Attention Facilitators: You don’t always need to have an answer
It’s likely you had a few notable growth spurts as a young person. You may have been one of the lucky ones who woke up one day four inches taller. Or, you may have had a slightly prolonged experience, feeling the growth occur little by little.
The phrase ‘growing pains’ means “neuralgic pains which occur in the limbs of some young children” and the important word here is ‘some’. Not everyone will experience the same sort of pains, or any pains at all.
On The Anatomy and The Journey, we share the growing pains many experience when becoming a coach. You may remember – Manage the ‘Me’, Trust the Process, Coach the Person, Meet them where they are and so on. But, as a facilitator, you may have experienced pains as well.
The most notable pain McKenzie and Quinn have experienced, and other Certified Start With Heart Facilitators have too, is the need to ‘get it right’. Also known as, the need to have an answer or the need to be the expert! Sound familiar? It’s happened to all of us at one point or another. We forget that facilitating is about creating a learning experience and get wrapped up in ourselves.
Your participants will undoubtedly have questions, a lot of questions. There’s no stopping their curiosity. However, even when they are asking you for the answer, you don’t need to have the answer.
Every course has a unique set of participants that will ask different questions, but you can definitely expect a few of these – What is the different between coaching and therapy? Or, How do you know when to move from Heart to Head? Or, How are values different from beliefs? Or, How long do you need to stay in the Heart stage?
Already feeling like you need to have the answers?
If so, then you need to decide if your answer is really the one they need to hear. Perhaps they already have an answer and are just asking to confirm what they already think. You may need to draw it out of them, or ask the wider group, which means you just don’t always need to have an answer.
Being a facilitator means enabling learning and that means you don’t need to have the perfect response, great idea or articulate opinion. You need to lean on your participants.
Are you a Graydin Certified Start With Heart Facilitator? If so, join us for Coaching Day 2022! Connect with and learn from Quinn, McKenzie and your fellow Facilitators about how to move past the pains we face when facilitating coaching-training. We can’t wait to see you there.