Training Facilitation Skills

-This article featured in RECOFTC E-news November 2006-

What is Facilitation?

Facilitation can involve many different activities from supporting long-term complex processes involving multiple-stakeholder groups, to facilitating one-off meetings with small groups. For simplicity, the focus of this discussion is on the latter – how to train practitioners in the art of facilitating small one-off meetings.

Facilitation skills are now an essential tool for practitioners involved in CBNRM to enable them to learn with communities and empower communities to actively participate in decision making processes. This requires a combination of communication skills, an understanding of the perspectives of others and a detailed understanding of group dynamics.

Tips for Effective Facilitation Training

1. Terminology:

Explore your group’s understanding of facilitation before you start the training. Understanding your target group and their current perceptions of facilitation in advance of the training will avoid misunderstanding later in the training. Never assume that because participants use the word ‘facilitation’ they understand the meaning as you do or each other. Use the early sessions of the training to build a mutual understanding in the group about the concept as this will make your life as a trainer easier in the long term.

Part of this process is to explore certain terminology or words used in the facilitation process that may not exist in your own national language. Even the word ‘facilitation’ does not translate well into other languages. There are several options for dealing with these foreign terms:

• Look for the word in your language that is closest to the original meaning.

• Make up a new word in your own language and explain the meaning.

• Use the original English term but describe the meaning in your own language. You will probably have to judge which option is best on a case by case basis. Examples include: paraphrasing, probing, feedback, action plan, hand-out, role-play, and simulation.

2. You can not train and facilitate!

As a trainer in front of the class using participatory training techniques many participants will perceive you as an ‘example facilitator’. In many ways you are, as you will be using a wide range of facilitation skills and methods to facilitate the sharing of experiences among participants. But in many ways you are not, as you are content focused and are leading participants down a learning pathway that you have determined, so you are not content neutral in that respect. It is important that you clarify this early on in the training otherwise participants may start to follow you as a role model.

3. Provide examples of effective facilitators during your training course

In addition it may be important for you to identify role models of facilitators for participants to relate to. This can be done either in simulations where you or colleagues play a facilitator, field trips where you have identified an experienced facilitator or using videos where role models are illustrated. Whichever option you go for you will find that it will really help if participants can visualize what you actually mean by a facilitator especially if their perceptions of facilitation at the beginning of the course are very different.

4. Identify Context

Try to identify a context that your participants can relate to. Ideally this will allow you to relate the concepts to their own situation and application. Other contexts may include setting facilitation in the bigger picture of a specific process or task. This is important so that the skills and concepts presented in the training course can be linked to the reality of participants.

5. Facilitating classroom simulations

Simulations are a highly effective training tool for almost any training content. A simulation is when you create a ‘real life’ situation in the classroom, for example a village. Whilst we would all agree that the best learning practice for field facilitators is in the village, this is not always possible. Remember that preparation is as important as the simulation itself. If the participants are not able to put their feet in the shoes of the villagers and imagine being in a village meeting or workshop the simulation will not work. It is often a good idea to use some props to remind participants of a village setting, like farmers’ hats. Telling a story about the village is another good way to fully engage participants in the simulation. Make sure to stop the simulation at an appropriate time. Sometimes the simulation will come to a natural end, but more often you will have to stop it when you think that it has generated enough learning material for reflection. Ask participants to de-role. This means that they consciously stop being a villager or facilitator and are once again participants in a training workshop. This may sound melodramatic, but it is an important step otherwise it will be impossible to reflect objectively on the experience.

Again the reflection is as important as the simulation itself. Most of the actual learning points are raised in these reflection exercises if you schedule enough time.

Click here for useful facilitation links.

Please send in any your comments on this article and suggestions for future ‘Tips for Trainers’ topics to tina(at)recoftc.org.