Facilitating

Mike Robson, Ciarán Beary

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351937511
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

How to manage change, and how to ensure continuous improvement: these are perhaps the two most important challenges confronting businesses today. And increasingly facilitating is being seen as the best way to deal with both. Facilitators - and managers operating in a facilitative style - work on helping individuals, groups and organizations to enhance their performance. This book shows how that can be done. The first part deals with the nature of facilitation and why those involved need to understand the basis of human behaviour. The second covers the management of change at different levels. The third provides practical guidelines on the relevant skills. The fourth looks at the kinds of situation where facilitators can be effective and includes case studies from a wide variety of settings. The final part deals with facilitative styles of management. For any manager or trainer determined to release the unfulfilled potential of their organization and the people in it, this book is the ideal starting point.

PART I
The Facilitator Role

The task of the facilitator is to develop organizations and people; not in theory, but in practice. Though many useful theories that underpin the role exist, success comes from being prepared to try a wide range of interventions, and to continue to use the techniques that work, but always to be able to explain why we choose a certain course of action, and to predict the likely outcomes. It is both an art and a science, but increasingly, as more becomes known about the way people behave, it is a science with definable skills that can be learned and practised by anyone.

Facilitators, in the way the role is used for the most part today, do not have a line relationship with their customers. This will change over time as the use of facilitative styles of management and leadership increase. Chapter 20 deals with this subject. Facilitators work with individuals, groups, and indeed the organization as a whole, helping to improve performance.

In summary, the role is that of an 'on-line' trainer and developer, someone who helps people as they work on improvement activities either individually or in groups. 'Just in time' theories have demonstrated their worth in many manufacturing situations and the idea of facilitation takes this principle and applies it to the effective development of the organization in general and the human resource specifically. However, most people are not particularly good at retaining knowledge for future use, neither are they particularly skilled at taking lessons learned in theory and applying them in practice in a 'real world' situation. It is because of these deficiencies that so much conventional training and development is wasted. People learn most from what they do, and, if this learning can be properly structured, their learning will be that much more effective. So the facilitator works with customers in 'real time' and uses the events that happen here and now as the building blocks of future development activities.

To understand the role of the facilitator, we also need an understanding of some of the main issues that affect the development of groups and individuals. Chapters 3 and 4 cover these subjects.

1 The origins of the facilitator role

The term facilitator first came to prominence with the introduction into the West of Quality Circles in the late 1970s. Quality Circles are a mechanism for encouraging the involvement of the workforce in problem-solving and improvement. Groups of employees working for the same supervisor or first line manager meet voluntarily on a weekly basis to identify, analyse and solve their own work-related problems.

It was soon realized that if such a process was to work, the members and leaders of such groups needed to receive training in elementary problem-solving skills, and that this would best be provided 'in situ' during the course of the weekly meetings. It was not the task of the person providing this training to solve the group's problems but rather to give the leader and the members the wherewithal to do so in an orderly and professional manner. Hence the title facilitator, someone whose task is to make things easy for those working on the problem.

The importance of the role in supporting Quality Circles was quickly appreciated, and it became a standard feature of introducing this particular approach. Unfortunately though, poor or non-existent training in understanding facilitation and developing the necessary skills, contributed to the early demise of Quality Circles in many organizations. As is so often the way, the organizations concerned blamed the approach, claiming that it did not work, rather than recognizing their own ineptitude in introducing and sustaining it. It does work if it is introduced with skill and care, if properly trained facilitators are utilized to support the groups as they work towards self-sufficiency, and if the managerial process continues to be actively and obviously committed to it over time, not as an add on, but as a fundamental part of the way it wants things to be done.

From these relatively humble beginnings the potential of the role in other situations started to be recognized. Today there are examples of chief executives of large international organizations that employ the services of personal facilitators, a trend much to be encouraged given the amount of potential for improvement among most people who occupy such roles. Facilitators in these situations attend the same meetings as the chief executive, and they work together to review performance afterwards, by the facilitators using a process of eliciting self-assessments and also giving their own feedback they work on improvement possibilities. In other organizations, facilitators, in their role as developers of individuals, are deployed at different levels, and in some, people who are particularly knowledgeable and skilful are utilized as full-scale, internal, Organization Development consultants.

Though the original conception of the role was as an 'on-line' trainer, in practice this is, and always has been, a relatively minor part of the true job. The origins of the facilitator role as it is performed now, by those who have been properly trained, are to be found in the work of Kurt Lewin, Carl Rogers and Edgar Schein.

Kurt Lewin was a researcher into the behaviour of groups, and was the person who invented the term 'group dynamics'. Working in the 1940s he realized that most groups did not perform as well as they should have done judging by the capabilities of the individual members, and he set out both to explain this and to provide tools and mechanisms that would help groups diagnose and confront the problem. Lewin recognized that small groups established for whatever purpose tended to be obsessively concerned with the completion of their task, and paid little or no attention to the way that they were going about it. He further realized that virtually all the difficulties faced by such groups were to do with the way they were doing their work, the process. He saw that successful groups were those that actively and consciously managed the process, rather than being entirely 'task-mesmerized'. Although Lewin's work was recognized and valued by fellow researchers, behavioural scientists and Organization Development consultants, it did not permeate organizations in any wholesale way. It is through the role of facilitator that much of his work is given its practical expression today.

The process of group working looks at how the group is doing its work rather than what it is trying to do. It is a combination of a wide variety of factors any of which may be having an important influence on the group at any particular time. For example whether members are really listening to each other will obviously have an important impact, as will the procedure that the group uses to address its problem, the decision-making method used and whether or not a member of the group is dominating proceedings and preventing others from contributing. Understanding and managing the complex dynamics of a group is critical to success, but experience indicates that most people find it difficult, especially at the beginning, to manage the process whilst at the same time working on the task. The facilitator, when working with groups, is responsible for observing the process and pointing out to the group if there are any process issues that are impeding progress.

Carl Rogers developed an approach to counselling and therapy that was 'client-centred'. He recognized that the ownership of the client was vital to the success of any counselling relationship and that a set of skills were needed to develop this in practice. Facilitators, for the most part, are dealing with individuals and groups that are at least relatively 'healthy', unlike Rogers, but there are distinct similarities in some of the attributes that are necessary for success. Because they are developers of people in organizations, facilitators require the sort of skills that Rogers recognized were important in any truly 'client-centred' approach, and they use them routinely in drawing out of the individual or group an analysis of the situation and a preferred way of addressing it.

Edgar Schein, the third core influence on the role of facilitator, introduced the idea of process consultancy as a way of generating high levels of ownership in the client. He distinguished between 'expert' consultancy where the consultant tells the client what the right answer is, 'doctor/patient' consultancy where the consultant diagnoses the illness before providing the cure, and 'process' consultancy where the client is assumed to have the solution, but may not know it or may not know how to access it. Many of the skills of the process consultant are in expert questioning that is successful in eliciting the appropriate self-diagnosis.

The initial expectations that most people seem to have of the consultant role are of an expert who is brought in to tell us the answer to our concern or problem. While this is an appropriate approach in some situations, there are many where it is not, indeed where it is actively counter-productive.

Organizations regularly call in outside consultants to conduct investigations and to recommend solutions to a range of issues. The work is usually done with at least a degree of skill, and yet so often nothing actually happens after the consultants have presented their findings and left. The issue here is an ever-present danger of the ownership leaving with the consultants, and where this happens people in the organization are likely to become frustrated and the consultants are likely to acquire a bad reputation, yet this scenario frequently occurs.

The issues are much the same for the facilitator, who is in many ways an internal consultant, which is why the subject of ownership is so vitally important to anyone who is involved in this role. Right from the early days the effective facilitator has been concerned to help individuals and groups achieve, and those who have been well trained have always known that this involved more than simply saying what should be; indeed that this approach was likely to do more harm than good. It was perhaps inevitable in the early years, given that even many of the people who were running training courses on the subject had no real understanding of it, that many facilitators would be unable to perform the role properly and that they would end up damaging the very process that they were supposedly trying to help. Unfortunately this still happens today.

Having studied the facilitator role over the years, trained many hundreds, if not thousands, of people to practise it well, and observed the damage caused by people who have not been properly equipped, I have concluded that facilitators, if they are to be successful, need to be trained to understand the true origins and purpose of the job, and need to be helped (facilitated) as they begin to practise their newly developed skills.

2 Understanding the facilitator role

In this chapter we begin to look at some of the ingredients of the facilitator role and some of the important issues that we need to bear in mind as we approach the work.

Learning styles

People are different in many ways and one of them is their preferred method of learning. The traditional assumptions that were made about learning gave the responsibility for the process to the teacher or trainer. It is assumed that 'teacher knows best', and that the role of the 'student' is to listen, memorize and be able to repeat. Traditionally it was believed that learning was a process of acquiring and remembering ideas and concepts, primarily in the classroom away from the distractions of everyday life, the job and so on. This is a description that many of the older ones among us will relate to as it describes the whole of our school experience. It is still, remarkably, the model most commonly used; remarkable because of all the possible methods it is the one that works least well!

A more fruitful approach, especially when dealing with adults, which facilitators will be for the most part, is to change the nature of this often unwritten 'contract' to one which places the responsibility on both the trainer and the trainee, the facilitator and the customer. If it is to be successful, we should also recognize that we remember about 10 per cent of what we hear, about 50 per cent of what we see, and about 75 per cent of what we experience, so experiential learning models are preferable wherever it is possible to use them. We need as well to recognize that teaching that is applied to meet individual learning objectives is likely to be more powerful than generalized learning, and ideally we should be able to tailor our approach to the particular way that different individuals prefer to learn.

In this respect Kolb's work on learning styles can be of great use to facilitators. He identified four different ways of learning which are first, by concrete experiences, second by reflective observation, third by abstract conceptualization and fourth by active experimentation. He found that, although any one person's learning style reflects a combination of these four, people have a tendency to prefer one or two methods. From the point of view of the learner there may be an advantage to be gained from expanding the learning styles that are used, and certainly from the facilitator's there is a clear necessity to try to understand and take into account the preferred style of the customer, since this will have a pronounced effect on the results that are achieved.

For example, if as facilitators we work on the assumption that a particular person prefers to learn by abstract conceptualization of the issues when in fact he or she will only be moved by concrete experience, then we will not achieve very much; we will only serve to annoy and frustrate. With this in mind we should be sure to take this issue into consideration when planning our interventions and should have the ability to adapt what we say and how we say it in the light of what is most likely to engage the person or people we are dealing with.

The first learning mode is by concrete experience, which means by being involved; people who learn purely in this way emphasize what they feel rather than what they think. These are people who are concerned with what is happening now, rather than with theories and models, they see the world through their intuition rather than through any systematic or scientific approaches.

Reflective observation is the second mode which implies gaining an understanding of events by careful observation of ideas and events. Purists here would prefer to reflect on what they see rather than to rush in and act, indeed they are more concerned with thinking about things than doing something about them since they are more concerned with understanding than doing. People who use only, or prefer, this learning style tend to be good at seeing the implications of ideas.

In the same way that those who prefer to learn only by concrete experience do so by feeling rather than thinking, those who prefer abstract conceptualization learn by thinking rather than doing. These people are most concerned with having theories and models to which they can subscribe, and being able to apply disciplined and rigorous analysis in the learning situation. They want the learning process to be systematic and capable of quantitative analysis.

The final learning mode is active experimentation. Here the emphasis is on achieving things through an active process of involving people and getting them to take action rather than starting from a need to understand. Active experimenters are the pragmatists of our world, concerned primarily with what works, and much less about abstract concepts such as what is right or true.

Kolb's work tells us that very few people's preferred learning style is a pure version of one of the four described, rather that any individual tends to be an amalgam of the four, but with certain preferences. Drawing on his research, he was able to identify four basic learning styles that cover most people. He called these convergers, divergers, assimilators and accommodators. There is nothing inherently right or wrong about any of these preferred styles; from the facilitator's point of view it is simply a matter of understanding anyone we are dealing with from this point of view so that we can be sufficiently prepared and can therefore adopt the approach that is most likely to succeed.

A 'converger' is someone whose strength lies in problem—solving, decision-making and the practical application of ideas. These people prefer situations where there is one right answer, they prefer technical tasks rather than issues to do with people.

A 'diverger' is imaginative, very aware of, and interested in, underlying values. They tend to be able to see things from different perspectives and are suited to issues that require the generation of ideas. 'Divergers' are interested in people rather than things.

An 'assimilator' is able to pull together different ideas, facts and theories into an integrated whole. They are more interested in developing elegant concepts than in people or the practicability of their ideas.

An 'accommodator' wants to get things done, to become involved in the practicalities of carrying out plans, and to have new experiences. They are happy in uncertain situations where trial and error is the preferred problem-solving process, and where there is a requirement to use information gleaned from outside sources rather than from their own analytical ability.

As facilitators we will be dealing with all sorts of people and certainly we will come across people who reflect all four of these stereotypes. It is clear from the descriptions that different approaches will be needed if we are to be successful with such a wide variety of people. Skilled facilitators are able to work effectively with anyone, not just those that mirror their own particular preferences.

These four preferred learning styles are clearly very different. Without being particularly conscious of it, people are either 'turned on' or 'turned off' by methods of influence that either match or do not match their preferred style. If we think about it carefully we will all be able to recall examples of where we have been successful or not as a result of using the appropriate or inappropriate method. For the vast majority of us the trap we fall into is of assuming that everyone thinks like and learns like we do, and so we plough on and use the methods that would appeal to us, rather than thinking about it from the point of view of our customers. It is a key part of the facilitator's job to be aware of such dangers and to have the knowledge and the skills to avoid them.

The process

The manner in which the facilitator achieves the objective of developing people and helping them to improve their performance is basic to understanding the role since it is different from traditional approaches. We tend to be brought up with the idea that life concerns achievement and that this should be virtually our exclusive aim. This is reinforced at home, at school and most certainly at work. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with this except that it produces what could be described as 'task mesmerization'. In fact, we are here to obtain results, it is just that most people spend at least some of their time preventing themselves from doing this. This happens everywhere and in all walks of life, and is the phenomenon where we become so obsessed with the achievem...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• PART I THE FACILITATOR ROLE
• PART II MANAGING CHANGE
• PART III FACILITATOR SKILLS
• PART IV THE FACILITATOR ROLE IN PRACTICE
• PART V MANAGEMENT STYLE
• Sources and resources
• Index