Do Great Trainers Make Great Meeting Facilitators?
By Michael Wilkinson, CMF
Managing Director, Leadership Strategies, Inc.
Consider this dilemma.
You are the head of the Human Resources Department for your organization. You are driving home pondering a decision. Earlier in the day, the chief operating officer came to you with a request, “The CEO wants to get the senior team together for a one-day retreat to focus on developing solutions for addressing our major barriers to growth. You will have to be part of the session, so I would like you to get one of your HR specialists to facilitate the session.”
As you drive, you consider the three senior members of your department. The two top HR managers are great when it comes to benefits and HR issues. However, their group skills are weak, and they lack the commanding presence needed to gain the respect of the senior team members. Your attention then turns to your top trainer. She is great on her feet, has a boardroom presence, and is a dynamic trainer. She works well with people, gives great explanations, and knows how to turn on a dime. You pretty much conclude that she’s your choice. However, you have this nagging feeling that, even though she is a good trainer, maybe that doesn’t necessarily mean that she will be a great facilitator. How can you tell?
Trainers and group facilitators share many of the same skills. For example, at Leadership Strategies, we believe a great trainer should have the following traits:
- Knowledgeable and experience in the subject area
- Ability to present points clearly and persuasively
- Responsiveness to questions
- Ability to adapt to meet the needs of the participants
- Ability to control and focus the group
- Ability to keep participants engaged and interacting
- Ability to gain commitment to action and follow through
As you examine the list, you might conclude that these are many of the same skills that a great facilitator should have. And we believe you would be correct. Trainers and facilitators do share many of the same traits. But let’s dig a little deeper, for though they share the same list of traits, the two lists are different in a significant way.
If you had to select the top two traits from this list for trainers, what would they be? We believe they would be the following:
Top Two Traits for Trainers
- Knowledgeable and experience in the subject area
- Ability to present points clearly and persuasively
What about the top two traits for a facilitator? We think they would be different:
Top Two Traits for Facilitators
- Ability to gain commitment to action and follow through
- Ability to keep participants engaged and interacting
As you can see, the most important traits for a Trainer are very different from the most important traits for a facilitator. To take the analysis a little further, consider how much each trait plays in the success of a training session versus the success of a facilitated meeting. We believe the breakdown might look like the following:
|
|
% Importance to Success in a |
|
|
|
Training Session |
Facilitated Meeting |
|
1. Subject area knowledge/experience |
25% |
5% |
|
2. Present clearly and persuasively |
25% |
10% |
|
3. Responsiveness to questions |
10% |
5% |
|
4. Adapt to needs of participants |
10% |
15% |
|
5. Control and focus the group |
10% |
15% |
|
6. Keep participants engaged |
10% |
30% |
|
7. Gain commitment to action |
10% |
20% |
As you can see, while the traits are similar, the focus of the traits are very different.
- For a trainer, the knowledge of the topic and the ability to present that information clearly and persuasively are of paramount importance. In facilitation however, the key isn’t the ability of the facilitators to present what they know. Instead, it is their ability to keep the group engaged in building a solution that group members are committed to acting upon.
- A trainer’s most important skill might be the ability to explain concepts in a way that people can understand them. A group facilitator’s most important skill might be the ability to ask the questions that keep people engaged in creating their own solutions.
- While a trainer often “tells,” a facilitator more often asks.
- While a trainer listens to participants in order to determine how best to explain, a facilitator listens to participants in order to determine what to ask to get them to explain to one another.
- While trainers control the session through their knowledge of the subject and ability to present, a facilitator controls the session through their understanding of group processes and their ability to ask questions.
Recently a trainer, who also facilitates, described the difference this way, “I like facilitation, but I love training. Because when you are facilitating, you really have to listen to them. And that’s work!”
For great trainers to be effective group facilitators, they must focus on skills that are traditionally used much less in training sessions. These skills are often under developed. Do great trainers make great facilitators? Not necessarily, and in many cases, not at all.
Michael Wilkinson is the Managing Director of Leadership Strategies – The Facilitation Company, a firm that specializes in meeting facilitation and facilitation training. He is also the President of the Southeast Association of Facilitators. For more information on Leadership Strategies or the Southeast Association of Facilitators go to www.leadstrat.com/.
