The Art of Facilitation
Facilitation is a transferable skill that can help practitioners in many fields engage people, transfer knowledge, and reach broad audiences. Dr. Jim Mahone, Professor in the School of Environmental Design and Rural Development at the University of Guelph, has a knack of bringing out the inner facilitator in his students. In his 3-week intensive graduate level course, he throws his students at the front of the room and, through immediate feedback, encouragement, and a little nudge to help them step out of their comfort zone, he makes his students feel confident enough to stand in the lime light and command the attention of the audience.
The summative project for the Facilitation and Conflict Management class requires the students to pair up and facilitate a discussion group out in the real world. This semester, his present and previous students facilitated six discussion groups at the Ontario Agricultural College (OAC) Graduate Student Colloquium on Functional Foods. The response of the participants was very positive. One participant went so far as to say that she would use the facilitation technique she was exposed to (democracy) upon her return to Brazil. “I just loved it so much,” she lauded.
Dr. Jim Mahone and his students from the Facilitation and Conflict Management Class at the
OAC Graduate Student Colloquium, February 27, 2015. Photo credit: Arboretum Staff.
Through the many iterations of teaching this course, Jim has devised a set of tried and tested teaching methods that transform even the most unwilling presenters (those with their backs to the audience, reading their overcrowded powerpoint slides in a monotone voice for ten minutes) into captivating speakers (those who use their presence, voices, hand gestures, and movement to capture their audience, draw out discussions, and leave lasting impressions). This course is a transformative experience for the majority of students and attracts graduate students from Capacity Development and Extension, Rural Planning and Development, Geography, Public Health, and Environmental Sciences. He also teaches graduate courses in Community Environmental Leadership, Negotiation and Conflict resolution and an undergraduate course in Sustainable Communities
Alongside his teaching efforts, Jim is currently involved in various projects, including research on building rapport between international graduate students and their advisors and assessing the capacity of undergraduate students to implement innovation on return to the farm.