuring group members are treated as equals, encouraging group discussion, suggesting decision-making and problem-solving alternatives, guiding toward resolution, and promoting development of actions and follow-up plans. As leader, the facilitator must help team members to be sensitive to other members, involve all members, and establish and maintain group norms to help them function more effectively.

One of the things leaders do in leading the task component is provide feedback on participants’ comments and individual and group activities. Individual comments and group discussions are ideal times to assess if the learners are really getting it. Your response gives them additional content and, at the same time, feedback on their understanding of the subject under discussion. Practice activities are great opportunities to provide balanced feedback.

Basic Rule 6

As leader, you help participants learn and apply the new knowledge and skills to their jobs.

Manager of the Agenda

Having developed a schedule, it is your job to maintain that agenda; this is a task-focused facilitator role. Starting on time, whether in the morning or after breaks, can be difficult to enforce. Even when starting on time is a ground rule, it is difficult to manage to that agreed-upon rule. Yet, starting on time and staying on time are important to completing all the content and fully experiencing the learning strategies.

Noted

Many times, facilitators are tempted to give only positive feedback by affirming what a learner has said, rather than correcting or augmenting it. Some facilitators agree with people’s comments, even if they are incomplete or wrong. This is a disservice to all concerned. Although affirmation is important (and, if nothing else, the learner’s effort and participation can always be affirmed), giving complete and honest feedback is also important. A facilitator cannot allow his or her duty to provide balanced feedback to be affected by a participant’s intimidating job title, or a need to be liked and respected (more on facilitators’ personal agendas later). Simply put, the facilitator owes the group and the individual correct and complete feedback on all practice activities.

Once you get behind, you must make up time without sacrificing the quality of the learning experience. The learners will notice if you take longer than the schedule states for an activity. Some will worry that the learning is compromised, and others will be so busy making sure you take a break at the right time that they will miss the learning!

You must also manage the time for facilitative discussion and for various learning activities. It is very easy to respond to a question and then go down the garden path of various topics. Related? Yes. Important to meeting the objectives of the course? Well, maybe.

Think About This

Should you share your course time schedule with the learners? Except for telling them what time breaks, meals, and the end of the day are, the answer is most often no. If you are facilitating properly, you are constantly adjusting to the needs of the learners within the timeframes that you have. If you share actual agenda item times with them, they will be more interested in whether you are keeping to the schedule than in the learning.

Learning activities pose another opportunity to challenge your skills. All groups are different. With best intentions, you begin the activity according to schedule. With clear instructions, the groups begin their work. Then as the time draws near, they need just a few more minutes. Their presentations take longer than expected. The debriefing session draws questions. You are now off schedule.

With all these possibilities for getting off schedule, you are still expected to finish on time. After all, this is a ground rule. Although you may be able to negotiate some extra time at the end of the day or have a working lunch, there is still the expectation of stopping on time. After all, you’re the leader and you manage the agenda.

Basic Rule 7

Manage and maintain your agenda.

Role Model for Positive Behaviors

You must always—without exception—maintain a positive and professional demeanor; this is a critical part of your focus on process. While it can be tough, seek positive solutions to constructive conflict; try to see the other’s point of view. Your modeling of professional behavior is critical to having a successful program.

Beyond this, model the behavior that you are teaching. For example, if you are teaching coaching skills, model the behavior of an exemplary coach. When explaining concepts, providing feedback, or making application to the job, model those coaching behaviors you are teaching. By so doing, participants can learn by observing and become more convinced that these skills really do work.

Basic Rule 8

Always maintain a positive and professional demeanor and model the behavior that you are teaching.

Content Expert

Being an expert in your content is part of your task. To some extent, facilitators have credibility by virtue of standing before the group, and you will not want to lose that credibility. The participants expect you to be a content expert, someone who’s able to speak beyond the script of the leader’s guide and make the content relevant to them.

How do you do this? One way is to ask and answer questions. You ask questions that take people deeper into the content than they currently are. By then taking their answers and going further or making application, you demonstrate your grasp of the content. You can have the same impact by answering questions completely, when appropriate. The familiar technique of handing it back to the group (“What do you think about that?”) can only work for so long. At some point, participants want to know what you think and why. This is an opportunity for you to enhance your stance as a content expert.

Besides asking and answering questions, you can also share your experiences— not all experiences, but those relevant to the course content and application of that content to the job. As a content expert, you can blend your knowledge and your job-related experience to enrich the learning experience. Your stories can make the content come alive, capture the interest of the group, and enhance your credibility as a content expert and facilitator. These things do not just happen. As you prepare to facilitate, plan for your questions and ways of sharing your experiences. If you just ad lib, you’re likely to stray from the learning objectives and lose your learners along the way.

Jargon is also important for the content expert. You must know and speak the language of your participants. There is nothing more embarrassing than having a participant ask a question and you not having a clue as to what he or she is saying. Your command of the language of the subject will go a long way to establishing and maintaining your credibility.

Basic Rule 9

Demonstrate mastery of the subject, in both content and application to the job.

Consultant

In your role of a consultant or advisor or coach, you are to help the participants complete a critical task: to make sense of the concepts and apply them to their jobs within the context of their environment. This is the task part of learning, which goes beyond having learners complete action plans or a performance contract. You must help them see the implications of new knowledge and skills for their performance, that of their team, and that of their business unit (process of learning). After all, the ultimate purpose of your course is to close an identified performance gap that is important to the individual and the organization.

Your consultant role may take you beyond the classroom. In some cases (within reason), you may need to do some one-on-one consulting with persons during lunch, break, or even during the evening. Yes, you must do your preparation work for the next day and, yes, you must meet the needs of your participants. You may even have the opportunity to do some follow-up work to see the extent that the new knowledge and skills have transferred to the job. In your role as a consultant, you go beyond the classroom into the work environment. You can then identify enablers and barriers to knowledge and skill transfer, and help management address the situation. Ultimately, you are a business problem solver.

Basic Rule 10

Consult with learners to clarify content and help them apply the content to their jobs, within their environment.