Dear everyone,
While I am preparing a training course focused on creative and engaged facilitation skills called “FaciliCraft” coming up in the Netherlands in 10 days, I asked myself: what do I think that makes a facilitator an engaging and creative one. Here are my thoughts:
As a facilitator, you guide the process of a group. You are focused on the process, more than the content. To allow the best outcomes of the process, using engaging and creative tools is for me essential. It gives space for the participants to fully participate in the activity, to increase ownership by the participants and they just don’t get bored too! How to do this: I like to use 4Mat approach in the sessions. This includes the following stages: engage - share - practice - perform. Participants in the group first get connected to the topic you facilitate (how does it relate to you?), what can we share about the topic (either from the group, theories, methods, etc.), then to test the methods in the safe space of the activity and finally reflect on how one can use this method in the own context. That is for me a good way to engage participants fully in an activity. Furthermore, these 4 steps also allows different learners (personal connection, theorists, practicioners and the applyers) in the activity as you tackle all their preferred learning procedures.
Engaged means for me also that you focus on what the learner/participants needs. It is not up to me as a facilitator to decide that, but I will keep the learning goals of the participant central, as they choose to participate in your activity. What to do if one wants to go fully into a totally different subject? Well, perhaps one here can write a blog about that ;)
Finally, the applicability increases engagement too: the activity you facilitate is not just for the here and now, but it is to prepare the participants for their own future. How could they make use of it and how can their target group benefit from that. Never underestimate this part of facilitation and allow enough time for this!
Facilitors need to be active listeners, flexible, good communicators, using different energies and emotions (e.g., being calm when necessary, or more uplifting when the group requires that) and applying empathy in their activities, among many other skills too.
Then what about creativity? This makes it so much less boring and so much more fun! And it is a way to engage the participants more too. I am talking about using drawing, posters, music in your sessions and including creative tools that the participants can use in the activity, such as theatre, still images, poems, roleplays, singing, Lego, etc. instead of a presentation of the outcomes of an activity or discussion. My experience in general when someone says “I am not creative!”: don’t underestimate yourself and don’t be to critical. Be open and have a “yes, and...” approach when joining in a creative activity. Curious to hear them afterwards :)
