Effective Facilitation: Bridging the Gap between Learning and Application

Effective Facilitation: Bridging the Gap between Learning and Application

An Article by Joey Ng
1ST August 2014

You only have time to attend either one of these two concurrent talks during a
seminar on Leadership:

Option 1 – A Harvard Business School professor who has been teaching leadership for more
than thirty years sharing his knowledge to more than 20,000 students throughout his career. His
profile headline reads ‘Always at the pulse of the latest leadership theories’.

Option 2 – An entrepreneur who in a span of fifteen years, expand his organisation from a two man
team to 20,000 strong today. His profile headline reads ‘Fifteen years of real time leading’.

Which one would you attend? Truth be told, Option 2 sounds more inspiring and realistic. However, lets take a further look into how we can better understand the title as it suggests. 

Conceptual Tools - Models, Frameworks and Theories

Facilitators use conceptual tools such as conceptual models, decision making frameworks and behavioral theories to explain the psychological and scientific aspect of behaviors to participant in an easy to understand manner. In the context of Klob’s four-stage experiential learning cycle, conceptual tools are used by  facilitators in the third stage, abstract conceptualization, as a way to connect various learning points to summarizes the debrief. Facilitators should equipped themselves with sound knowledge in a wide range of conceptual tools, to help participants understand how their thinking and actions lead to certain outcomes and also, to explain cause-and-effect events. The basic idea behind the use of conceptual tools as part of debriefing is that by explaining complex events in relatively straightforward cause-and-effect relationships, it increases the likelihood of participants making positive changes, because they now know what they have to do, in order to achieve the outcome they seek.

Besides being used as part of the debriefing process, conceptual tools are used by many to:

1. Guide decision making.
2. Make predictions
3. Systematic review and analysis of behaviors.
4. Offer scientific and rational explanations to events.
5. Simplifies a complex situation.
6. Organize multiple variables in a coherent manner.

However, in reality, outside of a a controlled environment, relying on conceptual tools a alone to understand the real world is not enough. Conceptual tools are after all, merely concepts and broad representation of ideas about human dynamics and their main purpose is to offer the simplest explanation to events and occurrences. But as we all know, the real world is more complex than 4 stages of team p performances or 4 types of behaviors. When the rubber meets the road, reality will present challenges that no theories, models and frameworks can fully explain.

Facilitators must be aware of the limitations of conceptual tools. They need t to recognize that the linear idea of cause-and-effect seldom applies in reality and that framework offers rational explanation to behaviors, but h humans are highly prone to irrational thinking. It is not that conceptual tools are not important, it is that conceptual tools alone are insufficient.

When the Rubber Meets the Road 

A whitepaper published by The Center of Creative Leadership sug gested the following ratio on how leadership is developed -70% of o one’s leadership skill is acquired through actual experiences, 20%
through feedback and observation, and 10% institutionally.

Educating oneself about leadership is an important part of leadership development. It enables leaders to learn from others and reflect on their own leadership skill. However, a large proportion of leadership learning comes when leaders apply and ‘do’ leadership, not just read d or talk about it. When the rubber meets the r road, leaders will experience leadership challenge es that no formal training and education will e ever teach them. Leading real people and real projects exposes leaders to variables that conceptual models and frameworks tend to over-simplify, overlook and/or understate. Models and frameworks are
deliberately kept simple so that it can be easily understood by most, and this indivertibly resulted in a gap between theory and application. Variables leaders will find themselves dealing includes time, performance standards, human emotions, personality difference es, up and down stream pressure and the list goes on. These are just factors internal to the team; we have not touch on variables that are outside of leaders’ sphere of influence, such as government policies and technology advancement. While frameworks are available to help leaders manage each variable as a standalone entity, there are no conceptual tools available to manage a collective system of variables, because the interlinked relationships between the variables are too complex to rationalize into structures. As such, the best way for leaders to learn how to lead in the real world is by actual experimentation, by ‘doing’ leadership. The more they ‘do’ leadership, the better they are at dealing with
complexity. 

Leading real projects means leaders have to deal with the complexity of economics (money, time, asset etc), human factors (greed, incompetency, unmotivated etc) and legal/ethical challenges (policies, moral compass, etc). This means dealing with outcomes that have real consequences on the team. Examples of real consequences include losing money, upsetting people and getting sued. Without real consequences, leaders will never be able to assess the actual impact their decision and actions have on others and the team. It is hard-pressed to think of any other type of feedback that is as forthright as real consequences.

Relating this back to conceptual tools, without actual application of the tools and benefiting (or suffering) from the ensuing consequences, leaders will never be able to fully understand and appreciate the usefulness (or uselessness) of the conceptual tools they learned.


Discerning Participants

Facilitators must be conscious of the fact that participants themselves have lived through their fair share of real time leadership and teamwork. It can even be argued that most participants experienced more leadership and teamwork than facilitators. Participants are ‘doer’ of leadership and teamwork. To them, leadership and teamwork are more about application and practice than concepts and theories. Conceptual models sound just about right on paper but what really matters to participants is when the rubber meets the road, how do we apply them effectively?

Hence, for the facilitation to be relevant and useful to the participants, facilitators must be able to draw out practical features and uses of the conceptual tools. In-order to do so effectively, facilitators themselves must have experiences with the tools in actual situations. Without real time application, facilitators would find it difficult to bridge concept and reality in meaningful ways, leaving them to present the conceptual tools at the theoretical level and suggesting application approaches without considering the challenges participants face in reality. This raises questions on the effectiveness of the facilitation because it is no different from participants reading the models directly from textbooks.

Content Neutrality

To be clear, facilitators do not teach participants how to be a more effective leader or team member. This is a job for trainers, educators and consultants. In the purest sense, facilitators are supposed to be process experts but content neutral. Process experts means that facilitators are skilled and proficient in facilitation principles, methods and conceptual tools. In the context of adventure learning, this also means the activities. Using information such as participant profiles, programme objective and deliverable, facilitators would pick the most suitable processes and design the experience around them.

Content neutrality means that facilitators do not take any positions, advocate for any particular causes nor contribute any content to the discussion. It is easier for facilitators to practice content neutrality in the context of process facilitation than adventure learning due to the nature of post activity debrief, where facilitators are often required to make clear the key learning points of each activity or direct the debrief towards a particular learning outcome. Nonetheless, the main idea of not teaching remains the same in any form of facilitation.

Content neutrality does not mean zero content knowledge. The difference is huge. Zero content knowledge means that facilitators are absolutely clueless about what is being said and discussed. While this will surely ensure content neutrality, it also means that facilitators have no idea if the discussion is moving towards the right direction or it is of any real value to the participants. While facilitators do not contribute to the content, content knowledge remains a key asset because it enables facilitators to be more effective. Facilitators uses their content knowledge to guide the participants towards more meaningful conversations, by asking participants the right questions, surface underlying assumptions and connecting different perspectives. And real-time leadership experience is the content, when the learning outcomes revolve around leadership and team dynamics.

Connecting the Dots

Suppose you have a third option -A Harvard Business School Professor who taught Leadership for fifteen years and is also an entrepreneur with fifteen years of experience leading and building an actual organization.

Would you choose him over the first two options? Many would.

Putting all the key points together, it is hard to dispute with the idea that facilitators are more effective when they have actual experiences with conceptual tools, because it gives them a better sense of reality, and thus, enabling them to draw on more practical and sensible application of the models.

To gain in-depth understanding and knowledge of conceptual tools, facilitators have to read, reflect on what they’ve read and analyze their reading by writing articles. There is no short cut to this. Top facilitators read to get to the top, and top facilitators read to stay at the top. Reflecting and writing on conceptual tools contributes massively to the learning process. Writing reviews and articles ensures a thorough understanding of the conceptual tools learned because it requires the facilitators to analyze the content, identify the key learning points, put them together in a coherent fashion and present their perspectives in a manner that is different from the original content, without losing the main essence. In short, writing increases the
breadth and depth of understanding.

As repeated many times here, understanding the tools at the conceptual level is not enough, no matter how in-depth one’s knowledge is. Understanding must be accompanied by real-time application, in order for facilitators to apply the tools effectively. Facilitators can claim to understand the practical aspects of conceptual tools very well because they have practiced them with thousand of participants represented by hundreds of organization. However, are the practices limited to team-based activities in an artificial, controlled environment? Where succeed or fail, it does not make any difference at all? By now, you should get the point.

To gain real-time experiences on conceptual tools, facilitators have to put themselves in actual leadership and management positions. Some facilitators are fortunate enough to lead an organization or two, others will be given opportunities to lead departments, while there will always be ad-hoc projects for the rest to lead. Wherever we are, there is surely someone or something waiting to be led. In short, the opportunities to lead are endless. This bias towards real time leadership experience, instead of merely experience as a team-member, is deliberate because the leadership position allows facilitators to relate to the tools at a higher level, which also translates to a more holistic analysis of the conceptual tools. Facilitators need not necessarily apply the conceptual tools consciously during their decision-making process, in other words, design their thought-process around a particular framework. Facilitators can also learn the practical aspects of the tools by reflecting their past experiences on the concepts.


There are many ways to learn the practical aspects of conceptual tools, but the one element that must always be present is real-time experiences.

Would it be a conflict of interest, for facilitators to both pursue deep knowledge in conceptual tools and take on real-time leadership responsibilities at the same time? The answer is categorically no. Instead of conflicting, they are as complementary as it can get. Do facilitators have enough time to do both? The answer is categorically yes. In fact, by doing both, it actually steepened the facilitators’ learning curve because they are learning in a more effective manner. Facilitators have to keep themselves abreast of the latest management and behavioral science thinking and so, they read to gain new knowledge. These conceptual tools require a context to ‘test’ their feasibility and this is where the facilitators’ leadership role comes in. As leaders themselves, facilitators should always be on the lookout for ways to develop their leadership and management skills. This is where the readings of conceptual models come in. Together, reading and application feeds each other to create a self-reinforcing loop.

The effectiveness of an adventure learning programme is determined not by the sum of learning points generated on the spot or the amount of talk that takes place, but by the amount of application that happened after or action taken. Effective facilitation therefore is measured by how well facilitators bridge the gap between learning and application or talk and action.

Quick Thoughts on Leadership and Management, Culture and Systems

Quick Thoughts on Leadership and Management, Culture and Systems
24/6/2014
An article by Joey Ng

Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner defined leadership as ‘The art of mobilizing others to want to struggle for shared aspirations’.

Peter Drucker defines management as ‘a multi-purpose organ that manages business and manages managers and manages workers and work’.

Culture – The values and behaviors that contribute to the unique social and psychological environment of an organization (businessdictionary.com).

Systems - A set of detailed methods, procedures and routines created to carry out a specific activity, perform a duty, or solve a problem (businessdictionary.com).

Leadership Vs and Management

In theory, leadership and management are different. ‘Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.’ – Peter Drucker. This explanation, although simplistic in every sense, is a good starting point to understand the differences between leadership and management. However, in reality, leadership and management are two sides of the same coin. They are complimentary of each other and they go hand in hand. Trying to slice them apart will only result in more problems than it solves.

Leadership without management is like going to a battle without a plan. Management without leadership is like going to a battle not knowing who the enemy is.

Culture and Systems

“Your first and foremost job as a leader is to take charge of your own energy and then help to orchestrate the energy of those around you.” ― Peter Drucker

Leaders spend vast amount of energy on culture. Leaders use their energy to model the way, to model the culture they intend to build and values they expect from the team. They are clear about their personal values and are committed to living them. They walk the talk to build credibility. With credibility, leaders lead more than they manage because people are willing to struggle with them. Modeling the way is both unconscious and deliberate.

“The most serious mistakes are not being made as a result of wrong answers. The true dangerous thing is asking the wrong question.” ― Peter Drucker

Leaders make spontaneous decisions that are guided by their values. Leaders should be judge by how they make decision, rather than the decision they made. It is ok to choose wrongly as long as their conscious are clear. Of course, leaders shouldn't make too many wrong choices. Leaders also need to deliberately create tangible opportunities for them to communicate, practice and reinforce what they preached. To remind the team of what they believe in and stand for.

To maintain the culture, leaders also focus their energy on the systems that drives it. Leaders use system to manage daily activities, instead of managing the activities directly. This gives them time for other important issues. This is not to say daily activities are not important. Collectively and over a period of time, when daily activities contradicts too often with the spirit of the culture, the system will collapse within itself and subsequently, the culture and finally, the team. However, time is finite. Focusing too much attention on day to day matters could lead to the leader losing sight of the bigger picture. There will be times when leaders are required to manage. When the time comes, leader must know what to manage, when to manage and how much to manage. This is why leadership and management are inseparable.

But culture is a living organism that requires constant attention and it is the leaders' duty to ensure that the culture remains healthy. When the culture shows signs of failing, it needs to be remedy immediately to prevent the culture from sliding into paralysis, then death. Leaders need to re-examine themselves first, ' Am I still modeling the way?', then revisit the systems. Sometimes, they need to be brave enough to admit that the system is no longer working and introduce wholesale changes, even if it means putting the team in very uncomfortable situations and forcing everyone to adapt to new behavioral norms.

Leaders decide on the culture they intend to create first, before picking and designing the systems around it. Like how we choose the theme of our living room before picking the furniture.

Systems shape behaviors.

Behaviors direct action.

Action drives results.

System is the infrastructure that enables the culture to flourish. Effective managers manage behaviors by working on the systems, instead of the addressing the behaviors directly. System is fair because it is transparent and it applies to everyone. But no system is perfect, like no person is perfect. Instead of trying to develop the perfect members, managers should use their energy to perfect the system, because a good system provides the foundation that frees members to focus on what is the most important – personal development.

Closing Tale

Tuckman explains that it is inevitable for team to 'storm' in its pursuit of high performance.

Members will pray, ‘I hope that I’m not on board when the storm comes.’

Managers recognize that the ‘storm’ is inevitable and try to ride it as best as they could when it happens. Raising a clenched fist at the troops, managers will go, 'if it is a storm that want, it is a storm we will give!'

Leaders will say, ‘Let’s have a system in place in order to sail through the storm.'

Team Building Activities - Kayaking to Kukup Island

Situation Awareness - A ‘Learnable’ Facilitation Skill

Situation Awareness – A ‘Learnable’ Facilitation Skill
29/5/2014
An article by Joey Ng

‘The Invisible Gorilla’ - Suppose you are asked to watch a video of two teams of basketball players passing balls around. One team is dressed in white while the other black. As you are watching, you are tasked to count the number of passes made by the players in white. Midway through the video, a man in a gorilla costume walks into the middle of the action, thumps his chest and slowly walks out the other side. Do you think you would notice the gorilla? It seems silly to ask this question because the answer is obviously “yes”.

However, when this experiment was conducted at Harvard University several years ago, more than half the participants failed to notice the gorilla. They were so focused on counting the passes that they completely missed the chest-thumping ape. This study, titled ‘The Invisible Gorilla’ by psychologists Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons, is one of the most best-known experiments and it shows that our attention has a capacity limit – we can only consciously read and process a limited amount of information at any one time.

At any given moment, facilitators are exposed to vast amount of sensory information, each vying for his attention. It is humanly impossible to process every bit of information at the same time due to the limited mental bandwidth we operate with. Any attempt to consciously stretch this bandwidth will only result in exhausting our mental state and lowering our sense of awareness. Try focusing on every object in the space you are at right now for 60 seconds. What was it like? How did you feel? I bet once the 60 seconds are up, your mind would immediately switch to a ‘break’ mode and go blank for a few moments.

To make up for this inherent shortcoming, facilitators need to operate with a high level of Situation Awareness (SA). SA is the ability to recognize, process and comprehend important elements of information in a given situation. Dr. Mica Endsley, recognized by many as a pioneer and leader in the study and application of SA, defined it as:

‘…the Perception of the Elements in the Environment within a Volume of Time and Space, the Comprehension of their Meaning, and the Projection of their Status in the Near Future.’

In simpler terms, it means making sense of the current situation and mentally mapping out cause-and-effect relationships.

SA is the radar that operates at the subconsciously level, constantly scanning the surroundings for abnormalities and providing updates to our mental model. Like an air-traffic control tower radar that is continuously feeding the traffic controllers with information, it identifies aircrafts that are flying too fast or heading towards the wrong runway while at the same time, provides the controllers with the most updated view of the air space.

Aside from detecting abnormalities, SA is also allows facilitators to capture information that are subtle yet significant. While a facilitator cannot control the amount of sensory elements present, he can however determine the types of elements to focus on. The more acute his SA is, the more sensitive he will be to his surroundings and this places him in a better position to anticipate changes and introduce timely intervention.

High level of SA enables facilitators to:

1. Maintain a high level of safety.
   
   Prevention is better than cure. Having a high SA would lead to a heighten sense of anticipation. Because facilitators are able to project the plausible consequences of the current situation, this gives them that extra second to introduce preventive measures or eliminates threats before they turned into
   actual risks.
2. Identify opportunities to enhance the learning experience.
   
   Seeing things that others do not is one of the hallmark of effective facilitation. While most would focus on actions that are at the heart of the activity, seldom would participants reflect on the minor incidents - incidences that come as quickly as they go. Part of SA is about being sensitive to these minor, and to
   many, insignificant incidences. Insightful learning, the kind that people do not recognize at first but seems so apparent when pointed out, are created when facilitators are able to spot these opportunities and create meaning off them.
3. Adjust delivery style.
   
   Another hallmark of effective facilitation is the facilitator’s ability to adjust his delivery style. Once in a while, concerned and discomforted participants will question the facilitators’ style of delivery, but these are exceptions to the rule. In the Asian context, out of respect to the facilitators, most participants
   tend to keep to themselves and go with the flow. Not knowing what participants are truly feeling is a major stumbling block because the facilitator might be thinking he is doing the ‘right’ thing and would continue doing so. By the time participants surface their concerns, it might already be too late
   because the damage is done. Two common cases are; 1) When the facilitator is being too strict with the rules. 2) When the facilitator uses languages that some participants are uncomfortable with. For example, jokes on sexual orientation might not fit well with participants who are strong believer of the
   LGBT social movement.
   
   However, when facilitators are able to detect signs of discomfort, or feel a sense of passive aggressiveness from the participants early, they can make the necessary adjustments to their delivery before more damages are done.
4. Making better decisions, spontaneously.
   
   Facilitators make spontaneous decisions all the time because no matter how well the programmes are designed and planned, it is not possible to factor in every possible variable. Seasoned facilitators have countless tales of curveball anecdotes. In order to make better and more informed snap decisions to
   respond to changing and emerging patterns, facilitators need to stay two steps ahead of the situation. For example, knowing what to do the moment grey clouds are spotted or how to adjust the programme in the event of a delay in catering services.

Here is the good news - SA is not an inborn ability that is bestowed to a lucky few. SA is an ability that facilitators can work on and be better at, it is a sense that can be trained, like a highly trained nurse who can read the faintest of pulse or a skilled wine sommelier who can give a full description with a single sip. Increased exposure and field time is widely acknowledged as key pillars in building up one’s SA. In a series
of studies conducted by researcher Gary Klein on how experts in various fields make spontaneous decision in urgent situations, he found out that these individuals are able to tap on the wealth of experiences they have amassed over years of practice and understanding. One of the better-known case studies is about a seasoned fire fighter, who made the decision to pull his team out of a burning building moment before it
collapsed, though there were no obvious signs of any structural damage. In an interview later, the fire fighter said he felt a hunch and something in his mind told him that the building was going to give way soon, and that made him pulled his team out.

Although experience is key to the development of SA, paradoxically, experience is also SA biggest enemy because the more experienced a facilitator is, the more likely he will fall into a routine mindset, let his senses down and allow complacency to sip in. This transition from experience to complacency is best explained through the “conscious competence” framework:

1. Unconscious incompetence

A rookie facilitator does not recognize SA as an important feature and might deny the usefulness of the skill. The facilitator must recognize his own incompetence and the value of SA before moving on to the next stage.

2. Conscious incompetence

The training facilitator now knows what SA is and acknowledges that it is a skill he
lacks. He makes effort to work on his SA.

3. Conscious competence

The trained facilitator now understands how to apply SA, but he needs to concentrate and think in order to use it effectively. Without thorough cognitive effort, his SA might not be as reliable. It is only through constant practice would his SA move to the next stage.

4. Unconscious competence

The seasoned facilitator has had so much practice that SA has entered the unconscious part of the brain and it has become "second nature". As a result, he no longer needs to consciously think about applying SA.

5. Complacency

Once SA operates at the subconscious level, the seasoned facilitator might missed the natural ‘check and balance’ system that comes with conscious thinking, thus, opening up opportunities for the occasional lapse in attention.

Inexperience facilitator requires field time and practice to sharpen their SA, seasoned practitioners too need to remind themselves on the trappings of complacency. Below is a list of techniques rookie facilitator can work on to improve their SA and seasoned practitioners can adopt to guard against complacency.

1. Active involvement - SA is not a passive process, it does not just come on to the facilitator. For SA to function effectively, one has to play an active role and be with the situation. This means the facilitator has to be mentally present, consciously making sense of the events that are taking place around him.
   Active involvement requires the facilitator to stay engage with the process and be as involved as the participants through the experience.
2. Setting goals - Professor Kip Smith and Dr. Peter Hancock, prominently researchers in the field of aviation and human behavior in dynamic situations, defined SA as ‘adaptive, externally directed consciousnesses. They see SA as an intentional behavior that is directed towards the goal. In other words, we assess what we set out to assess. Our SA is most sensitive towards the objectives we set because our focus is primarily on them.
   
   Setting goals will help funnel our attention towards key areas. Clearly defined goals serve as both guide and reminder to the facilitator on what to look out for. Because human’s attention is limited and easily distracted, the way in which our attention is deployed will determine what is read. Before an activity commences, facilitators should be clear on where to focus their attention on, for example, to capture specific learning opportunities and/or to mitigate risk at a precise point. These points for attention could also be a specific time, juncture, person, situation, reaction or conversation.
   
3. Delegate responsibilities to co-facilitators or participants – There will be occasions where there are simply too many things taking place at the same time. In such instances, a facilitator can either split the area of focus with his co-facilitator (one concentrate on safety while another concentrate on learning
   moments) or delegate secondary roles to the participants, such as ‘Safety Officer’.
   
4. Expose to a variety of experiences – Facilitators who limit themselves to a small number of programme types will develop very sharp sense of SA but only in environments they are extremely familiar with. Conversely, facilitators who expose themselves to a wider range of experiences will develop wellrounded SA that can be applied effectively across various situations. For experience facilitators, exposing themselves to fresh challenges is one of the best way to guard against complacency because it reminds them that learning is an on-going process and that no facilitator can ever claim to have enough SA.

SA serves two fundamental purposes. Firstly, it enables facilitators to maintain a high level of safety. No facilitator ever plans for things to go wrong. The reality is, no matter how well the programmes are designed and how clear our instructions to the participations are, accidents are unavoidable. Accidences are after all, a matter of statistics. It is at these points where the facilitator’s foresight, speed of reaction and judgment makes all the differences and SA is central to this process. Secondly, SA supports a higher standard of learning. It is a facilitator’s ability to spot learning moments that are otherwise oblivious to everyone, and make sense of it that would create the most value to the learning process. It is here where facilitators can stimulate the deepest reflection amongst the team because it examines the underlying forces that drove the participants’ behaviors. Behaviors so instinctive that is invisible to most, but so apparent once they are pointer out. Just like the gorilla in the video.

“people will focus on procedures and not notice anything that isn't just part of the procedures”

― Daniel Simons, author of ‘The Invisible Gorilla’