Facilitaition

We discuss often at work the role of a facilitator over a trainer. We have 10 or more trainers in our organization, but only a handful of facilitators. Facilitation is tough. How do we ensure that the learners are learning what we intend, but allowing them to get to the learning point by themselves or as a group rather than be told. 

I think a lot about the adage, "show don't tell" when writing novels. Many first-time authors will just provide information and not allow the reader the richness of experiencing the story through expository details. Similarly, I'd much rather facilitate than train. 

Facilitation is similar to providing guideposts and handrails to the class. So, back to your question, we always allow the class to take the subjects wherever they want to go with them and when we see that they are struggling, taking too much time, or just way off course, we provide a prompt or a handrail to help guide them to the point we want them to come to. It's an art not a science. 

We have another course that provides the exact opposite experience. We are audited regularly to determine if we are saying the right thing at the right time in the right order, and if we go too far off script we are reprimanded by the governing authority. This class however is for very inexperienced learners. Our leadership classes where we facilitate rather than train is much more experienced learners. 

I doubt they'd appreciate being told rather than being provided the opportunity to learn themselves. I also think this allows the learner the chance to learn via their preferred learning preference. They can discuss, they can white board, they can use information from their smart phones, they can tell stories, whatever they most want to get the point across to their teams. 

This discussion reminds me of the discussion I had on behavior-based safety and the adult learning credo from Cafferella and Daffron (2013) "When I only hear, I forget. When I hear and see, I remember a little. When I hear and see, and ask questions and discuss with someone else, I begin to understand.  When I hear, see, question, discuss, and do, I acquire knowledge and skill.  When I teach someone, I master what I have learned." (p. 188). (see HERE).

So often I feel that when we facilitate we are helping the learners skip ahead to that last part of the credo. When they teach themselves and their groups they are mastering the content rather than just learning it. Long and short, guideposts and handrails are what we provide, and if we see them wander a bit we let them so we can determine if they find their way along naturally. 

References:

Caffarella, R. S., & Daffron, S. R. (2013). Planning Programs for Adult Learners; a Practical Guide. Jossey-Bass.

Do Leopards Ever Change Their Spots? What About Stripes on a Tiger?

We've heard the saying, a leopard never changes his spots . . . or is it a tiger can't change his stripes? Which is it? I guess, after my slight google search, it's leopard.

Why does this have anything to do with my life?

A Heady Love Affair

I'm reading a great book about the ambassador to Germany during Hitlers rise to power. One of the main stories that the author focuses on is the story of the ambassador's daughter, Martha. She was a bit of a romantic to put it lightly. She slept around a lot with a lot of men, even when she was married, and with many, many married men. She hopped around a lot. 

Still I see some of my life in her. There are moments when she writes that hit me right in the heart. 

Never Stop Learning

I can't wait to hear what the others in my class say and are doing to accomplish this same learner-centered approach. I can say that in my organization we have a series of classes to help our learners step up to become leaders. 

In our industry, we have many leaders and supervisors who are promoted not because of their skill or techniques at leading other workers, but because they show up on time consistently, or they complete projects well, or they've been onsite the longest. These are not markers of great leadership traits. 

We offer a foundational leadership experience that provides these new leaders with some fundamental techniques to allow them to build a leadership career path for themselves. In this class, which I teach or facilitate at times, I'm continually amazed by how little "teaching" or "telling" we do. Instead, we sit back and prompt the class with questions and allow the class to teach themselves through their experiences. 

Writing about teacher and student power, Estes (2004) writes about how limiting formal, traditional teaching can become constraining to the student and to their ability to think on their own, and how the teacher's experience and expectations confine the student, both in terms of their thinking and their learning. Estes also writes referring to Greenaway "that a future generation of facilitation should involve learners as facilitators of their own experiences" (p. 252). 

Their work led not just to learning gains during the formal training but also after the fact. Estes goes on to write about Priest and Lesperence's study, that they "discovered that a corporate group, which chose to self-facilitate by using funneling techniques taught during an experiential program back in the work place, resulted in continually higher gains in postcourse teamwork levels" (p. 252). Having read about this study, I wonder how often our facilitation has led our leaders to continue their education after the class is over. 

References

Estes, C. A. (2004). Promoting student-centered learning in experiential education. Journal of Experiential Education, 27(2), 141–160. https://doi.org/10.1177/105382590402700203

Creative Learners

The term "creative learners" immediately appealed to me when I saw it if only because I have been thinking lately about Kolb's Learning Cycle that moves learners through 1) concrete experience, 2) reflective observation, 3) abstract conceptualism, then 4) active experimentation. 

Last week I wrote about how I like that with this cycle the learner alternates around between activity and theory and allows for experimentation and learning through experience as well as building on prior knowledge. 

What I like about inspiring creative learners is that it has obvious foundations in building on that part of the learner cycle around abstract conceptualism. Infact McMullan and Cahoon (1979) find that there is a creative tension between two poles of the cycle when they write "the pull of these polar opposites produces what Kolb refers to as "creative tension." 

The creative person is able to coordinate these different modes of knowing. Moreover, the creative process may be described as a meaningful synthesis of problem-finding and problem-solving" (p. 454). This relationship is shown in the image below that is from McMullan and Cahoon (1979). 

This tension between abstract conceptualization and concrete experience that yields creative tension is where I believe the learner can flex their mental muscles and build on their prior knowledge and move further along in the learning process than they might otherwise have the chance to. 

References

McMullan, W. E., & Cahoon, A. (1979). Integrating abstract conceptualizing with experiential learning. Academy of Management Review, 4(3), 453. https://doi.org/10.2307/257203

Everyone is a Learner

Anna, our facilitator for class this week wrote about experience and wisdom and everyone a learner. Within this vein, I think about the post I wrote earlier on facilitation. 

Within our community, we have experienced operators and hands who have twenty or thirty years of knowledge about the refineries, plants, and worksites that they support. One thing we are missing is a course that can help these people become better trainers and help develop the next generation. 

For years trainers in my industry have been focused on the coming skills and technical training gap (Leonard et al., 2014 & Sammer, 2020) and the deficiencies that are coming to light in hiring for replacement using a labor pool with less technical and engineering know-how (Faw, 2012 & The Engineers Ring, 2019). 10 years ago this was something to expect, 5 years ago it was something we feared and we saw coming to light, and now we are living through it. 

Shade tree mechanics of the type that are now retiring are rare and a prized commodity for hiring organizations. What I believe we need is the ability to mentor and train using the workforce that is retiring, but so often these people don't have the skills necessary to properly train and mentor those that are replacing them. We promote what we can from our organization but there is a very real gap and part of filling that I believe is by tapping into the wisdom of the retiring workforce and empowering them to help train their replacements. 

One wonderful resource that is practicing this in real-time is Dad How Do I (see here (Links to an external site.)). A series developed by a concerned YouTuber who is interested in just helping people who have never been taught the basics of living, get a crash course in these subjects and using learning on demand, and video style of training. We are actually thinking of producing similar video snippets for our industry and utilizing the aqurired wisdom of our retreating older community.  

References

Faw, L. (2012, November 20). Does it matter if millennials don’t know how cars work? Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/larissafaw/2012/11/20/does-it-matter-if-millennials-dont-know-how-cars-work/?sh=7429fe044d58

Leonard, D., Swap, W., & Barton, G. (2014, December 2). What’s lost when experts retire. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2014/12/whats-lost-when-experts-retire

Sammer, J. (2020, February 19). Preparing for waves of retiring employees. SHRM. https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/benefits/pages/preparing-for-waves-of-retiring-employees.aspx

The Engineers Ring. (2019, April 17). Millennials lack key DIY skills. The Engineer’s Ring. https://www.theengineersring.com/young-people/millennials-lack-key-diy-skills/

Another Podcast

I had the opportunity to record another podcast (see HERE and then see HERE for a full list of these that I've done lately). 

This one I got to host the podcast. This was the first one that I had the opportunity to host. I've hosted three I think thus far. They haven't all been released. I look forward to more. 

Personally, I like being on the guesting end rather than on the hosting end. Why? I don't know. I just don't think I do as good a job hosting as I do guest. 

There's a damn video of this one. Ugh. I have a voice for podcasting, not for video! Only click the video link if you have a strong stomach (see HERE). 

BTW . . . We have worked on our audio quality since this last podcast. 

BBS and a Fatality

The other day I wrote about a fatality that an organization I worked at suffered. My classmate asked about that in terms of how it affected our safety and our culture. 

As I mentioned in my post, my organization suffered a fatality and we implemented the behavior-based safety system as a response to that accident. I think that accident was a transformative moment for our executive leadership as well as the workers in the field by extension.

The first of ten phases of transformative learning that Mezirow observed, according to Clark, Merriman, and Sandlin (2011) is a disorienting dilemma followed by a self-examination with feelings of fear, anger, guilt, and shame. The organization went through these first two phases and more to help inspire change in the organization. Despite that, it still included having a nine-person core team doing the training, and over 2 years of work to change the culture. 

Six years later, we merged with another organization equal in size that performed exactly the same type of work. After the merger, we tried to roll out the behavior-based safety system to the new organization. This rollout was not as smooth and twice as long. I think partly because there wasn't that transformative moment with a disorienting dilemma. 

From my perspective, as a part of the safety team, and the Director of Training, I was surprised by how long it took for the system to gain acceptance by the field technicians and managers. Secondly, I was glad that we bought and existing system, despite the high cost, because having a finished product to introduce to the field was far better than trying to create one ourselves or self-perform the rollout. 

From an adult learning perspective, if I was to go back now, armed with the information that our classes have given us, I think some of our marketing material, and training material would have been written from a vastly different perspective, one more geared toward a behvaiorist training approach. 

Reference

Clark, M. C., Merriam, S. B., Sandlin, J. A. (2011). The relationship between adult learning and development; Challenging normative assumptions. In Hoare, C. (Ed.), The oxford handbook of reciprocal adult development and learning (pp. 17 - 38). 

A Pragmatist

When reading Chapter 1 of our text for my new class Introduction: Philosophy of Adult Education, the first thing that caught my eye was the education school of thought or system of pragmatism.

Just the other day I was complimented by my wife when she told me I was too practical. She might have meant it as a slight, but being overly practical to me is more of a compliment and is similar to pragmatism. I like having things proven in clear and clean terms. I like the practical application of the techniques that I use. 

But of the theories expressed in the chapter, the two that made the most sense to me were Progressive Adult Education with the focus on the “relationship between education and society” (Elias & Merriam, 2005, p. 12), and Behaviorist Adult Education with its focus on “behavior modification, learning through reinforcement, and management by objectives” (Elias & Merriam, 2005, p. 13). 

The first is similar in many respects to pragmatism, but the second is interesting to me because of the work I was able to do in behavior-based safety with my old organization. Following a fatality of one of our workers, our leadership decided a drastic change in our safety focus was needed. That change came by way of a behavior-based safety system. 

Instead of a focus on numbers, and metrics, we changed to a system that changed the way our workers naturally behaved. It is intriguing now, 10 years later, to look back on the rollout of that system and see behaviorist adult philosophies woven throughout the content.  

Reference:

Elias, J. L., & Merriam, S. B. (2005). Philosophical foundations of adult education. Malabar, FL.

Different Styles

A few weeks back I wrote about how frustrating it is to work with some folks. I have these types at work, and we just do NOT see eye to eye and it gets VERY frustrating. I think I wrote how I’ll sure that these people get frustrated trying to work with me too. I move too fast. I’m a “pace setting” type of leader and very independent and practical. I come up with an idea and just do. It’s Sua Sponte Leadership (see more HERE). 

But today, as a part of my self-authorship journal, I wrote a long post about this frustration. Just the other day, I had an idea to do a quick study of how our learners change their mindset (or not) about some of our training. Two of my employees have proposed this and it’s a great idea. I’m already thinking about how to go about capturing and analyzing the data. 

Being a good sport, I decided to bring this up to other leaders at the organization. What started as a one to one quick discussion became a larger and longer conversation than I wanted. And when I mentioned my intent about the study, the response was “Sure, let’s get everyone together for a meeting to discuss.”

So, first, I have no intention of “getting everyone together” for a meeting. I don’t have time for that, and truthfully, I don’t really care about their input. If they want to perform a study, they can feel free. But this study is going forward without the input of a much larger group. There isn’t a big enough risk to need more input from a larger group. 

Secondly, it irritates me some times that I’m here making a decision, sua sponte, right? And this other leader needs to build consensus even for something as small as this. 

What’s this have to do with self-authorship? Well, I realized that this isn’t done on purpose. It’s natural for me to move forward out front and set the pace and go. If it fails, it’s not that big a risk. If it yields valuable information and data, then good job team! No need for more than a quick strike group and an idea. We have both. What’s the hold up. 

Regardless, that’s natural to me, but consensus building is natural for this other leader. I shouldn’t expect them to not build consensus. That’s what they do. They see the world through consensus in the same way I see the world through sua sponte. 

What’s the end result? Well, I’m moving forward. If they want a consensus and a meeting, well they better hurry, the pace is being set. But, in terms of self authorship it was nice to realize it’s not being done to be a jerk, nor to get in the way, nor even as spite or a power play. It’s just what this person does. It’s how they see the world. What did I expect? I knew this about them. Adapt, adjust, overcome and go set the pace.