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Train-The-Facilitators Series

Presents

BASIC FACILITATOR COURSE

Facilitators create a learning environment of openness and harmony, they make things smooth, ease kinks, inspires insights, and lead the participants to a learning zone that they would not have experienced in the work settings. In the flow state, a facilitator is liken to a magician, creating both visual and audio stimuli being felt by the participants, bringing them on an emotional roller coaster ride. In doing these, it is hard to describe a facilitator without including the word passion.

Train-The-Facilitators Series

Content

Overview 3

Learning Outcomes 3

Target Audience 3

Course Focus 3

Course Outline 3

Facilitation 3

Your Responsibilities 3

Managing Risk 3

Facilitation Tools 3

Giving Instructions 3

Program Design Principles 3

OPTIONS Form – The Way of Business 3

Type of Activities 3

Models and Anecdotes 3

Execution - The FOCUS Adventure way 3

Skills Bay 3

Skills Evaluation 3

Activities Interpretation 3

Goals Setting 3

FOCUS Adventure’s USP 3

Recommended Readings 3

Annex A 3

Annex B 3

Annex C 3

Annex D 3

Train-The-Facilitators Series

Overview

The Basic Facilitator Course is a five-day course designed to provide participants an insight to the world of facilitation in the adventure and experiential learning environment. Participants will learn a myriad of skills thus enabling each learner the path towards delivering high impact experiential programs that are uniquely to FOCUS Adventure.

Learning Outcomes

The course aims to engage potential facilitators with an array of skills and knowledge consisting of learning experiential activities and delivering them. They will also learn various functional skills which include,

1. Public Speaking

2. Facilitation Tools and Techniques

3. Programs Management

4. Risk Management

5. Situational Awareness

6. Technical and Safety of Ropes Courses etc.

Upon completion of the course, potential participants can start their journey as a Facilitator (On-Job-Training) or Program Executive/Manager.

Target Audience

The Basic Facilitation Course is suitable for people who possess little or totally uninitiated to the field and is interested in facilitated experiential learning or training. It is also suitable for company’s in-house full or part-time trainers, freelance trainers, training consultants, training administrators, course or training program, curriculum developers, assessment developers and assessors.

Human Resource professionals, managers and leaders who have an interest in using facilitated experiential learning as a tool to augment organizational growth or business environment are certainly welcome as well.

Train-The-Facilitators Series

Course Focus

Greetings from FOCUS Adventure! We delighted to have you in this program because when like-minded people flock together, the enjoyment you would be receiving through this impending learning and sharing process will be tremendous.

As this session is inducting someone to be a facilitator, you can expect to learn abundantly and the learning process would inevitably put you out of your comfort zone occasionally. Remember, out of comfort zone isn’t a bad thing.

Schizophrenia you might become? Yes, there will be times for you to switch contexts from one to another. Sometimes you are required to think and act like a facilitator whereas there are moments for you to become a happy participant. You will find this ability of toggling between contexts to be beneficial for your future attempts in designing and carrying out facilitation sessions.

Role playing is essential to feel the responsibilities shouldered by different members in any facilitation settings. Just don’t be surprised when you are being called upon to act. Make sure you act it out well!

Articulating your thoughts is a key strength for a facilitator. Throughout, you would be invited to express your ideas, share your insights and talk your heart out. This doing will multiply your learning exponentially. This process also allows us to uncover any internal inhibitions of each individual when it comes to speaking before a group.

Play like a kid and not like an “a-dull-t”. We know kids are the experts in having fun. This is one skill that we adults did not get better as we grow. Without a doubt we will never reverse our growth but we can mentally teleport ourselves back to childhood days. Suspense the assumptions, remove the inhibitions and just let your hair down and play!

Train-The-Facilitators Series

Course Outline

The course outline is illustrated below. No attempt to provide all details at this point because life is like a box of chocolate…

Day One (Focus Headquarters – Sentosa)
Introduction to Course Theoretical Framework
Facilitation Tools and Skills
Energizers (Ice Breakers)
Low Elements
Day Two (Focus Singapore Site – Sembawang)
Mobile Adventure Programme (MAP)
Low Elements
High Elements
Singapore – Bintan
DISC Profiling (Behavioural Analysis)
Day Three (Focus Bintan Site – Nirwana Gardens)
Orientation to Bintan
All Terrain Vehicle
Jet Ski
Rafting
Mobile Adventure Programme (MAP)
Day Four (Focus Bintan Site – Bintan Lagoon Resort)
Team Challenge Pyramid
Paintball
Day Five (Focus Bintan Site – Nirwana Gardens)
Consolidation/Evaluation
Bintan - Singapore

*All meals will be provided on days where overnight stay is required

Train-The-Facilitators Series

Facilitation

What is it you’re actually doing when you considered to have facilitated an experience?

Facilitation is … just talking things, information dissemination, telling, transferring, creating metaphors … or just simply a meaningful conversation
What is it to you? Care to write a few words about it?

To facilitate is liken to make easier. As like there are various means to skin a cat, there are a range of definitions or even assumptions tagged to the term facilitator. Let’s uncover some myths before we get trapped by some of these unwarranted paradigms that may limit our growth.

In any facilitated experiential learning settings, the facilitator plays the role of a catalyst to learning, internalization, self-examination, overcoming self-imposed limits, inspiring a sense futurism, etc in the learners. He would set up scenarios a.k.a. structuring multiple experiences for the learners (participants) to go through, thereafter making deliberate attempts to elicit their responses of the experiences.

Generally the responses are raw feedback or observations from the learners. However, in achieving any positive learning transfer from the seemingly unrelated adventure experiences to useful insights and ideas to be applied to the learners’ context (workplace) lies in the facilitation process executed by the facilitator. In most situations, the facilitation process is a meaningful conversational exchange among the learners, usually guided by the facilitator.

Are facilitators content experts? A common jargon you might have heard of is “the know it all”. If you think that facilitators are supposed to be equipped with wide range and great depth of knowledge, you might not become one anytime soon, right? Categorically, academics are content experts whereas facilitators are process wizards. Facilitators may not need to be the guru in many topics but they should be fluent in administering various facilitation processes to augment the participants’ learning.

While it does make sense for facilitators to be conversant in facilitation processes, invariably it does nothing to augment credibility if the facilitators know little or nothing of other areas. Facilitators are expected to possess sufficient knowledge in related fields like, behavioral science, management models, communication skills, human resources, adult learning theory, etc. to sustain meaningful conversations during facilitation.

Perhaps we could also discuss what facilitation is NOT. This might help you to get a better appreciation of some common paradigms that might have limiting growth to the learners. Therefore facilitation is NOT,

· a one-way conversation

· the sole responsible of the facilitator to ensure success

· the usual presentation

· a showcase of the facilitator’s life story

· a brainwashing session

· a mean to appraise peers

· to flex authority muscles

Strange but true, a well facilitated session is generally felt but hardly described as vividly witnessed. While the facilitation session is underway, lots of sensing and perceiving are happening. This is where the Jungnian’s (http://www.religiousworlds.com/fondarosa/jung03.html) notion of perceiving and judging comes into play. When a facilitator facilitates, he or she listens intensely. The immense amount of data is being processes in the mind hence resulted in a judgment or an outcome. Judgment herein does not connote being judgmental. There are numerous inferences made on-the-fly whilst observing, listening and interacting with the participants. A discerning facilitator would be able to justify the actions he or she has taken during facilitation. In a nutshell, he would know what to do, why do it, how to do it and when to do it.

The term, facilitator should not be foreign to you. Extracted from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/facilitate shows a regular definition of the word.

Train-The-Facilitators Series

Your Responsibilities

The responsibilities of the facilitator in-charge are by no mean simple. Participants have given their time and presence at the program and they expect to learn or discover from it. While high energy level and fun are essential to make a successful program, they are definitely not the cornerstones. A facilitator is expected to place the participants’ learning as top priority. By the same token, for learning to happen, the facilitator must also take note of the various factors that would contribute to great learning and be able to fulfill these factors.

What are the perceived responsibilities of a facilitator?

As the saying; every coin has two sides. Participants do harbor expectations of the facilitator both explicitly and implicitly. The expectations automatically translate to the responsibilities to be carried by the facilitator. Although the participants are given the opportunity to learn, the ownership to learning is often misconstrued. Many participants assume that facilitators are responsible for their learning even we are well aware that nobody can be forced to learn unless they are willing to do so.

Since learning involves changing, and most people would resist when they are being changed whereas they are fine with changing themselves, we are certain that learning is directly related to willingness. This is the most critical intrinsic attribute that is not illuminated most of the time. As such, the facilitator inadvertently carries the burden of the participants’ learning instead of concentrating in providing a conducive environment and sufficient opportunities for learning to take place.

On the facilitators’ side, they always yearn for positive participants with immense amount of energy to learn and do. That makes the job easier but the reality is far from ideal. It is common to learn that facilitators are driven by passion … only most and not all. Invariably, facilitators should not get carried away by passion until the distinction of responsibilities and authority is smeared.

Facilitators should remember that participants are on the equal learning platform and not a lower one. They are expected to be well aware of the self-directed learning nature of adult’s learning. At no time should the facilitator oversteps or abuses privilege accorded by making light of the participants’ ability or readiness to learn. Facilitation is to make easier, the focus is about surfacing the potential insights from participants and not forcing down certain perspectives that are preferred by the facilitator.

As mentioned in previous section, facilitators are not expected to be “the know it all”. The abundance of insights are hidden within the participants. Experienced facilitators are able to apply the suitable facilitation process timely. This doing give the participants great pleasure in learning from each others. Many facilitators fell into the trap of transmission. Instead of a facilitated learning session, it became a lecture. Even more thinks that facilitators must possessed tremendous amount of knowledge, likened to an academic. This is far from truth. In facilitated learning, as long as the participants have learned abundantly through the facilitation process administered by the facilitators, the deserving amount of respect and admiration will be accorded.

Train-The-Facilitators Series

Managing Risk

Is managing risk about tossing dices? If this is true, the notion of managing will be automatically nullified. In this section, we shall illuminate the concept of risks mitigation in our programs, and also creating the appropriate paradigms in perceiving risks in both the facilitators and participants.

In any facilitated experiential settings regardless done indoors and outdoors, risk is inherent. The ship in the harbor is safe, but this not what the ship is built for. In adventure learning, inevitably it involves some degrees of risks. We can’t really experience anything we can call adventure unless we embark on an adventure. However, as practitioners, we must be well aware of the risk levels to avoid events of misadventure. This industry is as delicate as a string. There can be ten faulty ball point pens in every ten thousand being made and the sales of the ball point pens will go on. However it will only take one incident that contains one irrecoverable injury to undermine the relevance of the adventure learning industry, and that is the industry we are joining or are immersed into.

The Concept of Risk

Within the context of experiential learning, the risk can be viewed from three perspectives or some practitioners may call it as the three types of risk. In brief, each risk or perspective is written below.

Absolute Risk – this refers to the “at worst” scenarios. If we think the possible incidents that can occur in any challenge rope courses (CRC), one can imagine falling objects, cables detaching from the main structure, tilting of the main pillars, belay or foot lines giving way, or even the entire CRC collapsing. The consequences of such catastrophic event are nothing less than severe and threatening.

Real Risk – this refers inevitable events that are highly possible to happen but in much less severity compared to the Absolute Risk. It is common to get some bruises and nicks from going a CRC or any given adventure learning experiences. When we mention real risk, we think of soft tissue injuries, lacerations, bruises, sun burn, insect bites, etc. Such events can happen to any individual regardless of the precautions taken. One can wrap up in a protective armor over all but it is still possible get abrasion or even be dehydrated from the physical exertion of moving in the armor over all.