Facilitation is Your Work, Use Your Judgment

 

Article originally printed in the Association For Experiential Education North East Region Newsletter.

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2011 Northeast Regional Conference is April 8-10 at Berkshire Outdoor Center and Becket-Chimney Corners YMCA

What is Work?

If you ask 100 different facilitators you will get 100 different answers. Just what is work?

Elliot Jaques “Requisite Organization” supplies an explanation of work by stating;

As currently used, the term refers to three different things, all important, which need to be separated out from one another: That was tough WORK (my “effort”) doing my WORK (my tasks or assignments) they gave me to do at WORK (my place of work) today! (Jaques 1998)

In the context of a ropes course program you can see how facilitation being “work” can be identified and defined in at least three different ways.
1. Your effort…today I worked really hard facilitating that group
2. Your tasks or assignments…I worked all day facilitating trust building with a corporate group, and we had amazing breakthroughs.
3. Your place of work…Today I am facilitating the Climbing Tower.

With an unclear foundation of work, facilitators operate off the culture, norms and expectations (whether implicit or explicit) of the organization who they are working with and their direct managers.

To build a shared under-standing from this point forward, work will be defined as; Work (W): The exercise of discretion, judgment and decision making, within limits, in carrying out tasks: Driven by values, and bringing skilled knowledge into play (Jaques 1998).

So, is that work? Work is about using YOUR judgment to make the best decision possible at that time, within defined and known limits to complete a task; this is YOUR work.

Work is not a routinized process or activity that you have done 1000s of times…if that’s work, then YOU ARE NOT adding value.

Is work Facilitation, is facilitation work?

Reading the definition of work from Eliot Jaques it sounds like a great re-source for facilitation. In Jennifer Stanchfield’s “Tips & Tools…The Art of Experiential Facilitation” Stanchfield writes;

Experiential Facilitation is an intentional approach to facilitation based on the idea that people learn and change more from the process of work-ing through problems and finding solu-tions than from being given answers and solutions….(Stanchfield 2007).

Experiential facilitation is Work…an intentional approach is similar to exercise of judgment. The idea of working through problems is parallel to bringing skilled knowledge into play.

Facilitation is your work…the steps that are taken to purposely exercise judgment in decisions of what to do and work through problems to find solutions, while driven by values (explicit or implicit) using the skills and capacity you have as a facilitator. When you are with a group, and the activity is not going according to plan – what you do in that moment is facilitation. When you are leading an initiative and the expected outcomes are not happening – what you do in that moment is work. When you are in a classroom and the lesson plans are taking on a life of their own and the students are amazing you with their talent – how you facilitate and the decisions you make are work. What you do in the moment that requires you to make a decision that is based upon your mental processing, the process by which you take information, pick it over, play with it, analyze it, put it together, reorganize it, judge and reason with it, make conclusions, plans and decisions, and take action (Jaques 1998) makes your work as a facilitator valuable.

How does a facilitator improve their work? If facilitation is work and work is our ability to make decisions within limits based upon our mental processing. How can facilitators and managers of facilitators;
1. Determine current skills?
2. Improve current skills?

Determining current facilitation skills
We must turn our experiential lenses upon ourselves and staff. To determine current levels of facilitation and mental processing for work you must observe, question and match facilitators to their highest level of complexity in work.

Think about this as matching the proper content to the activity or matching the proper tool to the need. If you are a manager of an experiential program you know which facilitators have better skills in completing work than others. Additionally as facilitators we need to stop and reflect upon our current skills for work, listen to and take advice from those we admire and are wiser than us to improve our facilitation work. The greatest way to grow facilitation skills is for a manager (more experienced facilitator) to mentor and / or coach another facilitator.

This must be the work of program managers…your work is facilitation and should be focused on the facilitators you manage. Too often experiential program managers lose sight of their direct staff and focus on the participants in the program. This has to stop…as an experiential program manager your work is to add value to those who report to you, through judgment to make decisions within the limits you are given.

A primary value of a facilitator is to add value to those they interact with. Continually evaluating and ensuring that people are working within their capacity, knowledge, skill, and value to expand their comfort and use judgment to solve problems and offer value.

Facilitation is your work…and you deserve to continually improve the value offered through facilitation. Making decisions, using judgment can NEVER be replaced and taken from you.

 

michael cardus is create-learning

Reference:
Stanchfield, Jennifer. (2007) Tips & tools: The Art of Experiential Group Facilitation.
Jaques, Eliot. (1998) Requisite Organization: A Total System for Effective Managerial Leadership in the 21st Century.

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