Participatory Training Design and Delivery * What is your approach to training? * Sample workshops * Facilitator training * Support staff and their teams * Everybody needs mentoring About my work Mary Dingee Fillmore, Director Clients Projects	Facilitator Training Changing Work offers trainer and facilitator training to small groups, with the goal of helping participants learn to engage with the group and involve them in the process, rather than talking at them. After a day or two of experiential learning, participants practice their new skills in groups of ten or fewer. Learning to Facilitate is the basic course which teaches principles of andragogy (the art of training adults) and how to apply them. It stresses setting a positive, participatory tone, with both examples and practice in techniques which will bring people into the process. Participants learn to focus on the subject and their audience, rather on their anxiety, and practice reacting to the situations they particularly fear. Working with Skeptical and Hostile Groups helps presenters and facilitators learn an escalating range of responses to skepticism and hostility, from the peashooter to the cannon, and when to use each of them; and practice different strategies and get feedback about which ones were handled most effectively. It is helpful both to people who address potentially hostile public meetings, and those who are working with dubious peers. Designing Successful Group Processes is aimed at team leaders, task force conveners, chairs of committees and other groups who need to design processes to accomplish something through a group. By focusing on one particular goal for each person, the course both enables people to sketch out a design to fit their immediate needs, and to learn a methodology they can apply to any situation. Training the Technical Expert to Train addresses the particular conflicts faced by experts when they work with groups: the level of detail they know vs. what the group is willing to hear, the dilemma of the expert whose job is to keep the agenda moving rather than to impart all the available knowledge. Because many experts have experience teaching undergraduates, they may feel that training adults means lecturing, and need both to be persuaded otherwise and taught new techniques.
© 1996 - 1998 Mary Dingee Fillmore, Changing Work <mfillmore@usa.net>. All rights reserved.