Train-the-Trainer by DataHomeLab

A4.C Facilitation Guide

Facilitation

To be competent in any job a person requires a certain amount of knowledge, an adequate level of skill, and the right set of attitudes. This is true for doctors, hotel receptionists, lawyers, footballers, soldiers, artists and of course flight crew, air traffic controllers and maintenance engineers. The role of an instructor in any discipline is to help people develop their knowledge, their skills and their attitudes so that they are able to do their jobs well.

The same KSA framing appears in the ICAO Doc 9995 conduct-of-EBT chapter as the rationale for why facilitation is the primary technique in EBT debriefing: knowledge and skills can be transferred by direct instruction, but attitude change is harder to teach by instruction and harder still to assess by examination. Facilitation is the technique that addresses the attitude leg.

Instruction and Facilitation

It is important to understand the difference between instruction and facilitation. Instruction can be described as being primarily a telling activity, where knowledge and skills are developed in trainees through either direct communication or demonstration, with questioning primarily used to check understanding or reinforce key messages. Facilitation, on the other hand, can be described as a technique that helps trainees to discover for themselves what is appropriate and effective, in the context of their own experience and circumstances.

Both techniques are useful and have their place. In order to transfer knowledge and many skills, instruction is the most efficient technique to employ; it would be laborious and unnecessary to teach a straightforward and precise subject such as an electrical system using facilitation. Furthermore, instruction can be used to train larger numbers of people, and is particularly useful if only certain answers are acceptable.

The reason is that a person's behaviour is based on their past experiences, values and beliefs which will be different from those of others. Telling people to behave differently carries the implication that their values and beliefs are wrong, and this is not convincing. People generally behave in a way that they think is rational, and often find it easy to justify their behaviour to themselves and others. What they may not be aware of is the effects of their behaviour on other people or the operation, and that an alternative behaviour may have a more positive effect, maybe something they might wish to consider.

This is the heart of the instruction / facilitation choice. The aim of facilitation is not to suppress the trainee's reasoning or replace it with the instructor's; it is to surface the consequences the trainee may not have seen, and let the trainee decide whether the alternative is worth adopting. The same logic underpins the table at the end of the ICAO Doc 9995 conduct-of-EBT chapter (Table I-7-1), which contrasts the two techniques line by line.

Why facilitation fits adult learning

Facilitation is a technique that fits well with how adults learn best. Adult learners learn best when they:

  • understand the reason for learning;
  • are actively involved in the learning;
  • are able to connect learning with existing knowledge / mental models;
  • are able to engage in reflection and self-analysis.

Facilitation can be equally used to reinforce effective behaviour because it gives people an understanding of why they are good which encourages their continued development. Furthermore it can be used in the development of skills and even knowledge, because it is an effective tool for allowing self-analysis and in-depth thought, as thought and analysis help commit things to memory more effectively. The skills of self-analysis are not just to get the most from the training session, but can also be continually used for self-development on the line.

General considerations for developing facilitation skills

The ten considerations below cover the range of the technique: the definitional contrast with instructing, the role of subject knowledge, the relational stance, agenda-setting, the diagnostic of who is talking, time, focus, workload, the non-judgemental attitude, and the difference in evaluation. They are presented as the source presents them, in source order; each one is a separate piece of practitioner discipline that an instructor builds over time.

1. Telling, demonstrating, and checking versus enabling discovery

Although instructors have used facilitation techniques naturally for many years, in its purest sense instructing has a lot to do with telling, demonstrating and checking that the task is being done in accordance with a standard. Whereas facilitation means that trainees are given the opportunity to discover what they are doing and the effect it has on others and the task, so that they can make the decision themselves to alter their behaviour or even reinforce any positive behaviour.

The decision is the trainee's. The conditions for that decision are the instructor's responsibility.

2. Subject knowledge: needed for instruction, not always for facilitation

When instructing, the instructor knows the subject and has the experience, otherwise it would be a pointless exercise. When facilitating both parties know the subject and have the experience, particularly when discussing behaviour. In fact, very competent facilitators are quite capable of being effective without knowing the subject or having any experience of it.

3. The relational stance

The relationship when instructing can be perceived as being top-down in that the instructor knows more than the trainee, whereas when facilitating it must be apparently equal. A common mistake by inexperienced instructors when facilitating is to create the impression that they are in some way superior, by implying they know more or have a better attitude.

The relational stance is signalled by question form, body posture, and the tone in which observations are offered, not by formal rank. An instructor who facilitates while signalling superiority has reverted to instruction with extra steps.

4. Setting the agenda jointly

The agenda when facilitating must be set by both parties as this helps to engage the trainees from the start. Agreeing what you are going to talk about and how you will go about it is an important first step. The instructor can greatly assist the learning of the session by summarising and giving meaning to the trainees' discussions.

It is still the instructor's responsibility to ensure that all the training requirements are included in the facilitated session. Joint agenda-setting does not transfer ownership of the syllabus to the trainee; it transfers ownership of the route through the syllabus, while the instructor retains the obligation to cover the required ground. The same point sits behind the upstream FSF / NASA observation that a fixed agenda imposed top-down is one of the recurrent failure modes of LOFT debriefing; see 7.3 General Debrief Techniques for the full failure inventory.

5. Who is doing most of the talking

One of the best measures of identifying which technique you are using, whether it is instructing or facilitating, is to note who is doing most of the talking. When facilitating, trainees need to be clear in their own minds and be able to self-assess what they are doing and the benefits of changing. It is difficult to do this whilst trying to listen to an instructor passing multiple messages.

6. Time: finite when instructing, indefinite when facilitating

The time taken to cover a subject when instructing tends to be finite and consistent, whereas with facilitation the timescale is indefinite. This does not mean that it takes forever but that the process of facilitation must be given sufficient time to achieve its aim.

The instructor should not be worried about longer debrief or exercise times, because the concentration period is much longer when trainees are actively involved in the thinking and discussion rather than passively listening. When time is limited, for example during debriefing, the process may need to continue afterwards, while trainees try out new options back at work. Conversely, if the aim is achieved within a few minutes the job is done and there is no point dragging out the discussion.

7. Focus: task and instructor versus trainee

The focus when instructing is often on the task and the instructor: how well they are doing, did they get things in order, are they being clear, is the equipment working, are they on time. With facilitation the focus must be solely on the trainee, their attitudes and behaviour, and whether they are learning and are comfortable with the process that is being used. The focus should also be on the trainee demonstrating an understanding and willingness to change.

The shift of focus is the deepest of the ten considerations. An instructor who has built their professional identity around being clear, organised, and on time has built that identity around the wrong axis for facilitation work. The skill being developed in facilitation is the ability to be present to what the trainee is doing and saying, not the ability to deliver a polished sequence.

8. Workload: high in facilitation, especially in groups

Each trainee is different. It is difficult to read people's minds. The workload whilst facilitating is intense, and more so in a group. The facilitator in this respect is having several conversations simultaneously, both verbally and non-verbally, and having to think on their feet in reaction to what is being said.

With instructing the workload is high in preparation and initial delivery, but then reduces over time as the instructor becomes more familiar with the material.

9. Non-judgemental attitude

Although the instructor's observations and training objectives are inevitably judgemental, in order to prompt a trainee's self-analysis, the attitude of the instructor when facilitating a debrief should be non-judgemental. In other words, he or she must be prepared to accept that the opinion of the trainee is valid and not necessarily wrong, even though the instructor's own experience dictates otherwise.

This attitude is the most difficult to genuinely achieve, particularly for instructors who have spent many years instructing and ensuring things are right. It is a discipline against the instructor's own competence: the more correct the instructor's reading of the situation, the stronger the temptation to deliver that reading rather than let the trainee work it out. Resisting that temptation is what builds the skill.

10. Evaluation: by test versus by observation and self-assessment

The evaluation of an instructing session is relatively simple and measured by test, where a judgement is made about whether the objective or standard has been achieved. When facilitating, evaluation is made by observation only and the trainee's self-assessment.

The evaluation difference is what makes the rubric in A3.1 Purpose and Directions necessary: where instruction can be scored against a binary did-they-pass-the-test, facilitation has to be observed against descriptive markers of what good facilitation looks like at each level, because the artefact being scored is a process rather than an output. The 5 categories × 4 markers × 5 levels rubric reproduced there is Appendix 4's scoring instrument for that observation.

How this guide pairs with the upstream toolkit

A4.C Facilitation Guide is Appendix 4's rationale and discipline. The upstream FSF / NASA material reproduced in A1.4 Facilitation Techniques is the toolkit: levels of facilitation (high / intermediate / low), criteria for effective crew participation, criteria for effective instructor facilitation, and the four operational tools (questions, silence, active listening, video). Read together, this guide gives the why and the technique-selection logic; the upstream gives the how. An instructor who has read the upstream toolkit but not internalised the ten considerations here will execute the techniques mechanically; an instructor who has internalised the considerations but not learned the toolkit will know what they are aiming for but lack the operational moves to get there.

The same content also pairs back, at higher altitude, with the table in the ICAO Doc 9995 conduct-of-EBT chapter (Table I-7-1), which compresses the ten considerations into a twelve-row instruction-versus-facilitation contrast. The ICAO table is the standard-body distillation; A4.C Facilitation Guide is Appendix 4's treatment of the same material at a level of practitioner detail the standard does not attempt.

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