Facilitation Skills

Citation

Hannabuss, S. (1999), "Facilitation Skills", Library Review, Vol. 48 No. 8, pp. 413-424. https://doi.org/10.1108/lr.1999.48.8.413.6

This is a good book for trainers and for managers involved in team‐building. IPD have hit a winning streak recently and this work is no exception. The authors are directors of Time for People Ltd, a personnel and training consultancy, and previous contributions to the series include their useful Managing Information Systems and Statistics, Project Management and Training Needs Analysis. Since everyone talks of facilitation nowadays, it is important for trainers to know what it means, and this book tells them. It is alert to the learning, interpersonal and managerial aspects of the subject, it is up to date, and it has got plenty of practical examples for training programmes, clearly based on the authors’ own applied experience.

A useful summary of the whole book comes at the start, good for busy managers. A contrast is made between McGregor’s Theory X (employees need to be directed) and Theory Y (employees should be empowered), the second position being very much where facilitation most beneficially applies. Facilitation “maximises the contribution of everyone in the group or team and seeks win‐win consensus solutions”. Lots of factors work against it – fears of losing control, time, risk, remaining neutral – but the positive outcomes from effective facilitation (consensus, ownership, rapport, holistic agreement, improved information, active listening) help to make the modern learning organisation work. The book is full of practical advice about how to work with groups, how to listen and challenge and clarify, how to use the transactional analysis parent‐child‐adult roles (always aim at the straightforward purposeful style of the “adult” win‐win‐role), how to own learning outcomes through learning contracts, what objectives to set and agree on. There is a section for the trainer to evaluate him/herself in terms of initiating, reacting, clarifying and process behaviours. Appendices remind trainers of fishbone and force‐field approaches, all widely and successfully used in training. So, a good and useful book, combining the best of training, teaching and learning, and counselling approaches in a very practical way. Get it and use it!Too much training is patronisingly directive, too much so‐called training describes itself inaccurately as facilitative.