Ericka Gray, a highly experienced trainer and mediator and one of Insight Partner’s external consultants, generously agreed to come in for a training/coaching session this morning. She started the session by going over the nuts and bolts of preparing for facilitation versus preparing for a training session. When preparing for a training session, the content is generally the same, so the bulk of the preparation is working to understand the context, usually by conducting preliminary interviews. However, a facilitation is about structuring a process to allow for productive dialogue. Thus, the preparation work revolves around a deliberate and conscientious crafting of the process, which involves understanding who is going to be in the room, what people’s roles will be, structuring an agenda, etc.
The basic gist is that both require lots of preparation, so then Ericka decided to throw us into a blind facilitation exercise where we had zero preparation. The premise of the exercise was simple: one of us left the room, the others conspired together and came up with various difficult tactics to deploy, and then the initial person re-entered and attempted to facilitate a very brief discussion. The exercise was difficult, especially because we were rather tough on each other and used vicious difficult tactics like challenging the facilitator’s age, gender, authority, knowledge, status, etc. Not only was it a great way for us to practice managing difficult groups and to become more aware of what we have to work on, but it was also a lot of fun—especially because we took light revenge on each other as we each had a turn to role play as a difficult participant and as a facilitator.
We had a remarkable visitor during the course of our 3-hour session… This magnificent red-tailed hawk came and sat on the window ledge outside the conference room and was kind enough to pose for some pictures. Hopefully it will also return for a visit when Ericka comes back for a follow-up session next week!
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