Facilitator and Deep Understanding

Abstract

Carl and Fred discuss  an Inside FMEA reader question: “does a facilitator have to have a deep understanding of the subject matter they are facilitating?”

Key Points

Join Carl and Fred as they discuss the level of knowledge a facilitator must have about there subject being facilitated, in order to be successful.
Topics include:

• What type of knowledge is helpful to the facilitator?
• It is essential that the facilitator have excellent facilitation skills.
• Having no knowledge at all of the subject being facilitated does not work.
• It is not necessary for a facilitator to have deep or expert knowledge of the subject matter.
• The laser is in between these extremes.
• The best answer to the question being posed is that the facilitator should have sufficient overview of the subject, so he or she does not impede the meetings (team members feel like they have to”educate” the facilitator) and can guide the team to good thinking and results.
• Avoid “expert” facilitators who know nothing about the subject being facilitated. Minimum is to know the scope, language, and a high-level overview of the topic. This might take a few hours of immersion.
• Avoid having the subject matter expert (who is unskilled in facilitation) being the team facilitator, because the team needs good facilitation to get to its best thinking.
• The skills of facilitation are covered in the series called “FMEA Facilitation Series,” which are part of Inside FMEA. A link is in the show notes.
• Example facilitation errors are discussed, along with comments on how to address.

Enjoy an episode of Speaking of Reliability. Where you can join friends as they discuss reliability topics. Join us as we discuss topics ranging from design for reliability techniques to field data analysis approaches.

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Show Notes

To read the “FMEA Facilitation Series” use this link: https://accendoreliability.com/inside-fmea-index-articles/

and cursor down the the facilitation series of articles.

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