Saturday 30 August 2014

Feedback

I blogged recently (a couple of times in fact) about invisible facilitation (here and here).  I concluded the first of these posts with the reflection: 'So I think we should trust our clients (who, after all, want an effective event, not a showboating facilitator) to recognise our contribution, and not worry about being seen to perform.'

I suppose that was always tempting fate: a recent feedback form from a team awayday I ran included this comment from one participant: 'Fellow seemed to be half asleep. Occasionally popped up to say something and that was about it.

That did make me smile, as it is exactly what I fear people may think when I work in that mode.  However, I was able to smile sincerely to myself (and not just wryly) as all the others who attended had a different view, and their feedback was that the awayday had been well run and achieved its goals.

But don't say I didn't warn you...


2 comments:

  1. Maybe you shouldn't ask about the facilitator in the feedback form, but only about the event? One of my memories of being coached by you is that every session would end with my having the sense that, by some magical process, I had come up with my own solution to the problem I had taken into the session. Fortunately I was able to recognise that the occurrence of this kind of magic correlated strongly with your presence!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Andrew

    It was a corporate happy sheet, not one of mine - I would never ask such a question!

    Thanks for your kind words about my coaching: though as you say, you did all the work!

    ReplyDelete