A third training workshop was agreed to be held before the end of the second project year to take stock of the initial experience in FTI implementation and provide additional insights, methods and tools33. During the planning meetings of various IDR teams, it was felt that the facilitation and communication skills of many of the group members, and especially those of the group leaders needed to be strengthened. Consequently, the author, being the FTI facilitator started an e-mail discussion on the need to have such training, and to identify suitable timing for the majority. Members from various teams concurred with the idea, and the potential dates were agreed for August 2009 (Ul-Hassan, 2008). Due to financial reasons, it was thought appropriate to limit the participation to the project staff based at Urgench only. The training was facilitated by the FTI facilitator. Five senior and nine junior research staff attended the training.
33 A summary report of these two trainings was prepared by Ul-Hassan (2008) and circulated amongst all FTI participants
Training on facilitation skills
The training on facilitation skills started with an energizer. A facilitation game was used to highlight the importance of facilitation and cooperation to lead to win-win solutions for partners. This energizer was followed by presentations on the following topics:
a) How facilitation helps in group work, for example conducting meetings, discussions, brainstorming sessions;
b) Relevance of facilitation for IDR teams working on FTI as they conduct group meetings/ consultations, work and meetings with stakeholders; each IDR team is composed of several members from various disciplines, having their own perspectives about the situation, work and the way the work should be conducted. Everyone’s opinion needs to be considered, and the group members and stakeholders need to be encouraged and facilitated to get involved and not to isolate;
c) The decision-making with the IDR teams needs to be democratic and not autocratic. Facilitator’s role is to ensure that;
d) Each FTI team has a longer term goal of forming highly motivated teams who successfully carry out their FTI experiments together with the stakeholders. Most of the group members being specialists and expert of their respective subjects may not be able to differentiate between the role an expert plays vs. the role a facilitator should play.
e) A facilitator was defined as an individual whose job was to help to manage a process of information exchange. While an expert's role was identified as to offer advice, particularly about the content of a discussion, the facilitator's role was to help with how the discussion proceeds. The facilitator's responsibility was identified as to address the journey, rather than the destination.
f) Capabilities and characteristics of a facilitator (Box 4.1) and facilitator’s role during preparing and conducting meetings/ workshops (Box 4.2) were also discussed.
Box 4.1 Characteristics of a facilitator discussed at the training
Source: Author’s extraction from Ul-Hassan (2008) Box 4.2 Preparing and Conducting Meetings
Source: Author’s extraction from Ul-Hassan (2008)
Training on Effective Communication Skills
A presentation was used to illustrate that the following and similar problems arise out of problems in communication:
a) Understanding someone’s talk can be partial because someone else nearby was talking loudly
b) Tried to explain something but people understood something different c) Asked someone to do something, but found out that (s)he was doing it
wrong
Several games and exercises were used to indicate the importance of communication, and clarifying that one’s own one-way perception of things or situations might be misleading.
Tasks for preparing for a facilitated meeting/ event:
a) Arrangement of space and other facilities/ supplies b) Thinking and arriving at decisions about the meeting times
c) Preparing the agenda keeping in mind the objectives of the meeting d) Deciding if the facilitator needs support
e) To inform the participants on time and send reminders, if needed f) Actual facilitation of the meeting
During a meeting, there are task roles and maintenance roles for the facilitator:
g) The task roles include: Helping participants to keep to the agenda, reworking the agenda if needed, maintaining group focus, recording decisions and action points, testing for agreement by the participants, and evaluating the meeting
h) The maintenance roles include: establishing common ground for participants (why we are here, what we want to achieve?), bringing out and resolving conflicts, and maintaining democracy and participation
a) asking rather than telling and paying compliments for inputs b) initiating conversation rather than waiting for someone else to
c) asking for other's opinions rather than always having to offer one’s own d) negotiating rather than dictating decision-making
e) listening without interrupting
f) adopting more persuasive style than just following sequence of steps g) more enthusiastic than systematic
Communication was introduced as a process of meaningful two-way interaction among human beings, in which a person does not only act or tell, but also invites and expects a certain reaction
During the training, the participants were facilitated to differentiated the following four types of communication and discuss their characteristics and use during FTI:
a) Intra-personal b) Inter-personal c) Inter-group
d) Mass Communication
The classical Sender-Message-Channel-Receiver (SMCR) model (after (Berlo, 1960) of interpersonal communication was used to illustrate the potential problems with content, sender, structure, channel and receiver during the communication process. A game was used to illustrate the model further. The awareness about communication filters and distortions was raised using games and exercises as well. Besides, five types of listening behaviors were also introduced as ignoring, pretending, selective, attentive and emphatic. Through a presentation, rules for provision of specific, usable, requested, accurate, feedback using “I-Statement” were also discussed. Finally, the tips to reduce distortions in communication were discussed. Some tips were about adopting a receiver orientation, increasing similarity of receiver and source, keeping message short, using good organization of message content, reducing number of links in the chain of communication, and increasing repetition.
4.3.6 Training III: Deepening the Understanding of the ‘Follow the