Tag: Facilitation

  • “Difficult People” Versus Difficult Dynamics

    Presenters wanting to learn to respond to ruckus-causing participants discover an industry dedicated to techniques, programs and articles, but especially labels. Experts in the “difficult people” business love labels.

    Here are several labels for different kinds of “difficult people”:

    • The Know-It-All
    • The Show-Off
    • The Rambler

    But Guess What? We Are All “Difficult People”

    To be a person is to be difficult. “Difficult people” are often just regular people responding to difficult dynamics. Difficult dynamics can include:

    • Organizational change
    • Bad room set-up or temperature control
    • Mandatory attendance
    • Ambiguity about how the event will benefit the individual
    • Personal challenges, such as hunger and low blood sugar.

    What trainers, facilitators and presenters need to know is:

    • You cannot fix people.
    • You can reduce difficult dynamics, thus lowering the risk of reactive behavior.

    3 Ways to Reduce Difficult Dynamics

    You may have little control over organizational change or mandatory attendance. However, these steps will address a broad spectrum of difficult dynamics:

    1. Set Up the Room for the Outcome You Desire
    For engagement, interaction, and accountability, seat people in groups of 5-6.

    2. Clarify the Benefits
    You MUST clearly express on why this topic is important to the participants and how it will benefit them.

    3. Model Both Authoritative and Cooperative Behaviors as a Presenter
    Encourage people to express themselves and to ask questions. Simultaneously, set and hold limits.

    To achieve smooth dynamics, don’t label human beings. Instead, prevent difficult dynamics before they occur.

  • Using the “Six Limbs” of Facilitation to Make Meetings Work

    Understanding the “six limbs” of facilitation will help you juggle meeting dynamics better.

    What Are the “Six Limbs?”

    A facilitator needs to keep six avenues of awareness open to facilitate effectively. Awareness of the “six limbs” is a kind of hyper-awareness that we don’t tend to need during other parts of our lives. This hyper-awareness underlies all the specific skills (such as summarizing and paraphrasing) that a facilitator uses. Maintaining this heightened awareness is hard work, and is largely what makes facilitation such an art.

    Familiar to anyone who has ever written a term paper, the six avenues of awareness are:

    • Who
    • What
    • When
    • Why
    • How
    • What if…?

    During a meeting, you need to maintain your awareness of:

    Who is talking, who is silent, and who is expressing themselves non-verbally? Who has been heard, and who needs to be heard?

    What is going on, both on the surface and underneath? What are the “vibes?” On another level, what time is it? What needs to happen before the meeting ends?

    When is it time to break? When is it appropriate for you to intervene in the meeting’s process?

    Why do you feel you must intervene?

    How can the group’s work best be accomplished?

    What if… the meeting outcomes are not met this time around? What if a particular person hasn’t yet provided input? What if yelling occurs? What if you decided to take a whole new path to solving the problem?

    Juggling Dynamics

    If using the six limbs sounds challenging, it’s because it is. Facilitation is both an art and a set of skills. Keeping all six tracks of awareness open will help you bridge those two worlds—and make you the best facilitator you can be.

    Guila Muir is the premiere trainer of trainers, facilitators, and presenters on the West Coast of the United States. Since 1994, she has helped thousands of professionals improve their training, facilitation, and presentation skills. Find out how she can help you improve your meetings!

  • What is a Trainer? What is a Facilitator?

    A pet peeve of mine: Trainers who either lecture or simply read their slides, but who call themselves “facilitators”. Training and facilitation are very different animals.

    Different Roles, Different Skills

    A trainer absolutely must be a content expert. Surely, the best trainers integrate facilitative techniques to make learning easy, but at core they must “know their stuff” intimately.

    Great facilitators need not be content experts. In fact, sometimes those who run meetings the best are those who know least about the subject. Instead, they focus on the quality of the process itself.

    This chart shows the core differences between being a content expert and a facilitator.

    Con­tent Expert or Facil­i­ta­tor?

    Con­tent Expert (Tell)

    Facil­i­ta­tor (Ask)
    Presents Infor­ma­tion Guides Process; Ensures Multi-Directional Com­mu­ni­ca­tion
    Pro­vides the Right Answers Pro­vides the Right Questions
    Clear Purpose (and Learning Outcomes if Training) Clear Outcomes for the Group’s Process

    Are You a Trainer or a Facilitator?

    If you are a trainer, your best bet is to combine the roles shown in the chart. This will ensure you’re doing your job as a content expert while eliciting robust engagement and involvement.

    If you are facilitating a meeting but must impart information at some point, inform folks what you are doing. When you unexpectedly begin to tell instead of ask, confusion arises and engagement shuts down.

    Let’s make a pact right now to always be clear on what role we are embodying. Are we training? Or are we running a meeting? Our understanding makes the process more clear, and easier, for everyone.

    Give your training skills a lift with The Kite Workshop! Contact Guila today.

  • Enthusiasm in Training

    As a trainer or presenter, enthusiasm goes a long way in making you the best you can be. As your joy excites your participants, their energy rises to meet yours. People feel good. Work gets done.

    But what if your enthusiasm has taken a hit? How can you regain a sense of joy while giving a presentation or training a group?

    These five practical steps will help.

    1. Create a list of 10 positive aspects about the subject. Your brain may balk at doing this, but you’ll be forced to see the subject in a new way. Its “newness” will stimulate you in unexpected ways.

    2. Do something physical. When your blood pumps aerobically, it helps wash away your “blaahs.” Don’t wait — you can take a walk right now.

    3. Visualize yourself being enthusiastic. Take a moment to close your eyes. See yourself as you would from the outside, feeling fantastic and emanating positive energy. Seeing yourself this way can kick-start your acting this way.

    4. Smile. Research has shown that when you smile, even if that smile doesn’t come easily, your brain chemistry changes. Try smiling and feeling joyful, even if it is difficult. You’ll be surprised how it “ups” your mood.

    5. Get excited about the success of those around you. When you express authentic enthusiasm about what others are doing, your own mood improves. You start feeling excited about what you’re doing, too.

    Keep the vitality and magic of life as you train, facilitate or present. It will be your gift not only to others, but to yourself.

  • Get ‘Em Moving!

    Depositphotos_59572037_s-2015Anyone who jogs regularly will tell you that they feel sharper both emotionally and mentally after a run. But did you know that exercise also “pumps up” learning?

    The science is clear. Not only can exercise work at least as well as antidepressants to improve moods, it improves people’s learning ability.

    One recent study showed that participants learned vocabulary words 20% faster following exercise than they did before exercise. Another experiment revealed that adults’ cognitive flexibility improved after one 35- minute treadmill session at a moderate pace.

    What Does This Mean for Trainers?

    The best trainers acknowledge that adults learn better when they connect their heads to their bodies. So get your students moving! Use these three strategies:

    1. Bring content alive by using relevant, engaging activities.

    2. Periodically lead the class in some quick, stand-up stretching.

    3. Take frequent breaks. (My preference is to take one 10-minute break every 60 to 75 minutes.)

    Remember-we learn with our entire bodies. Don’t treat your students as if they are just “heads” alone!

    Guila Muir is the premiere trainer of trainers, facilitators, and presenters on the West Coast of the United States. Since 1994, she has helped thousands of professionals improve their training, facilitation, and presentation skills. Find out how she can help transform you from a boring expert to a great trainer: www.guilamuir.com

    © Guila Muir.

  • Transform Your Training with This Easy Tool

    Magic Hat and WandDoes your training environment sometimes feel dull (or even dead) as you deliver content? Does the environment itself feel uninspired? Wouldn’t it be great to have a magic wand you could use to inject your training with energy!

    Such a “magic wand” exists. Called Pair and Share, it is arguably the easiest and most effective training tool you can use. It always increases interaction, whether your class consists of four participants or four hundred. Importantly, Pair and Share also deepens every single participants’ interest and retention.

    So…Is Pair and Share Magic?

    Once you try it, you may think so. Pair and Share is simply a structured opportunity for your participants to process information in groups of two.

    Why Does Pair and Share Work?

    This super-easy technique does three important things. It:

    • Helps store information in long-term memory
    • Allows participants to reflect on content and make it their own
    • Increases individual accountability

    You can sprinkle Pair and Share several times throughout any training session to increase participation while reinforcing your message.

    How to Use Pair and Share

    Before or after providing content, guide the participants to form pairs with the person sitting next to them. Instruct them to process a specific, relevant point in the material. Your instructions should force them to work through the topic’s application to their own lives or work. Provide a total amount of time for the exercise—perhaps 30 seconds to one minute.

    Select from the following verbs, or use others, when you give instructions.

    “Turn to your partner and …

    • List
    • Discuss
    • Fix
    • Do
    • Figure out
    • Fill in
    • Share
    • Explain (etc.)

    Examples:

    Please turn to your neighbor and …

    • Name five types of safety gloves and what each are used for.
    • Define “saturation level”.
    • Tell them the most important fact you have learned in the last ten minutes and why.

    Believe it or not, this simple technique can determine if your participants remember or forget essential pieces of content. Sprinkle Pair and Shares liberally throughout your training sessions, and watch the classroom come alive!

    Want more tips to improve your trainings? Learn how Guila Muir’s Instructional Design Workshop can help you to create powerful, effective training sessions.

    Guila Muir , a premiere trainer of trainers, facilitators, and presenters, has helped thousands of professionals improve their training, facilitation, and presentation skills. Find out how she can help transform you from a boring expert to a great trainer!

  • The Most Important Tool for Online Meetings

    What’s the REAL secret to effective online meetings? An outcome-based agenda.

    An outcome-based agenda is an action plan. It states “what will have changed” by the end of the meeting. All agenda items should lead toward achieving those changes.

    A Plan, Not a Grocery List

    If you’re thinking that “something changing” seems like a big leap for a 30-minute meeting, consider these outcome stems:

    1. By the end of this meeting, we will have discussed…
    2. By the end of this meeting, we will have brainstormed…
    3. By the end of this meeting, we will have decided…

    Take a look at the differences in complexity of each outcome above. Typically, the more complex, (such as #3), the longer a meeting you will need. *

    If you cannot think of anything that will change, do not hold the meeting. A meeting without an outcome is just a waste of time.

    The Future Perfect Tense

    Note that outcomes use a verb with an “ed” on the end. Using the future perfect tense makes it obvious that you have a clear end in mind.

    Take the time to figure out exactly what is achievable in the time allotted. Then state that using the future perfect form of the verb: “By the end of this meeting, we will have ________ed)…” Magically, by stating your outcome this way, the meeting gains a much better chance at success.

    By using an outcome based agenda, your meetings will become shorter, less painful, and more productive.

    * By the way, the outcome is NOT a pre-determined “solution”. (For example, consider: “By the end of this meeting, you will have come up with the answer I’ve already decided.”) The group must feel ownership for the outcome they achieve.

    Want to improve your facilitation skills? Try our “Leading Stellar Online Meetings” workshop. Contact Guila today.