Key takeaways:

Created by ChatpGPT

• Facilitation, training, and teaching are not the same
  
  Each has distinct goals and methods—facilitation is about guiding a group process, training focuses on skill and behaviour development, and teaching often centres on knowledge transfer. Knowing the difference helps choose the right approach for the right context.
  
  
• Silence is powerful—use it well
  
  One of the biggest mistakes facilitators make is rushing to fill silence. Giving learners space to think and respond is crucial for engagement and depth.
  
  
• Learning transfer starts before the session
  
  Designing for transfer isn’t just a post-session activity. It begins with identifying potential barriers, embedding active practice (not just active learning), and building in time for planning and reflection.
  
  
• Modality matters less than method
  
  Whether in-person or virtual, what matters most is how learning is designed and facilitated. Great design and delivery can make almost any format effective.
  
  
• Great facilitation is a skill—not a job title
  
  Being able to flex between modes, challenge constructively, and make learning ‘easy’ takes practice, intention, and continuous development. Good facilitators aren’t born—they’re built.

Podcast summary:

Created by ChatpGPT

This episode dives deep into what it really means to deliver effective learning, with a particular focus on the distinctions—and overlaps—between teaching, training, and facilitation. The episode opens the discussion by exploring whether these labels matter, and why it’s important for learning professionals to be clear about the role they’re playing.

Kirsty Lewis, Founder of School of Facilitation, sets the stage by explaining that teaching often involves a top-down transfer of knowledge and is more typical in academic or youth contexts. In contrast, training is about upskilling through subject matter expertise, while facilitation is the art of guiding a group through a process without necessarily being the expert. Confusing these can mislead learners and dilute impact.

Erica Farmer, Co-Founder of Quantum Rise Talent Group, builds on this by emphasising the different styles of facilitation—from purely question-led to more hybrid approaches that blend training and facilitation. She points out that skilled facilitators can drive outcomes by flexing their style and focusing on behaviours, not just content.

Andy McConville, Leadership Development Manager at ResQ, reflects on how facilitators must navigate multiple roles—sometimes teaching, sometimes training, and at other times stepping back entirely. He champions adaptability and knowing when to shift gears depending on group needs and session objectives.

The discussion then turns to common mistakes. Colin Smith, Founding Partner of Cognitive Union, warns against slipping into a “sage on the stage” mindset. He advocates for drawing insights from participants rather than positioning oneself as the sole authority. Kirsty Lewis and Jo Cook both note that fear of silence is a huge barrier—new facilitators often rush to speak instead of giving learners the time they need to think.

Melanie Martinelli, CEO of the Institute for Transfer Effectiveness, highlights how learning transfer is often treated as an afterthought, when it should actually be baked into the design from the beginning. She differentiates between “active learning” (e.g. discussions) and “active practice” (e.g. doing the task itself), the latter being essential for real-world application.

The podcast also explores how different delivery formats affect facilitation. Erica Farmer champions blended learning and using technology—including generative AI tools like ChatGPT—as a co-facilitator, enabling more personalised and scalable support. Melanie Martinelli agrees, noting that modality affects how transfer levers play out but shouldn’t dictate design.

Tina Seth, Head of UK Development at Dods Training, stresses the need to avoid over-scripting and instead design for responsiveness and engagement. Knowing your audience, she says, is key—and that includes accommodating cultural and language differences.

The episode wraps up with reflections on what the guests love (and sometimes hate) about facilitation. From lightbulb moments to watching learners overcome challenges, everyone agrees: great facilitation is a powerful, nuanced skill that takes time, intention, and practice to master.

Links from the podcast:

Will Thalheimer’s research paper “Does eLearning Work?”

SOFest – School of Facilitation learning festival in June 2025

Kirsty’s SOFest blogs

HR Unconference from Fiona McBride

Facilitation Shindigs from Julie Drybrough

Thanks to ⁠TechSmith⁠ for providing Camtasia and Audiate for editing

Speakers:

1. Kirsty Lewis
2. Colin Smith
3. Melanie Martinelli
4. Erica Farmer
5. Tina Seth
6. Andy McConville
7. Jo Cook

Transcript:

Created by TechSmith Audiate

Jo Cook: Today’s podcast is all about the delivery of a learning intervention. For anyone a bit newer to the world of L&D I’m going to start at the beginning, and ask our guests about the differences between teaching, training and facilitation, and if that even matters.

First up is School of Facilitation founder, Kirsty Lewis:

Kirsty Lewis: It definitely matters. Each of those three roles have very different pedagogy is that right and styles. So for me someone who is a teacher comes with maybe an attitude of talking at and showing and having that element of knowledge that they’re then putting back out into the room. So and I often think teaching can happen with younger people.

Whereas training and facilitation I would be seeking to happen definitely for adults. I think teaching sometimes assumes people do not know anything about the subject matter. Then you come to being a trainer or a facilitator. I think it’s down to a trainer is someone who is either helping people to upskill, so skills, knowledge or behaviour, and a facilitator is helping a group get from a to b, a to z in a process or either come up with new ideas, or come to a place of consensus, consensus and agreement. A facilitator makes things easy and they are not a subject matter expert, whereas a trainer is definitely a subject matter expert and that matters because people call themselves a facilitator when they’re actually training, and I think that can be really misleading. I think people are facilitative trainers.

Jo Cook: I pretty much agree with what Kirsty is saying – that teaching is a specific approach, often used in a more academic setting or with a younger audience. It certainly focuses more on the knowledge of a subject area, whereas training I see as being much more practical.

Erica Farmer is Co-Founder of Quantum Rise Talent Group and chips in her thoughts:

Erica Farmer: So I know there’s different styles of facilitation; there’s facilitation where you’re purely asking questions. There’s kind of the training facilitation which we employ in person and virtually. Facilitation, as long as you’ve got skill to make easier through asking the right questions consolidating the right knowledge dealing with the right behaviours in the moment, making sure you can get to those learning outcomes that you’ve promised and you need to, and then assessing people’s capability and seeing the, the journey they’ve been on, that is the real win.

Jo Cook: Andy McConville is Leadership Development Manager at ResQ and is a finalist for the UK National Contact Centre Awards Trainer of the Year. He reflects on this question too:

Andy McConville: So when I first got the opportunity to, develop my own facilitators and my own facilitation skills workshop I got a little bit obsessed with this question. I looked at various different definitions and and there were similarities and and often contradictions. So I think it’s important for anyone that’s stepping into this world to to be a facilitator or a trainer or however they want to kind of look at their own label for want of a better word is that yeah there are differences in picking the one that means the most to you is probably most important.

And the reason why I say that is from from my point of view I would say a good facilitator can step into different modes of delivery so they can present, that can step into training something linear when there’s a knowledge gap, they can demonstrate skills they can coach skills. But a facilitator can also take a step back and let a group work and work within itself. And know when to step in know, when to challenge assumptions know when to move the session forward, when an objective is met and then he can transition into the next phase of the delivery. So it’s important but not something to obsess over and it’s for me it it’s what’s important to you and what works for you so that you can step into those different modes.

Jo Cook: Really great point Andy about the flexibility. At one point in my career I was an IT Trainer – I would have a bit of the session where I was teaching something, but also then where we would have various exercises and activities for everyone to practice, which was the training element.

My personal preference these days is definitely the facilitation end – whilst I love the skills-development angle of training, looking more at the group discussion, collaboration, activities and drawing things out from the group I think is a more experiential and rewarding way of running a formal learning intervention.

This podcast is going to focus on the interactive and engaging training or facilitation end of the spectrum, rather than the lecture or presentation approach. I definitely want to emphasise that none of these approaches or labels are bad or wrong. They’re just different, and I often say it’s about using the right tool for the job. Andy continues thinking about the flexing part of our role:

Andy McConville: So it is quite a broad question so I’m gonna cheat a little bit and and start it by just saying the free as accidental facilitators. What I mean by that is that sometimes when you deliver in a session you’re the lead of a session…somebody in the group might pick up a point, ask some questions, pull some more responses in from the audience, create that output and then and then move the session forward. So they have accidentally facilitated and had moved the the session forward with an outcome that allows you to transition to the next part of the delivery.

Lots of people come to me and say I couldn’t do what you do I couldn’t stand up with feet and and and kind of hold a room and and and do all of that good stuff that we do is facilitators. And I’d love to say it’s dark arts and it and it’s you know it is just you know all natural talent in in in not everyone can learn it but they can it’s a skill. So if you’ve ever been in a meeting and you’ve taken different views in the meeting you’ve summarised those views and formulated an action plan on the back of in a way forward and to follow-up, you facilitate a discussion that’s linked to an action plan and then you followed up on that, you you have facilitated that session whether you knew it or not or not is is is the is the the debate there isn’t it. But if you didn’t know you were doing it then you are an accidental facilitator so. It’s times when when I’ve, you know…given that group the the status of doing it for themselves even if they didn’t know they were doing it.

Jo Cook: Building on this distinction of the different types of delivery role, I asked Colin Smith, Founding Partner of Cognitive Union, for an example of something he thought that can go wrong:

Colin Smith: I think the biggest killer mistake that trainers and facilitators make that can really impact on the experience for participants is they believe that they have to be some sort of authoritative professor teacher kind of role. So they they tell participants the information that they’re trying to get across as if it’s a definitive. Whereas I think a more facilitative approach, drawing the information out of the group, out of the participants, is is a much more effective way to land whatever it is that you wanna land without having this sort of you end up being, like you’re taking a position as superior as opposed to having a warmth and, and encouraging the participants to… to share their expertise and and using that facilitating to enable that to teach everyone.

Jo Cook: And Kirsty has some other examples for us to avoid!

Kirsty Lewis: I think it probably depends on where people are at in their own journey as being a trainer or a facilitator so I’m gonna take an example from someone maybe new to world, and some of us who are more experienced.

New to world I think the one massive mistake that both trainers and facilitators make is……… not keeping silent. It’s, I hear it time and again, people ask a question, or they think they ask a question they sometimes ask a closed question and then no one gives them a response. Well they think no one’s giving them a response because people are actually thinking about what to say and suddenly the facilitator starts to talk the trainer starts to talk and fill in the gaps in the silence. So that’s one big mistake I see happen.

I think another one for us more experienced facilitators and trainers is probably I believe that we have to change up everything that we do each time we run a workshop and sometimes move away from some really good foundational practices and behaviours because they want to do something different because it engages their brains, but not necessarily useful for the participants and the learners.

Jo Cook: Some great points here Kirsty! When I’m helping virtual trainers, one of their biggest challenges is holding the silence whilst live online. It feels even more uncomfortable than in-person. I remind them to check the time, their notes, take a breath, have a sip of water, and usually someone has responded. It’s giving people time to think about the question, whether they want to respond, and actually having time to do so – whether that’s clicking unmute or learning forwards to check no one else is speaking in the physical room.

The issue of changing things up is challenging – as facilitators we do need to be interested in the session ourselves, but if something is working we absolutely shouldn’t change it just for the sake of it. We have to remember that our participants don’t know the plan, so it’s fresh for them even if not for us.

The flip side of this, and it’s edging into design as well as delivery, is about cutting content and perhaps the story or example you want to tell. I hate having to edit my favourite story or teach section about a topic, but we have to be objective in the interests of what’s best for the learning and for those performance outcomes, and often that’s slashing at your content! Kirsty continues with a great point about our role, especially when we are focusing more on facilitation:

Kirsty Lewis: I think another killer mistake that many of us can make in in training and facilitating is that we wanna make everything nice and comfortable for the group. We want to be liked and therefore we don’t ask maybe the killer question. We don’t insert ourselves at certain points in a conversation we let it flow and go on for too long. We don’t challenge and it is I didn’t think that sometimes that’s our role we have to be the person that asks the difficult question and puts ourselves out there.

Jo Cook: Well said. We are going to turn to learning transfer in our sessions now. Melanie Martinelli is the CEO of the Institute for Transfer Effectiveness and highlights some of the training mistakes that she sees.

Melanie Martinelli: One thing I do see people often do is is that actually we think about transfer only after the session. Whereas actually if you really want transfer to happen, transfer should ideally start before. And what I mean by that is ideally we kinda start analysing or diagnosing possible transfer barriers ahead of a learning intervention so we can kind of plan for it, because the training the transfer barriers could be different from project to project.

The other thing which is maybe a little bit more closely really connected to the actual training and facilitation is the mistake of confusing active learning with active practice. One key lever of transfer is active practice. And I hear a lot of people tell me ‘oh yeah, yeah we do a lot of that’. Then I ask ‘So what do you do?’ And they go ‘Oh you know we have all these group discussions and interactive activities…’ Well, don’t get me wrong, that’s great. But that’s active learning. For transfer to happen we actually also need active practice which means give people really the opportunity to practice in the session what they are supposed to do afterwards.

A challenge is with regard to transfer planning. I think we’ve probably all been there I know I have you know program is pretty full of content you’re kinda slowly starting to run out of time what do you do, you cut the action planning/transfer planning short, telling people well you know here’s a nice template, unfortunately we’re kinda running out of time but why don’t you kinda sit down a moment tomorrow to review everything and do your planning? Well that’s kinda game over because if people don’t have time in the session to plan their next steps, there’s a very big risk that they’re never gonna plan those next steps because after the training they’ll come back super busy loads of emails waiting for them and yeah probably not gonna happen.

Jo Cook: I asked Melanie a bit more about this, as it can be difficult to facilitate sessions sometimes when perhaps decision makers don’t really get the nuance of what we do.

Melanie Martinelli: What I kinda do hate is when, but that’s again then just coming back to setting expectations where with you know the stakeholders early on, is when you’re not given enough time to kinda do what you wanna do… or when you realise even though you’ve done a very solid needs analysis, that somehow last minute they kind of for whatever reason change the participants and then of course what you prepared isn’t actually as relevant for them. That’s the kind of stuff.

Or when people are just not given the actual time to attend sessions and they aren’t really given the opportunity to be fully present. I think that’s something yeah that I think makes facilitation just so much harder and especially it makes it so much harder to do it in a meaningful way that supports transfer.

Jo Cook: Colin is definitely on the same page when it comes to performance!

Colin Smith: There’s a couple of things that I’d I’d like stakeholders to know around kind of facilitation of learning or or of sessions. First one is please can we measure the impact not just the satisfaction. So I might be obsessive about outcomes – application – impact in the real world as a result of the things that they’ve learned I that’s the thing one of the things that I really focus on what’s the purpose of the session and what do I want them to do afterwards and how do I expect that to impact? But often the stakeholders will nod and go yes. And then when it comes to it we get a happy sheet at the end. So that’s the first thing like let’s actually work out how to measure the impact of the learning or the facilitated session so that action actually happens and so we get a feedback loop from it.

The second thing I’d say is, I think a good facilitator or a bad one can make all the difference and I, I this is gonna sound harsh but, I think really good ones are pretty rare. Like it’s a skill, and and there aren’t that many training programs to teach excellent facilitation skills, but I think an excellent facilitator makes a massive difference to outcomes.

Jo Cook: Speaking of making a difference, what about when we look at the modality of delivery and perhaps some of the technology tools available – how does this affect the engagement, the performance outcomes and the experience for the facilitator too? Erica shares her thoughts on this question.

Erica Farmer: Some of the best approaches of facilitation is in partnership with learning technology. So I know there’s some great kind of platforms enable you to do synchronous and asynchronous facilitation so couple live, training whether that’s online or in person, with asynchronous so kind of a self-work that could work quite nice so you’re facilitating not just learning but the attendee’s own experience. But taking that to the next level using artificial intelligence and ChatGPT particularly in particular to have the learner facilitate their own learning either through things like using personas.

So role play for example is a really good example. It’s you gotta get your head around as a trainer facilitation is more than just talking, asking questions, setting activities, challenging, picking up verbal non-verbal the verbal of yourself is a trainer facilitation is about facilitating. The learning experience and the word facilitation actually comes from the French to make easy facilitate. So we need to be making easy the learning process for our learners. At the moment it kind of blows people’s minds a little bit when you say you could use chat GPT or Microsoft co-pilot or any kind of artificial intelligence system, as a facilitator or a co tutor giving it the persona of a teacher or an L&D facilitator trainer to work with an learner to build skills such as having difficult conversations or, project management where you need to pitch to a budget holder, the ROI other projects that’s behind schedule for example or whatever the context might be to using generative artificial intelligence the co-facilitator as a way of generating questions, as a way of setting tasks for the learner not only just to build experience and skills of the topic that they’re studying, but also those digital skills. I think is the way forward certainly for the next twelve to eighteen months.

And it’s the skill of the facilitator…to be able to apply the context and the learners’ environment to the learning and not use it as something to alienate. So we’re seeing a bit of a pinging back to in person learning, since the pandemic, which is great you know there’s there’s benefits with all sorts of different modalities. But I don’t think we should close down the idea of great learning in the online classroom in the virtual webinar online session whatever it is that you’re running, because you can facilitate skills and practice, just as well online as you can in the classroom. And I’m not just talking about breakout rooms I’m talking about all sorts of different activities and like anything any great learning session it’s the design that’s the foundation of that really. So I don’t think facilitation in any kind of modality or context will fly unless it’s the skill of the facilitator that’s really underpinning it really in the design and the delivery.

Jo Cook: Thanks Erica, I totally agree about the skill of the facilitator, which Colin picked up on earlier too. Erica and I have very similar approaches and opinions about virtual classroom delivery. A lot of people’s experiences have been opened up since Covid when it was forced upon us, and this has both positive and negative impacts.

On the positive side, technology became more available, it got developed more quickly and has a lot more accessibility elements, such as live captions and language translation. However the negative impact, just as with the e-learning boom in the early 2000s, is that everyone with PowerPoint and a free account can share and talk at you. So whilst virtual is often included in learning interventions much more than five years ago, I also hear a lot of people saying that virtual isn’t good for certain types of session. Of course, there’s truth to that, but actually, it’s capable of probably 90% of what we do face to face, it’s just that you need the right tech, the right design and the right facilitation. Melanie continued this thought about virtual, but also about physical locations too.

Melanie Martinelli: It doesn’t really matter the modality the location doesn’t really matter when it comes to transfer because the levers remain the same the factors impacting transfer remain the same. But I do think the modality of the location can have an impact on how some of those levers play out. So for example you know if you are virtual the way you’re gonna set up or have to set up a budding let’s say a peer support system is gonna be very different from the way you would set that up maybe in a face-to-face environment. So I think you know some of that ask some of those aspects can get impacted.

The other thing that can have an impact which I actually in a positive way is especially when we do blended learning journeys where we have different modules spread over you know a slightly longer duration that can actually offer a lot of opportunities to make transfer happen because you can provide people with little transfer tasks, assignments, pier support assignments for example, in between sessions, providing them the opportunity to start applying what they’ve learned whereas when you have for example just a one day or two day face-to-face, you need to kinda think about that in a very different way so I think especially the kind of more blended learning journeys actually more easily offer opportunities to build transfer activities into it.

Jo Cook: Ah Melanie this is one of the things I love about using virtual sessions much more. Yes, there is absolutely, totally and utterly a time for people to come physically together, and that should be used for all the amazing things that an in-person event is great at. With virtual and other digital support options blended together, it’s much easier, and better, to have shorter sessions spaced out.

Will Thalheimer has a research paper that looks at different learning modalities and the research behind them. One of the key take aways from the “Does eLearning Work?” paper is this:

“What matters, in terms of learning effectiveness, is NOT the learning modality (elearning vs. classroom); it’s the learning methods that matter, including such factors as realistic practice, spaced repetitions, real-world contexts, and feedback.”

Will’s paper goes on to remind us not to teach to debunked methods, like learning styles, or jump on so-called brain science fads, but to use the researched and evidence-based methods and not make assumptions as to which delivery method is best.

Let’s take this now from modality, to thinking about the people that actually attend our sessions. Tina Seth is the Head of UK Development and Consultancy for Dods Training at Total Politics Group, a sister company to Training Journal. I asked Tina her thoughts on how different audiences might change the design and facilitation of our sessions.

Tina Seth: When it comes to designing impactful learning I think the main lesson is that decision makers shouldn’t get too caught up in a fully scripted design. Really good facilitation means thinking on your feet and flexing the content to the needs of the learners. To prioritize engagement from delegates, I think you need to bring them in at every opportunity. However charismatic you think you are you can’t hold attention spans for long with just speaking at people. So design shouldn’t be about a perfect slide set, which in my experience is what many commissioners of learning get caught up with. Remember how effective peer learning is and make sure that that is built in. People need to practice theories and models they’re introduced to otherwise the learning isn’t embedded. This takes time and again needs to be built into the design rather than too much pre-scripted content.

If they don’t know each other make use of icebreakers…generally senior audiences prefer a more discursive style of delivery and also be prepared for challenge to what you were saying and again you can’t design everything in. You need to think on your feet. I remember a time when a delegate said that smart objectives didn’t apply to their job because they were a lawyer. And I had to ask them what their job was and on the spot kind of come up with a smart objective, just to persuade them that it did apply to their role. So a virtual virtual scenario means a more scripted and crisp facilitation as there isn’t the same opportunity to have informal chats with delegates as you would in a face-to face-scenario in the fringes.

Jo Cook: Erica reminds us to look at the people and their context.

Erica Farmer: Different audiences can make a difference to the design and facilitation. I think the big one here is cultural trends and cultural differences. So if you’re used to facilitating to say, native English speakers, and then you’re doing a piece of work for non-English speakers and we’re currently doing this for some clients at the moment who, for Learning at Work Week, we’re gonna have maybe like fifteen twenty different types of languages and cultures on our sessions.

You’ve got to think more around how do you make it easy for people to consume that learning and engage with you and not just from a facility perspective but things like jargon, assuming that people understand L&D words, career type focus expressions, those kind of Englishisms or Americanisms that we tend to employ when we are facilitating verbally, we’ve just got to be careful in regards to that stuff. So making things accessible is is obviously mega important. But making things accessible for non-English speakers, I would argue they’ve almost got the step behind that they have to jump through the hurdle they have to jump through is even more important. So let’s kind of get our head out of our backsides as facilitators and really put ourselves in the shoe of the attendee or the learner.

Jo Cook: <laugh> love it Erica. Looking at accessibility in our live learning interventions, and how people’s neurodivergence and mental, emotional and physical needs are important to meet is, quite frankly, a subject for another podcast. One to put on the list!

If you’ve been following the blogs on TJ, you might have seen Kirsty sharing very openly her journey to putting on a whole new type of open learning event in the summer of this year, 2025. I’m not allowed to call it a conference, so perhaps Kirsty might be better to explain what it is!

Kirsty Lewis: SOFest. This is my baby that has been born this year. SOFest is a three-day festival on the 10^th, 11^th, 12^th of June for facilitators and trainers, freelancers, or corporates and it is a space for you to come and connect, learn and share. It is in the beautiful Essex countryside, it is in nature we have a lake to swim in we have fields to walk around. We also have for your indulgence we have ten amazing speakers. We have sixteen different workshops that you can come and explore.

We have the activator zones where we’re doing everything from a full moon ceremony to potentially some singing, an escape room, we have a campfire, we are glamping, and we are going to be surrounded with by lots of like-minded people who get you. But I just think I wanted to create an event that was not stuffy that was not in a conference room that is out and about and basically gives us time to really connect and talk, and that is gonna be SOFest. I’m really excited that TJ are also our official media partner, and I feel really blessed that Jo you were one of the first to come on board and get involved.

Jo Cook: It was an absolute no brainer – an event where you can focus on your facilitation skills, working with clients, your own business, as well as more personal self-development. I always say that the best thing about conferences is meeting and talking with people, and so this will be abundant with that and I can’t wait till June. I have to move on from all of this positivity and explore the more challenging side of our role. I asked our contributors what they hated about facilitating sessions. Tina kicks us off:

Tina Seth: Sometimes just a lack of engagement if the group haven’t been bought into the training, feel like they have to be there, or haven’t delegated their work out properly so their minds are elsewhere. It’s quite unnerving in virtual delivery if cameras are off. You can’t really tell if people are listening, and absorbing what you’re saying without the usual cues from face-to-face learning. So it’s worth having some cracking icebreakers to bring people out of their shells at the start and set the training up with the right tone.

Jo Cook: Colin just can’t be negative if he tried!

Colin Smith: I honestly don’t think I hate anything about facilitating sessions I love it there’s something deeply energising about every aspect of it. Whether that’s from the preparation, through to the kind of, the operational side of it kind of you know managing time and run sheets and all of that stuff, to engaging with the participants, to the you know getting them to act and do I mean every single part of it is is, it energises me so there’s there’s virtualy… there’s nothing! Sometimes you get difficult participants, but even that is part of the joy of it because that’s an opportunity to to create a dialogue with that individual or those people who are being difficult that might come out positive, and to have that maybe that pushback be something that creates a dialogue with it the whole group so there’s nothing there’s nothing. No.

Jo Cook: Erica focuses on the work before the actual session:

Erica Farmer: I don’t know if I hate anything about facilitating sessions I think that’s probably one of the biggest reasons I’ve got into not just learning and development but professional speaking, is working with an audience and getting the energy back from the audience and I can do that virtually or in-person and cameras on cameras off I think is irrelevant by the way from a virtual perspective as long as you know the right techniques.

What I hate most is not having the right set up in regards to where people are what their current knowledge is, and what they expect from you. We see that quite a lot when organisations perhaps haven’t done the leg work to really understand what people’s needs are and if you’re an external like we are. Sometimes you can come in and maybe not have all the information that you need but again that’s down to the skill of you being able to facilitate and use different tools in your toolkit in the moment. The right amount of prep to understand what your audience actually really needs, but you can always win people over and get a great result based on your skills and experience as a facilitator.

Jo Cook: I like what everyone has said. If we didn’t enjoy doing this, well we wouldn’t do it! I know some people are still very reticent in delivering in different ways, whether that’s virtual, hybrid, using tech or perhaps different techniques and approaches. There’s a fine line between knowing our strength and getting stuck in a rut, which is where getting together can help, such as SOFest, the HR Unconference from Fiona McBride or perhaps the Facilitation Shindigs that Julie Drybrough puts on, with many other events and networks for support available too.

As for me.. I hate when I haven’t had the right prep. It doesn’t happen often, but when you know the session didn’t hit the mark for some reason – that’s a struggle, because you know how good and transformational facilitated learning can be as part of someone’s developmental journey. Ok, so let’s get back to the positive and see what our contributors love about facilitating! First up, Tina focuses on the connection with others.

Tina Seth: Really it’s building energy in the room, virtual room, or in a face-to-face situation. Particularly if people are nervous or resistant at the start, so watching confidence build through practice and feedback is great and watching the penny drop if you are teaching something particularly complex or getting people to change entrenched opinions. So one of those is teaching people about interviewing skills and a few people in the group not understanding why you can’t ask lots of hypothetical questions. And then again thinking on your feet you can demonstrate how asking hypothetical questions kind of leads you further and further away from reality and what the person can actually do or what they already have actually done. So it’s it’s great to be able to change views, get people really thinking about views they’ve held before from the beginning of the session to the end of a session.

Jo Cook: Moving people forwards on their learning journey is what makes Erica happy when she facilitates:

Erica Farmer: It’s really seeing those lightbulb moments of people whether that’s professionally speaking, whether that’s two-way facilitation whether that’s coaching whatever that might be. There’s so many new different ways that you can get people over the line particularly with things like artificial intelligence where you can pretty much guarantee there’s people in your audience who might be sceptical, might be worried, might not have the confidence they need to start using whatever platform that you’re working with. Being able to share or facilitate or get somebody that step forward, whether that’s individually, whether that’s a team, a sector, you know an area a department or an organisation… Being able to make that difference to that to that group of people through facilitation, through confidence, through skill, through expertise all this stuff that we sell to our clients. That for me is the real win. That’s that’s what gets you know us up every day and continuing to work with the great clients that we work with.

Jo Cook: Like me, Colin loves those moments when you see someone just ‘get it’.

Colin Smith: It’s the moment it lands is always, like, it’s so high up on the list of satisfaction. There’s a characteristic in almost all good facilitators that I’ve worked with, I think, that is very similar to what you hear people say about actors. You know there’s an immediacy of feedback that you get when you’re working with a group around a topic.

I mean literally to the point that you get a form at the end of the day to say how much did you like the facilitator? How much did you learn? You know the or how much did you will you use of what we’ve covered? And there’s something amazing about that immediacy of feedback. But also that the the connection and the energy between you and the participants and and themselves helping them to a point that will be satisfactory and useful for them maybe even change the way they think about things or feel about things or do things, love it, every second of it.

Jo Cook: Melanie talks about the variety of people that come through our facilitation sessions:

Melanie Martinelli: It’s when you get a group together and there’s a really clear business challenge that has given birth to the request of the session. And you know you just kinda feel your working with a group to really make a difference because they are there for the right reason. I think that’s just kinda makes it of course very easy and then you just kinda love what you do.

But I think even when it’s challenging what I love about facilitating sessions is that you do have an opportunity to make a difference for someone. Yeah I think that’s kinda really what what I would say is the key aspect. I love that moment and you see that people are starting to have these lightbulb moments and you are able to really tie it to their business environment and they can start seeing how, by using whatever you know whatever they learn, it’s really gonna help them do their job better make their life easier. I think that just kinda feels really really rewarding.

Another thing I really love about facilitating is just a, you know, the variety of people you get to meet and the the kind of challenges that keep getting thrown at you I mean I have a problem solver. So you know I actually also love a good challenge, be it technology that’s difficult other things and you just kinda have to improvise I think and then when you kinda manage to overcome some of those challenges it just kinda yeah puts a big smile on my face. When you kinda really see that you’re making a difference for someone and that you’re really starting to move the needle you’re starting to make transfer happen. I think that kinda gives me the most, yeah satisfying feeling.

Jo Cook: And how does Andy get his facilitation joy?

Andy McConville: There is so much I love about facilitating. I love the fact that I’m still learning about facilitating now and I’ve been in the industry for for longer than I care to mention really, I think what we’re up to about twenty five years now in this world. The bringing in some of the neuroscience to to the programs that I’ve got has really helped me and helped my audience kind of broaden that thinking and and and come up with some fantastic solutions to to to issues and and problems that they might be facing into.

I still love the you know the the the person that you you unlock them you know you get the opportunity and the privilege of unlocking that thinking and and way of working and the change something because of maybe something that you’ve said. And I and I do believe that facilitation shouldn’t just, it’s not about the facilitator but it’s okay I think to get a kick out of that because you did it, you did the research, you applied the research and then somebody changes the way they did something. And in a really practical sense. I get I get real kick out of that I really love that.

And what I really love is is when people come and ask you for more there’s not there’s nothing like running a session, getting that immediate feedback in response saying people put something in the practice but then coming back and saying, “I’ve got this can you help with that, can you put a program together?” And and do what you what you did for us last time or do something different. That’s a real kick about the the ask for another session I guess.

Jo Cook: The exploration of just a few aspects of delivering training has been a joy for me. It’s something I’ve loved since I landed in a classroom, like most people, pretty much by accident, nearly 30 years ago. By the end of my first session I remember thinking, “Ohhhhh I love this, this is it, this is my career” and I’ve never looked back.

Like my lovely guests today have said, it’s a lot about connecting with others and their energy, especially in those more facilitated sessions. That’s one reason I didn’t go down the e-learning route, I like the live session, and latterly being able to bring that to remote, virtual sessions has been another joy.

Any presentation, training or facilitation skills you have are also interchangeable for other jobs. I went from hating lecturing early in my career to really understanding the art of a good presentation later on when I began speaking at conferences. The confidence I have to get up in front of 10 people and ask them to collaborate, or 500 and present an award, is also the confidence I take into a job interview or meeting a new social group for the first time. So whether you are a passionate facilitator through and through, or an occasional presenter, I hope our conversation has helped you.

AI male voice: Thank you to TechSmith for providing Audiate and Camtasia for editing this podcast.

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