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Welcome to the Facilitating and Training Site
My name is Doug I am a Learning and Development professional with nearly a decade of experience as the Director of Technical Training for multibillion-dollar companies (click on About to review my background). In addition, I worked for many years in corporate and field operations. I currently offer contract services for a variety of subjects, which most notably includes the actual art of simply facilitating and training (see Services). In addition to promoting my services and giving back, my goal here is to untangle the challenges of facilitating and training that we all face in any situation where we are called upon to manage group discussions and learning processes. Many people consider facilitating and training to be separate, I, however, have always found them to be so intertwined that I needed to be proficient at both in order to be most effective when doing either one. Therefore, it is most efficient to combine facilitation, presentation, and training curriculum all in to one skill building process. This is exactly what I offer during the High Performance Facilitation and Training program.
Often, facilitating and training are made to be complicated events. They do not, however, have to be complicated, and they are most certainly not events; training and facilitating is a process. While the process can be simple, and with coaching anybody can be an effective facilitator, it is rarely identical for different organizations and/or different individuals. As a Learning & Development professional I developed, over the years, methods to quickly adapt the training teams I was responsible for to the multitude of needs, cultures, and styles prevalent within any company.
Here’s the basic concept: the goal of any coaching, presentation, meeting, training session/program, etc. must be to meet pre-established desired outcomes/objectives. This does not mean leading the group to predetermined decisions; rather, it means that objectives and goals for each session should always be developed at the beginning of the process with the understanding that things may adjust as we go. As an example, “we are here to accomplish a, b, and c, and by the time we are done with the process you will demonstrate (not just “know”) the skills needed and/or make the decisions required to accomplish a, b, and c.” Participants are then expected to use the acquired skills and knowledge to perform tasks in a manner that assists the company and themselves in meeting their business/personal goals. So effective facilitating and training is not measured by how much somebody liked it (although people are more receptive and do learn better when they enjoy the process); but rather, by the application of the skills acquired and/or decisions made, and the difference they made to the success of the business and/or individual.
I have published and presented studies on measuring training’s Return On Investment (ROI) in both monetary/tangible and intangible terms. Too often, however, the whole process falls apart at the beginning and can never be measured on the back-end because the delivery of what people need to be able to do, and then do, is sabotaged. Not maliciously, but merely by a lack of knowledge about how to prepare and deliver high-impact training sessions and value-add meetings with high-performance facilitation techniques.
In my sessions I work directly with the organization to understand their needs and assist leaders, trainers, coaches, etc. with developing delivery models that meet and exceed desired outcomes. Sometimes that includes determining what those desired outcomes truly are during a facilitated meeting.
Give me a call to discuss what goals your team desires to attain and we can tailor the sessions so that you may realize those goals. Please first take a look around at what others charge for this service; you will be better able to appreciate the depth of experience and personalized solutions I can offer you at a fraction of the cost.
In addition, facilitating and training are by no means my only passion. Please peruse the “Giving Back” page and www.gocarlite.com to read about more of them.
Thank You!
Doug
Office: 707-439-3179
Email: sales@facilitatingandtraining.com