Facilitators lead, train, present new information, make process suggestions, mediate or play a combination of these roles in group sessions. However, the main function of a facilitator is to improve a process.
Often times, facilitators are tasked with serving in a dual function, such as that of a;
- Facilitator/Trainer
- Facilitator/Subject content matter expert
- Facilitator/Mediator and
- Leader/Facilitator
Serving in a dual role can come with special challenges or confusion that occurs because of the dual nature of those roles. For example, I experienced a number of challenges in my earlier years in my career in Leadership Development. I served as a Facilitator/Trainer, in this dual role I aspired to be interactive for the purpose of teaching modules to benefit leadership in knowledge gain. The most challenging part I found about this dual role was the crowd, by this I mean my trainees.
The trainees were reluctant to learning and some seemed skeptical, or uninterested in participating. As the facilitator/trainer it was important to monitor cues of disengagement and continuously re engage detractors. The root cause I found in part was the trainees were not self-enrolled, and executive leadership made development mandatory. The lesson learned in this case to overcome consisted of;
- Gaining trust with participants by empowering them as SME’s
- Continuous effort from the facilitator to be interactive
- Gauging level of interest from participants and
- Explaining the benefits of knowledge gain