My occupation is that of an adult trainer. I train managers and employees to acquire skills, knowledge, and attitudes to increase their professional performance and productivity.
I also work as a facilitator to guide small groups to make joint decisions, perform strategic planning, solve problems, and increase the group’s productivity and performance.
I combine effective strategies from these two approaches to form the hybrid profession of facilitative training.
There are several disparities between facilitation and training. The major difference is due to the doctrine that facilitation is a neutral activity in which the participants set their own goals, and the facilitator guides the team to collaboratively achieve them. The traditional trainer, on the other hand, presents relevant content and manages appropriate activities to guide the participants to achieve their predetermined goals.
Here' a working definition of facilitative training:
Facilitative training is the process in which a person assists a group of participants in selecting, modifying, and accepting a set of learning objectives and acquiring new skills, knowledge, and attitudes related to these objectives. The facilitative trainer supports collective inquiry and encourages the participants to interact with each other and with a variety of content resources.
Traditional and Facilitative Training
Here are some comparisons between traditional trainers and facilitative trainers:
Outcome. Both types of trainers improve workplace performance and productivity.
Role. The traditional trainer presents content and manages learning. The facilitative trainer supports collaborative learning by a group of participants.
Learners. All learners come to traditional training with a set of prerequisite skills. Differences in entry knowledge and learning preferences are frowned upon. In facilitative training, these differences are welcomed, honored, and made use of.
Content. The traditional trainer presents accurate and need-to-know content. The facilitative trainer manages the use of different content resources, including the participants’ expertise and experiences.
Activities. The traditional trainer presents the learning content, asks questions, and conducts optional activities. Under time pressure, the traditional trainer abandons the activities. The facilitative trainer builds upon collaborative activities to require the participants to generate, process, and apply relevant content.
Questions. The traditional trainer asks questions to assess the participants’ learning. The facilitative trainer encourages the participants to generate their own questions and answer them through collaborative inquiry.
Interaction. The traditional trainer guides the learners to interact with the content. The facilitative trainer encourages the participants to interact among themselves in a collaborative learning mode.
To shift your current role from a traditional trainer to that of a facilitative trainer requires a few new skills and knowledge. More importantly, this transformation requires a different mindset.
Changing your training approach to facilitative training is a worthwhile investment. Why? Both conventional wisdom and research data confirm the power of facilitative training.