Understanding the Facilitated - A Key Role of a Facilitator

As a facilitator, it is always good to find out more about the needs of your participants before you start the facilitated event. The information gathered is useful in designing the process of the workshop, creating the language of the facilitation and generating the questions-stems for the event.

I usually send out a pre-course survey to my participants and here is an extract of this survey that I use.

Learning Profile

1. Look at the words in the four red boxes in the diagram below. Please circle the box that best describes the way you learn.

Level of Emphasis

2. This 1-day workshop will cover issues related to your organisation’s vision, mission and values. Please read the three statements provided in the box below and rank them in running order according to their importance to you (the statement that is most important should be ranked 3 and least important as 1):

Learning Methodologies

3. A number of methods will be introduced to help you achieve the outcome mentioned above. Please look at the diagram below and circle your most preferred method.

Refreshments

4. We will be providing tea breaks. Our menu is provided below. Please tick off any two items you like included in the tea breaks for this workshop.

Measure of Success

5. Lastly, could you write a paragraph of not more than 30 words, in the box below, describing what you consider to be a successful facilitated session?

This article was written by Anthony Mok on 14 Aug 2008.

Copyright 2008. Anthony Mok. All Rights Reserved.