The lesson of the 5 P’s, ‘Poor Planning Provides Poor Performance’ often resounds around training rooms. It’s not surprising that the importance of effective planning (understanding the context, clarifying the aims and objectives, considering and evaluating alternative approaches, monitoring progress against plans, re-planning etc.) comes to the fore, but as facilitators of learning should we also construct and follow plans?  

Elsewhere in my blog I’ve emphasised that facilitators must both understand individuals’ and groups’ objectives and that their role, as an enabler of learning, is to respond to, and satisfy the emerging needs of a group. 

The critical word here is ‘emerging’ as a facilitator can’t possibly predict or find out exactly what will be appropriate for each individual to learn before an intervention. Of course you can predict that a workshop on team skills will cover aspects of communication, but you won’t know which aspects will be most relevant, why some people may or may not communicate effectively, or which people will experience particular blocks to personal learning. Facilitating experiential learning is, by definition, a voyage into the unknown.

So where does this leave planning?

The answer is that you, the facilitator have to be prepared mentally and practically for all likely (and some unlikely) situations. Prior to an ‘intervention’ you must understand its purpose (if this isn’t clear you must clarify it). You need to know and be comfortable with the ‘big picture’, the line manager’s objectives and any organisational constraints before giving thought to any aspects of the intervention. 

This preparation is critical: it gives you your terms of reference and a framework which you can refer back to as you facilitate. (Keep asking yourself the question, ‘Is what’s happening now helping us achieve the purpose?’)

Preparing the content of an intervention is a totally different matter. Your role will be to enable individuals’ and group learning which means that you’ll have to be constantly identifying and finding ways to satisfy learning needs. As soon as participants begin the first activity you should be gathering data with an open mind and using it to help you decide what you will do and how you will react. By definition therefore you cannot plan the details of a workshop, but you can prepare, and be prepared for, a range of likely situations and also be mentally prepared to work with the totally unexpected. 

Post script:

Two personal examples may be of interest:

1. As I was chatting with a group over a cup of coffee at the start a 3-day team development workshop it became clear that the group was so dysfunctional that I had to replace my planned first activity with one I hadn’t even considered would be appropriate, and as a consequence everything changed!

2. I’d decided to use a 10 minute activity to introduce a 2-day workshop with a very senior team. The activity touched so many raw nerves that the learning review took the whole morning!   

And the outcomes, both interventions received excellent feedback and what’s more, both were much more interesting and fun to facilitate than I’d expected!!