Facilitation vs. Presenting

Adult training requires participants to be engaged throughout their learning experience. Instead of presenting tons of information in a boring presentation format, you can facilitate a fun, collaborative learning environment. You can keep the learners engaged in an active format while guiding group discussion and activities.

Facilitation is a more effective leadership practice as it utilizes learning tools for self-development and mastery.

The difference between facilitation and presentation can be seen by considering the following three factors:

Concentration

Facilitation focuses on involving the learners while presentations are centered around the individual presenting. As a presenter, you’re basically just delivering the content. As a facilitator, you concentrate on the application of knowledge through discussion, skill practice, and various other types of activities.

Trust

As a facilitator, you can build credibility by showing your participants that you care about their needs. Presenters build trust solely by their mastery of the topic as well as the examples and information they provide. While you can gain trust by mastering a particular topic, it’s much more powerful when you demonstrate genuine concern for the needs of your learners.

Control

Facilitators share control of the learning experience, again, by involving the participants and simply maintaining oversight. Presenters take full control of the experience with the learners only having a passive role.

So, the simple and obvious takeaway here is that you need to involve your participants. They need to be able to engage with you, the content, and the other participants throughout your training sessions. There are plenty of ways that this can be accomplished and we’ll be covering exactly how you can do this later in the course.