In my previous post about workplace training and whether we should teach or facilitate, I mentioned that one company’s seasoned employees (those who’d been employed there for several decades) hated going to training – and said so.

After talking with a few employers about this, I concede that it’s probably well within any employer’s right to say “attending training IS part of your job, so you WILL attend and you WILL engage the training.” 

For some obstinate individuals, such a statement might be necessary. But for most folks, that’s probably akin to saying the beatings will continue until morale improves.

My perspective? We get more flies with honey than with vinegar. And since training via a “teaching” method will continue producing resistance in some learners, I wanted to lay out just a few more nuts and bolts about how to facilitate.

Probably the easiest way to differentiate teaching from facilitating is to say teachers do more telling while facilitators do more asking.

A facilitator tunes in to the interests, attitudes, and experiences of the learners, and then poses questions to stimulate meaningful dialog and discussion in the direction of the learning objectives.

A facilitator’s questions should not be patronizing or simplistic. Facilitating as an instructional method requires a high level of interpersonal skills, so as not to demean or insult the learners in any way.

Done right, learners end up exploring their past experience and previously-formed conclusions in an attempt to discover solutions for any new problems offered up by the facilitator.

Ideally, learners begin posing questions back and forth to each other!

In the end, depending on the topic and the experience levels of the learners, conducting training through facilitation can be MUCH more effective than standard “stand up and teach” methods.

If you have any history with this, be it positive or negative — feel free to jump in and tell us about it.

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Filed in Work, Training, Workplace, Train the Trainer, Corporate Culture