I was reminded the other day about how big a difference there can be between "teaching" and "facilitating".
A friend decided to go back to school after many years away from a university environment. Just two weeks ago, she told me how eager she was to be getting a chance to learn something new. Today she called to let me know that she dropped her most anticipated class. Why? The teacher stood in front of the room READING FROM THE TEXTBOOK!
Unfortunately, the lecture model -- I talk and you listen -- is alive and well in some of our learning institutions. And, it still shows up in some of the employee training offerings of our corporate clients.
We have great consultants/trainers at Paradigm Learning (OK, I'm biased, but it's true). My friend's story made me think about what makes our consultants so good and what it takes to be a great teacher/trainer.
Here are a few things that I think are especially important when working with adult learners:
- Deciding that your job is to "guide" your learners, not preach to them
- Using training materials that engage learners in small team exercises and encourage participation and thinking
- Allowing your learners to work hard enough that they will discover content and develop their own insights
- Caring more about what was learned by your students than about your "scores" at the end of the session
- Using humor -- and that doesn't mean telling jokes -- to set a playful learning tone
- Creating an environment that is comfortable and that engages the senses -- using music, visuals, colors, etc.
- Being well enough prepared to help learners make connections to their real job challenges
When we design our
business games and simulations for corporate clients, we work hard to develop experiences that allow our consultants to be true facilitators. We help them to be guides and cheerleaders. We help them pull together learning insights
with their learners, not
for them.
And, when our clients choose trainers in their own organizations to conduct sessions, we help them identify those who have both the ability and the desire to guide their learners through a
discovery learning process.
Do you have other thoughts about what it takes to be a great teacher/trainer?
