So what is the difference between the various roles? Here is what I think...
Facilitator
Purpose:
A facilitator is a professional who is skilled with group dynamics and whose job it is to bring forth the opinions, data, and wisdom that exists within a group. A facilitator’s role is to encourage all participants, inviting introverts as well as extroverts to express their views and to manage the energy so that the most vocal do not dominate the discussion. Facilitators provide value to multifunctional teams who need to develop common language and to brainstorming or strategy sessions that require generation of free-flowing ideas. Pure facilitation is content neutral, the goal being to create a safe environment for participants to share thoughts, feelings, and beliefs so that the team can develop its own culture and norms. A facilitator can also operate within an agenda or with a given goal to guide the team to useful outcomes.
Any meeting can benefit from a facilitator, although meeting facilitators tend to be part facilitator, part masters of ceremonies, and part management experts responsible for agenda completion. Department managers or executives have difficulties in facilitating meetings in their own organizations. Their authority hampers their ability to be neutral, and the managers’ subordinates tend to defer to their opinions.
Solid facilitation skills are desirable for consultants, coaches and trainers.
Benefits:
The highest use of talent and ensuring that the best ideas of each participant are integrated into the most important decisions. A skilled facilitator can assist the group to synthesize the best input from all the participants into a more sophisticated whole than any one member could have created alone.
Success story:
Prabu has content expertise in organizational development and is skilled with group dynamics. He facilitates meetings of many cross-functional product teams and is good at balancing multiple interests without inserting his opinion into the discussion. He helps quieter voices get heard and takes care to paraphrase and summarize what has been said, helping the group find synergy in the discussion. Teams become more productive with Prabu’s assistance, reaching common ground more rapidly in spite of team members’ different backgrounds and point of view.
Wrong choice:
Anthony, the division manager, attempted to facilitate his own strategy meeting. He believed there was no need for a facilitator because he understood the issues as well as anyone and wanted to avoid the expense. Anthony shared his own expertise first, in the process shutting down contributions from his subordinates. Participants nodded their heads in a show of support for Anthony’s authority, but in reality they did not feel heard and did not buy into his plans. Months later, Anthony is stymied by continued resistance to his initiative and the slow pace of its implementation.
Consultant
Purpose:
A consultant is typically an external resource who assists in achieving a complex corporate or organizational goal with which internal resources have been struggling. The consultant brings objectivity, a new perspective, and often specialized industry or functional expertise. He or she has the ability to assess the situation quickly, determine the real issues, and propose alternative course of action.
Management and OD consultants have the skills that must overlap with coaches, trainers and facilitators. They improve organizational performance and often address organizational dynamics, change management, and leadership issues. Strong management and OD consultants may have facilitation, personality instrumentation, team-building techniques and coaching process skills in addition to analytical skills in their tool bag.
When consultants are internal, they typically won’t have direct line control. They are more likely to be consulted for their special content or process expertise, and their recommendations are seen as inputs to the final executive or managerial decision. External consultants also provide specialized expertise but rarely make final decisions.
Benefits:
Consultants apply their analytical and process methodologies and tools to the problem or issue, with improved effectiveness, efficiency, and profitability being key outcomes. The client’s returns are expected to be many folds over the costs of engaging the management consultant.
Success story:
Anna’s client hired her to support the executive team in developing its product strategy for the next three years. Jackie, the VP of Marketing, asked Anna to research industry trends and competitors prior to facilitating the strategy discussion with the executive team. She was an optimal fit for this particular assignment, because she had the research skills and industry knowledge to keep the team grounded in the market realities and the facilitation skills to engage the entire team in this complex decision making process. Anna was so successful in this consulting assignment that VP Jackie asked her to help the divisions with their research and implementation plans as well.
Wrong use:
Executive coach Cheryl gained the confidence of CEO James. He asked her to facilitate the company’s strategic planning session, which would drive strategic initiatives for the next two years. Cheryl has excellent coaching and facilitation skills but was not financially savvy enough to ask the questions need to focus the conversation on critical success factors. As a result, the strategic plan was not rooted in the financial or market reality of the competitive industry situation and would not generate results soon enough for stockholders. Cheryl could have avoided the outcome with a referral to a strategy-savvy consultant colleague.
Trainer
Purpose:
Trainers provide large blocks of content to participants who must use the new knowledge or skill to achieve job success. Usually trainers are selected to keep employees (or members of a profession) up to date on the latest business practices and technologies and to address a specific skill or knowledge gap in the organization. Employees seek training to add to their value in the marketplace.
Trainers are often confused with speakers. Many similarities exist – such as the transfer of information, expertise, and the need to engage the audience – but professional speakers tend to experience less face time with the audience, speaking from a few minutes to a few hours. In contrast, trainers spend half a day to a few weeks with their audience. Professional speakers are also expected to be more topical and highly entertaining, and must tailor the talk to the audience’s needs. A trainer knows course development, typically transfers a higher density of information per hour than a speaker and is expected to transfer detailed content for attendees to retain and use in their jobs.
Lecturers and tutors are types of trainers with certain characteristics. A lecturer is likely to have an audience of 30 or more participants, and had obtained a reasonable high level of academic qualifications. The audience is likely to be seated facing the same direction, towards content shown on a presentation screen. On the other hand, a tutor is likely to have an audience of 30 or less participants, with the main outcome in helping the participants in mastering the content by practicum or revision. The audience could be sitting in groups or in computer workstations, with the attention distributed between the tutor and the practicum or revision materials.
Benefits:
Knowledge is disseminated in a rapid, consistent and cost-efficient manner to large or small groups of people.
Success story:
Sam wanted to learn to use Microsoft Frontpage in order to build and maintain his organization’s website. He signed up for a class available through a local training organization. The instructor, Terry, was an expert on the use of Frontpage and skills in engaging his students and in creating course material. The course was easy to follow, challenged his students, and enabled follow-up after its completion. Terry was able to field questions from Sam and the other students, and Sam was able to use Frontpage to right away build the site.
Wrong Choice:
David was hired to do a keynote talk at an association conference. The conference organizers wanted a speaker to provide pearls of wisdom in an entertaining manner. David know the content but did not have the platform skills to carry off a keynote talk in front of 3000 conference participants. His talk was too detailed and stiff and had little entertainment value. Moreover, the audience had difficulty determining his key points. Many became bored and left before the end of the talk, and conference organizers were disappointed.
Professional Speaker
Purpose:
Professional speakers are experts in their chosen field who are paid to motivate, impart their knowledge and connect with their audience to provide a memorable experience. They master sophisticated platform skills to achieve these aims. Training is not the same as professional speaking, even though both convey information to an audience. Nor is professional speaking the same as public speaking, who occurs when anyone presents to a group of individuals.
Benefits:
Attendees are educated, entertained, motivated and inspired.
Success story:
Joanna is an expert in effective communication and the misuse of email, phone mail and snail mail. She has written a book and articles and is well known in the field. Technical companies and conference hire Joanna to help employees and attendees become more effective in gaining control over information overload and to do this in an entertaining way. She has been speaking for several years, and audiences respond to her authentic presence and dry humor.
Wrong choice:
Any time an expert with poor platform skills is asked to give a keynote talk before a large audience at a conference, disappointment and wasted time will be the result for the audience
Coach
Purpose:
Coaches often are brought in to help a star player navigate a new role or advance faster inside a company so that these players can reach their goals and aspirations easier and faster. A coach can also be retained to help a valuable executive overcome performance gaps. Coaches fulfill needs for continued education in operational mastery (technical skills such as strategic planning) or personal mastery (such as interpersonal communication or client sensitivity). The use of coaches has grown in the past decade as management scope has widened and middle management layers have thinned. Examples of coaching needs include:
- Understanding strengths and developmental needs and how teams, clients and peers perceive the executive
- Dealing with conflict or improving conflict resolution skills
- Mastering and practicing new skills and styles through role play (such as leadership and public speaking)
- Changing specific behaviors (such as influence, decision making, defensiveness, or assertiveness)
- Increasing leadership competencies (thinking more strategically or communicating more effectively)
- Creating and managing a development plan
Eg, Sherpa Tenzing Norgay helping Sir Edmund Hillary, a New Zealander, conquers
In a way, the Sherpa was more than a companion and guide. He was critical to Sir Edmund’s success in scaling the highest peak in the world. By virtue of being a native of
Career coaches play a similar role in the workplace. They offer suggestions, explore ideas, and share experiences of others who face similar challenges. They “probe, push and pull” their charges to get them to identify and take advantage of opportunities.
What is the difference between coaching and consulting? Coaching is typically a one-to one process, whereas consultants tend to work as a team, department or corporate level. Consultants typically bring content and analytical expertise or highly specialized processes into the organization to address specific issues. Coaches use process expertise and tools to support clients in developing their own answers through expanded ways of seeing themselves and their situations.
What is the difference between coaching and mentoring? Both work one-to-one, but mentors tend to offer specific content as well as contacts, while coaches focus on processes to support clients in doing their own learning.
Benefits:
Faster integration of leaders into new roles and cultures, higher executive effectiveness, improved communication and morale, and improved job satisfaction and retention. A study by Manchester Inc in 2000 found coaching produced an ROI of almost six times its cost. A DBM study in 2000 stated,” Changes in skills and performance of executives who received coaching are still evident two years later”
Success story:
A growing, entrepreneurial company recruited 46 year old Chng from a senior position at its primary competitor, where he had spent 25 years rising through the ranks. In this new job, Chng continued to use his top-down management style and expected the automatic compliance he had received before from long-time subordinates who trusted him. Not surprisingly, his new entrepreneurial colleagues were unhappy about this. Coaching increased Chng’s awareness of his unsuitable style and provided the insights he needed to change. (note: for coaching to be effective, the coachee must have respect for the coach)
Wrong choice:
Shoba needed some sage advice on how to optimize an interview for a senior position. She went to her mentor, who helped her many times with her questions on technical subjects. Shoba’s mentor did not have any connections to the position she was interviewing for and was not knowledgeable in the area of peak performance interviewing, but he tried his best to give her some pointers. A personal coach in the area of job search and interviewing or a career coach would have been a better choice, as someone who knows the latest techniques an interview questions being used in the industry.
Purpose: Mentoring is a formal arrangement for a defined time period between a person experienced in a particular area (mentor) and another less experienced person (mentee) who is seeking help and guidance in order to succeed in that area. The most sought after mentors are often successful executives. The quality of the results obtained through mentoring depends on the follow-through, commitment and initiative of the mentee.
The mentor and mentee, by mutual agreement, determine the duration and frequency of meetings. By definition, mentors are internal to the organization or community and generally volunteered their services. Formal mentor-mentee relationships usually last three, six, twelve months with weekly or biweekly meetings.
Mentoring is often confused with personal or executive coaching. A mentor, generally a volunteer, uses his or her knowledge, connections and skills to help another reach desired goals. A personal coach, usually for a fee, helps an individual uncover his or her own answers or direction. However, mentor-coaches will interject their knowledge into their dialogues with the client.
Benefits:
Rapid improvement of the effectiveness of the mentee.
Success story:
Kai wanted to increase his effectiveness in handling his multi-project assignments. As part of a formal mentoring program, he was paired for six months with Su Yie, a senior project manager who was skilled in time and project management. Kai and Su Yie agreed on the logistics (when, where, length) and goals of their meetings. Su Yie tutored Kai in project management basics and arranged introductions for him with others in project management positions who could provide inputs, suggest a course of action, or point him to additional resources. Kai’s effectiveness in managing his project improved greatly, and his stress level decreased as a result.
Wrong Choice:
Work in progress
Disclaimer: All names are fictionous, any resemblances purely coincidental
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