DIMENSIONS OF FACILITATOR EFFECTIVENESS[1]

The Person
Empathy / Acceptance
Congruence / Flexibility
Skills
Listening / Responding
Expressing Oneself / Intervening
Observing / Designing
Techniques
Structured Experiences / Instruments
Lecturettes / Confrontations
Interventions (Verbal & Nonverbal) / Audio-Visual/Computer
Theories
Personality/Learning / Systems
Group Dynamics / Organizational Behavior
Change / Community Behavior

The Person

Social ills continue to plague us despite our current, incredible technology. We need to learn more about our own interpersonal relationships--and this is what the field of human resource development and training is about. The common denominator is the person. To become better as a facilitator, one must become better as a person.

One of the significant personal dimensions is the ability to feel empathy for another person. Complete empathy is not possible, of course; we can never fully experience someone else's situation. But we can try to see things from another person's perspective; this effort is critical.

Acceptance is another important personal dimension--allowing another person to be different, to have a different set of values and goals, to behave differently. Carl Rogers calls this Unconditional Positive Regard (UPR).

Congruence and flexibility determine two additional aspects of the person. A congruent person is aware of what he or she is doing and feeling and is able to communicate that self to another person in a straightforward way. A healthy and psychologically mature person is flexible, not dogmatic, opinionated, rigid, or authoritarian. A healthy consultant should be able to deal with another person at that person's pace.

If people have these personal attributes, they are therapeutic. Just being around them makes others feel good; they help by being well-integrated persons themselves.

The most meaningful direction consultants can take is toward improving their own personal development, furthering their own understanding of their values, attitudes, impulses, and desires. Two major interpersonal conflicts that facilitators must be able to resolve for themselves are their individual capacities for intimacy and their relations to authority.

Important as the personal dimension is, however, there are other components involved in successful human resource development and other areas of training and consulting.

Skills

Certain basic communication skills are necessary in order to promote individual, group, and organizational growth. A facilitator needs to develop the ability to listen, to express (both verbally and nonverbally), to observe, to respond to people, to intervene artfully in the group process, and to design effective learning environments that make efficient use of resources.

Techniques

One also can heighten and improve the effect of training and consulting through certain techniques. Structured experiences, instruments, lecturettes, confrontations, audio-visual, and verbal and nonverbal interventions are all useful in increasing a facilitator's effectiveness.

Theories

Theory is a resource. It is one of the components a facilitator uses to develop and improve as a practitioner. Theories abound in applied behavioral science; there are theories of personality, group dynamics, organizational behavior, community behavior, and systems. Systems theory, for example, has some interesting implications for OD in that it points out that all systems are interdependent and that no one can be dealt with in isolation.

Practice

Theory and research are inextricably intertwined with practice--one requires the other. Yet if the choice had to be made between a brilliant theorist, thoroughly grounded in technique and theory, and a stimulating, effective consultant with a well-integrated personal self, many practitioners would choose the latter.

[1] Adapted from A Reference Guide to Handbooks and Annuals, Jones, John E., and J. William Pfeiffer. San Diego: University Associates, Inc. 1988.