Transforming Training – Ottawa, Canada

What I did:
I just spent the greater part of the week observing my boss working with a group in Ottawa, Canada, to develop a competency and curriculum framework for training for their organization. Observing the process was a wonderful learning experience, which I will summarize below.

What I Learned

Facilitating the process requires:

• More art than science (or almost more art than science).
• Patience.
• Listening skills
• Ability to provide the vision to participants, explain the objectives of the workshop, and give enough direction to get them started.
• Ability to live with ambiguity.
• Ability to remain calm when others are debating various concepts and word definitions.
• Ability to "read" others and recognize when to step in vs. when to let them continue to discuss.
• Ability to recognize when someone is not getting heard.
• Ability to pull everyone back together, to refocus on the desired outcome when they are getting off-track.
• Knowledge and ability to provide development guidance, when needed, while the group is seeking to identify target audience, develop desired competencies, and define training concentrations for the frameworks.
• Knowledge and ability to apply Bloom's Taxonomy when developing the competencies.
• Ability to present, teach, and facilitate, and to switch between the 3 roles as needed.
• Ability to manipulate Microsoft Excel at an advanced level.

I observed the following:

• The journey or process is what gives the outcome and output value; without going through the journey, the end result will have less value to participants.
• Not everyone enjoys the journey and not everyone is willing to go on the journey even if they are participants.
• If a participant has to miss more than a few hours, it may take hours to bring the individual up-to-date.
• The time it takes to reach a consensus depends upon whether or not they already have a common lexicon or have to create it at the time of the workshop. In other words, within an organization, if the division or branch has been together for quite sometime, they probably are fairly well integrated and have a common lexicon; if they have been together for less than 6 months or so, reaching a consensus will take more time.
• Writing down the definitions of training areas or concentrations is extremely important in the identification of appropriate training content!
• Everyone needs to be heard; the facilitator may need to step in at times to ensure all participants are heard.
• Once a group has worked through this type of process there is a sense of ownership and achievement.

Professional Development Questions:

• Did it go well? Why or why not? 
• Yes, I believe it went well. The meeting was a success for the client and for my organization. 
• What did I learn? 
• The observation provided me with a foundational understanding of the process, ways to facilitate discourse and constructive debate, and the vision of what I need to learn to be able to do something similar in the future.
• Does it relate to my work? If yes, how does it relate or how can I use the knowledge/information? If not, what would have made it better or more effective and what would I do differently for future learning?
• Yes it does. I expect to use the information gathered to develop skills in facilitation of helping to resolve team conflicts, which meets one of my work objectives in Teamwork. I also expect to be able to use this to further my growth toward facilitating similar meetings in the future.