Over the past several years, I’ve seen more and more program managers recruit line leaders with subject matter expertise to facilitate training. In some cases this trend is about reducing the expense of professional facilitation. More often, it’s about bringing realism to the learning experience.
Subject matter expert-facilitators (SME-facilitators) offer insight into how new tools and models fit in to the workflow. They offer stories that illustrate what it looks like when new skills and knowledge are applied in the right context and executed correctly, and cautionary tales of what can happen when they’re not.
This facilitation model is not without risk. Some SME-facilitators know the material so well they don’t spend enough time preparing to teach it. They arrive for training just before the session starts. They stand in front of the room and talk, showing slide after slide to a room full of glazed eyes. Others are nervous and get thrown off their game. They may deliver information out of sequence, repeat themselves, go past their allotted time or rush through material at the end.
As instructional designers, we have a responsibility to help SME-facilitators be successful in the classroom and there are ways for us to do that. Here are five things you can do to make the most of having a SME-facilitate a program.
- Engage them in content development. It seems obvious that the SME that provides content will be the same as the one who is expected to deliver it, but sometimes it’s not the case. Sometimes the facilitator is more senior and asks someone from his or her staff to handle the content development. Even if that is the case, make sure your SME-facilitator is on the list of reviewers for draft materials. If they feel some ownership of the content they are more likely to deliver it as written.
- Pair them up. I was going to put this later on the list, but it makes sense to talk about it before talking about sticking with what they’re good at. If budgets are less of a concern, try to pair a SME-facilitator with a professional facilitator or a program manager. This partner can be responsible for introducing objectives and learning threads that may run throughout, running the activities, keeping the session on schedule, and otherwise connecting the whole thing together. That still leaves plenty for the SME-facilitator to do.
If a professional facilitator is not available to partner, put together teams of SME-facilitators to share the load, particularly if the training runs more than two hours.
- Stick to what they’re good at in the design. This isn’t the time to develop a 10-step activity that involves multiple handouts and props (props, really? I’m impressed!). Back off the urge to create elaborate instructional strategies that the facilitator will be challenged to execute. To realize the full value of a SME in your classroom, create spaces in your design for the explanations, stories, and examples that make the content seem less conceptual and speed the learners’s transition to leveraging the skills and information back on the job. The stories SME-facilitators tell will help the learners recognize situations in which they can either apply what they’ve learned in a way that will maximize their results, or simply avoid the potential pitfalls of their role.
There are a couple of ways to do this. If you can readily identify a spot in your content where you know an example will add value, you can either direct the facilitator to think of an example as part of their preparation and to ask them to annotate their guide so they remember it, or you can ask them to work on examples with you in advance, during content development. Include the example in the facilitation notes with an indication that they and any future facilitators can replace with something similar that reflects their own experience if they choose.
- Develop guides they’ll use. On the subject of guides, make sure the detail hits a level your stakeholders and your facilitators will be comfortable with. This is no small feat. If you don’t provide enough detail for your facilitators, you are not providing clear direction about what will fulfill the learning objectives. You also risk your facilitator talking about a topic that is better covered later in the material and setting the facilitator up for confusion. On the other hand, if you provide too much detail facilitators will tend to read the notes directly from the guide. You’ve probably seen that play out before – not pretty.
Another thing you can do to help a SME-facilitator is be very clear about their time budget. You probably already put at least rough timing in for facilitators, but it helps a less experienced facilitator if you’re very specific about how much time they should expect to spend on each topic. If your training is part of a larger program you may need to be flexible about start time, but do include elapsed time between topics so the facilitator can either stay on schedule or get back on schedule.
- Offer sufficient opportunities to prepare. A single briefing call is rarely adequate preparation for facilitators. Ideally, you’ve engaged your SME-facilitator in content development or as reviewers so they are familiar with the materials, the learning objectives, and the information that’s to be communicated. If you haven’t done that, immersing them in the material is your first order of business. Build a train-the-trainer plan that includes observation, walk-through, and guided practice. Think “tell me, show me, help me, and let me try it.”
SME-facilitators lend credibility to your content in a way only they can. When it’s done well it looks like magic – they deliver the content with poise and enthusiasm, taking command of the facilitation notes in a way that makes the words their own, telling stories with just the right notes of urgency and humor. Do your part as an instructional designer to help them leverage their talents and shine in the classroom.