Transforming through the learning space
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Training Disasters-II Sanjiv narang,Director:Innovation Systems Consulting Training disasters are excruciatingly painful memories for trainers. However, they do wonders for the competence development and the personality depth of the trainer. The experience cannot be substituted by vicarious learning. A slight tweaking of the process; a slight shift of perception; a little more flexibility; a little more openness to observation and analysis are the positive fallouts of any such experience. Let’s analyze another such case and cull out, what we can learn from it. A leading organization (A), wanted to develop a leadership model. So, after interaction with the consultant, the organization decided to identify the parameters of leadership. A task force was put together to identify the process. An interactive facilitation session involving key decision makers was conceptualized. Key decision makers were invited to participate in the “Facilitation session”. The session started with the C.E.O address. The C.E.O stated that different organizations require different kinds of leadership styles and that in spite of accepted understanding of leadership styles, the authoritative style was clearly successful in enforcing the organization focused decisions. The facilitator initiated the discussion by presenting a few leadership models. These were greeted by a great deal of skepticism by the participants. It seemed that since the participants were successful practitioners, they had a natural disdain for ‘models & concepts’. Several aggressive and argumentative discussions broke out, among the participants and even the participants and the facilitator. It seemed that there was a dominant inclination towards aggression and scoring points. The leadership parameters began to evolve. When the screen became full of leadership parameters, a restiveness seemed to set in among the participants. There was a ‘feeling of discomfort’ in the air. The outcomes on the screen were obvious and no progress towards clarity appeared to be taking place. The session was called off midway. What happened? Was the facilitator at fault? Were the participants too egoistic to be participants for such a session? Did the C.E.O blunder by creating a bias at the beginning of the session towards a particular leadership success? These are some of the questions we need to answer. From this analysis let’s extract learning points in order to reduce the probability of such disasters. Adequate unfreezing exercises: The first lacuna in the phenomenon was the facilitation process. The facilitator launched into the session without adequate unfreezing exercises. The number of unfreezing exercises required is directly proportional to the seniority and judgemental level of participants. The facilitator deployed only one, “unfreezing exercise”. From a facilitator’s point of view, it sometimes seems that unfreezing exercises are a waste of time. They do not catalyze any competence development and no visible progress is made. Such thinking is error prone and more often than not, when the outcome is negative, the facilitator tends to blame the maturity level of the participants. Unfreezing exercises do a great job of creating a comfort zone around the participants so that they become open to learning. No amount of excellence in preparation and teaching is going to substitute for a “lack of learning openness”. The creation of an open, learning, comfortable and interesting environment is an essential prerequisite to a ‘value creating’ facilitation session or a competence development workshop. Whenever new perception gets created, value gets added. This is a critical criterion for selecting unfreezing exercises. When the CEO is sitting in the facilitation session, unfreezing exercises may seem to be waste of time and the facilitator may feel compelled to get on with the task. This instinct needs to be suppressed and the facilitation process should start with unfreezing without any short circuiting. Alignment of participants to the Facilitation process : The facilitator did not map out the outcomes of the session, the input required from the participants, the role they were expected to play and the facilitation process. The result was that the participants were thinking and acting at cross-purposes to one another, the focus of the session and the facilitator’s objectives. What the participants were expecting and what the facilitator had in mind were different. Thus, the failure was bound to happen. Credibility of the facilitator : The credibility of the facilitator is a critical ingredient of having a successful facilitation session. I recently read in the paper that a front running FMCG Company paid millions to a consultancy to tell them that the promoters should let the professionals run the company. Now, anybody would have told them that. The difference is that of credibility and conviction. Where ever the audience consists of “accomplished practitioners”, credibility of the facilitator in terms of “action” rather than “theory” is critical. Practitioners generally have a disdain for theory. Even in the Shakespear’s play, “Othello”, ‘Iago’ ,one of the most celebrated villains comments about the 2nd in command to Othello. “He is but a theoretician”. So this antagonism between the two sections has existed for a long time. The facilitator would have established credibility, starting from his introduction of himself. An introduction consisting of work with strong brand names, novel areas of work and achievements tends to trigger credibility. This need to be followed up with “Hardboiled” data related to any conceptual model initiated. There needs to an,” a-ha “effect achieved and that also on the basis of valid and reliable data. If this aligns to any experience of any participant, it leads to a nodding head which has substantial symbolic value indicating the movement of the facilitation session. Facilitation Plan : The facilitation plan is more than simply assigning the time to the activities envisaged in the session. The critical question to be answered is “what activity will have what impact on the participants?” Hence, where should it be placed in the value chain”? A lot of facilitators make the following mistake. In a facilitator’s words, “I have scheduled a value adding exercise for the evening, If I do it now, what will I do in the evening?” The facilitator would do it in the evening provided the participants don’t throw him/her out by then. However, if that is not the case, the facilitator should choose to do the most value adding activities first. The visibility of “Value adds” can do wonders for the acceptability of the facilitator and the process. Subsequently, even if some activities are weak, they have a high probability of going through, without serious resistance. |
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