3. TABLE OF CONTENTS
PART ONE What will you learn by reading this document?
Who should read this article?
Important advice
Who am I to write all this?
What do I expect from you?
PART TWO Why the change….
PART THREE What is facilitation and why would you use it?
Difference between instruction and facilitation
PART FOUR What can go wrong
Asking the right questions
PART FIVE Debriefing and Facilitation
Collecting facts
Levels of facilitation
How to get started
PART SIX Conclusion
Leadership versus facilitation
Your turn …
5. What will you learn by reading this document?
Once an instructor, it is important that you keep evaluating yourself and keep
thinking of ways to improve your performance. No trainee is the same, so
therefore you need to think about your approach, each and every time.
Over the years I have seen instructors in many forms. In most situations, not
only in aviation, people become an instructor after some years of experience
on the job or more often after obtaining some seniority. Unfortunately this
does not necessarily mean they have what it takes to be an effective
instructor.
I have written this document for aviation instructors. This is maybe a bit
limited, because the article could well apply to all individuals involved in any
kind of instruction, or even in any kind of management. Especially the kind of
management you can t afford to make too many mistakes.
My main objective is not to show you how to be an instructor, but how to be
an effective instructor.
Mymain objective is
notto showyou howto
be an instructor, but
howto be an effective
instructor.
6. Who should read this article?
Perhaps I should add a caution before we start. This article is not for
everyone. It is written for people that are serious about taking care of their
trainees and are dedicated to training them to the best of their abilities.We will
see later on that this is hard work and that it requires loads of energy and
dedication.This is written for those people that are willing to look beyond the
paved paths and think outside the box.
This article is not limited to aviation though. It applies to everyone involved in
instruction. This could be in medicine, police, military, transport, etc, etc.
Basically anyone managing other individuals or groups could benefit from it.
By applying what is set out in this article you will probably be seen as
unconventional. This is not always easy, as many people will have an opinion
without the proper background knowledge. It is of course much safer to follow
the paved paths and do what all the others do.
Nothing is more rewarding however then motivated trainees that show good
progress, respect you and look at you as their role model.
So, I wrote this article for those people that want to be better, more effective,
instructors, managers and leaders.
Nothing is more
rewarding howeverthan
motivatedtrainees that
showgoodprogress,
respectyou andlookat
you as theirrole model
7. Important advice
Let me start with some important advice before we continue. It is a very simple piece of advice,
but I have learned over the years that it is one of the things that often stand in the way of
effective instruction. Here it is:
An instructorshould leave his ego at home!!
If you are instructing because it makes you feel superior or better then others, or if you became
an instructor because of peer pressure, you re in the wrong place doing the wrong job. As an
instructor you have to lead by example, be a role model but also a counsellor. You need to
gain your trainees trust. This means some hard work and discipline from your side. If you only
act like an expert and you pretend to be more knowledgeable and experienced than your
students, you loose credibility very quick.
Of course you will know more and you are more experienced, but this doesn t make you a better
person. Putting yourself at the level of the trainee and thinking with them, admitting your errors
and using your errors to show the trainee how to improve, makes you more trustworthy and
approachable. Think about it…. you probably made the same errors when you were a trainee
yourself.
Too many times I ve seen instructors judging their trainees on things they couldn t do, in terms of
'that guy can’t fly'. When I then asked what they tried to do to change this, the reply would often
be 'we reported it to the management'. But there was nothing the instructors did, apart from the
standard stuff. Remember, no trainee is the same. Different teachers and different background
create differences in motivation, perception and readiness to learn. As an instructor it is your job
to figure out where somebody stands and where to begin.
8. Let me introduce myself.
Before I get carried away, maybe it is better to introduce myself. Who am I to write all this? You
can find everything on my website, www.poweraerobatics.nl, and of course on Facebook,
LinkedIn and Twitter but here is the short version.
I ve been flying around the blue skies from the age of 1 2. I was totally obsessed with flying and
managed to get my Private Pilots License at the age of 1 8. Fairly quick after that I joined the
Netherlands Navy and spent a couple of years in the Naval Academy, before I started flying the
Lynx helicopter. Being in charge of your own helicopter and crew on the back of a ship for six
months, or so ,touring the Med or the Caribbean is fantastic and arguably one of the most fun
jobs in aviation. But everything has an end and I joined the Maritime Patrol Group, flying the P3
Orion. Unfortunately they were sold to Germany in 2004 and that s when my military life ended.
With the private jet market booming at the time, I decided to make the change and now I'm
flying fractionally owned private jets.
Most of the instruction I've done has been as a type rating instructor and examiner (TRI/TRE).
Apart from this I teach on the Instructor Core Course. We also do a Train the Trainer course for
cabin crew and ground crew instructors, which is a great opportunity to see how things change
outside the cockpit.
My personal goal is to have as much fun in flying as I can. To be honest, I never had a real desk
job and I hope I will never be forced to do one; I love flying in every aspect. One of my main
passions has always been aerobatics. This is a discipline in flying that offers too many
challenges to conquer and will probably never become boring. I can recommend it to all of you,
if you haven t tried it already!!
9. What do I expect from you?
Not a lot really. I m giving you this information for free, hoping that it makes you think about
being a better instructor. If I can achieve this I m a happy man. Although I can already say that
thinking about it alone won t be enough.
What I m about to tell you won t be something you will be able to apply over night. It is a process
of evaluating yourself and thinking of different ways to instruct. It needs practice, so in follow up
articles on my blog I will try to give you some practise.
I thought about this for a long time before I started writing, but I truly believe that by applying
what s written below, teaching will be more effective, more rewarding and an event where both
trainee and teacher benefit from. I hope you will all agree.
I ve seen it work many times now, and I ve also seen the effect it has on the trainees. All I ask
from you is to pass this information on to others involved in instructing, managing, leadership
etc. so we can together improve our efficiency, our joy in instructing and maybe improve the
world a little bit.
10. PARTTWOpart two
Why the change
Ok, enough about me. Let s have a look at how today s instruction is often conducted in this
modern world. I ve made a list below. Maybe I m generalising a bit and I realise that there are
many different levels of instructing so they will probably not all apply to everyone.
11. InstructionMODERN
1.You are an instructor because the company needed you
and it is good for your career
2.You think you’re not taken seriously among colleagues if
you’re not an instructor
3.You are disappointed with pre flight briefings. It is just as
easy to tell things in the air.
4.You strictly follow the syllabus, regardless of student
progress.
5.You are very good at telling your students what went
wrong. You see everything.
6.Your way of doing things is the only right way. You are
never wrong.
7.If your trainee comes unprepared and doesn’t know his
stuff that’s his problem, not yours.
8.If your trainee can’t get it right after a few attempts you
have another instructor look at it, or you will do it again
next time.
9.If a student has a question you can’t answer you make
up an answer.
10.The best students are the ones that know everything
and do everything right the first time.
11. When you debrief, you talk through the exercise and
explain the things that went wrong.
12. If a trainee denies the things that you claim went wrong
you become frustrated and you feel you are not respected.
13. Experienced pilots are hard to debrief. Who are you to
tell somebody more senior or experienced what to do?
14. Instructing is actually quite boring, because most people
make the same mistakes and you can pretty much predict
them.
15. When you debrief, you expect your trainee to shut up and
listen.
16. You are a very good instructor, because many trainees
told you so.
17. Trainees are out there to kill you
18. Sometimes you loose your patience and you shout at
your trainee. Some trainees just need this to wake up.
19. If a trainee or crew did well, the debriefing can be short.
20. Women can’t fly.
12. If you agree with the list above, no worries, you’re doing fine. Over the years
I’ve watched many different instructors, including myself, and this is how we
go about, in one way or the other.
Just stop reading here and continue with what you’re doing. Nobody will
criticise you for it and you will retire as a great airman.
Nobody will criticise you…. That’s interesting and true as well. When are you
debriefed as an instructor? Will a trainee tell you how you are doing on his
own accord? And if you ask him, what will he say? Most probably you’re
doing well.
I hope I made clear that I’m trying to change something here. If you
recognise yourself in one ore more points on the list above, I think you
should keep on reading, it will be worth it. But no hard feelings when you
don’t. Just think about it for a while. If you stop here, I wish you all the best
and many happy landings!!
Ifyou recognise yourself
in one ore more points
on the listabove, Ithink
you shouldkeep on
reading, itwillbe worth
it.
13. Ok, great, you are still here. Let’s continue then.
As I said before, the approach we will use to be a more effective instructor is something that
requires quite some thinking and dedication from your side. What I’m describing below is not
something I’ve invented myself, but a way of teaching that I think has great potential and is a
powerful tool. My experience, however, is that it is not used a lot, or in the wrong manner.
Unfortunately I will have to get a bit more serious for a while now to explain a few things. First,
let’s have a look at how (young) adults learn:
• adults need to know why; they need to see a use of their learning.
• adults have a self‐concept of being responsible for their own lives.
They resent and resist situations in which they feel others are
imposing their wills on them.
• adults have a greater quantity and quality of experience, therefore,
more emphasis is placed on techniques which use that experience,
such as group discussion and simulation exercises.
• adults become more ready to learn when they see a need for learning
in order to deal with real‐life situations.
• adults learn more effectively when the context is orientated so that
they can see that the learning will help them deal with tasks or
problems.
• adults are affected by external motivation, but they posses a far
more powerful internal motivation through job satisfaction or self‐
esteem.
When we look at the above, there are two tings that are constant factors influencing the
effectiveness of the teaching/learning process:
1. active participation bythe learner, and
2. meaningfulness ofthe content.
14. In aviation we have a long background of Crew Recourse Management (CRM). Many books
have been written on this subject and the use of CRM has brought aviation to a different level.
CRM introduced a new way of cooperating in the cockpit. It took away many of the old barriers
between captain and co-pilot and it has massively improved the way crews operate as a team
making aviation as a whole a lot safer.
But as an aviation instructor our job has traditionally been one of conveying information, typically
to trainees who are less knowledgeable than the instructor and to evaluate trainee performance.
We are more or less pushed in a situation where we are seen as the master and the trainee as a
“rooky”.
One of the things that the early developers of CRM recommended was that instructors should
facilitate crew briefings, rather than lecture, especially when trainees already poses substantial
experience and/or knowledge.
Carl Rogers (1 969) derived several principles of how to facilitate learning in aviation. The three
below are particularly relevant:
1. Learning is facilitated when the student participates responsibly in the learning
process. Students learn substantially more by participating actively rather than
passively.
2. Self initiated learning that involves the whole person of the learner ‐ feelings as
well as intellect ‐ is the most lasting and pervasive. This 'gut level' type of learning
arises from activities such as developing one's own ideas and learning difficult skills.
3. Independence, creativity and self‐reliance are all facilitated when self‐criticism and
self‐evaluation are primary and evalution by others secondary. It is through the
evaluation of your own behaviors that we learn from our mistakes and our successes so
we can become self‐reliant.
15. In aviation training our main objective is to teach a high level of skill to our trainees. We teach
them how to apply and understand the knowledge they already acquired in the classroom or
during previous experience.
When students participate actively it requires them to process information more deeply than
when they are just passively listening. In aviation it is of vital importance that the training
makes a long lasting impact.
So as an instructor you need to ask yourself two things:
• howdo Imake this impact
Crashing an aircraft or slapping your trainee in the face when the exercise goes wrong will
certainly have a long lasting impact. This will never be forgotten.
But this it not really something you want to do. So you need to think about other ways to make
an impression. We will see that when people participate more actively and discover things
themselves, they remember things much better. When they are more involved, the subject
matter is stored in the long term memory much quicker and more effectively.
• howdo IknowIve made the (right) impact
Once you think you have made an impact, you now need to check your trainees
understanding and find out whether you made the right impact, whether your trainee now
understands the subject the way you want him to understand it. Quite often, trainees don t
have questions if you ask them; this is a typical human response. Most people are still
processing data at that stage and will probably not have questions straight away. Quite often
people are also afraid of asking stupid things, especially in groups.
..... when people
participate more
activelyand
discoverthings
themselves,
theyremember
things much
better.
16. So, as an instructor it is your job to verify what they have learned. You have to ask your
trainee questions to find out if (s)he understood what was taught or if (s)he understands what
went well or not so well.
This is when it becomes a bit more challenging. To get an answer to the two questions above
you will need to change your approach with different people.
As I said before, your trainees will have different backgrounds, ideas, experience, culture, sex
(I will come back later to item 20 in the list ….), etc, etc. It is now your job to teach them
something, preferably in an effective way. But how?
We continue….
17. PARTTHREEpart three
What is facilitation and why would you use it?
Let me introduce you to facilitated learning.
18. Facilitation is not something new and also not something that originates in aviation. It is used
in many forms. Good examples of trained facilitators at work in our day to day environment
are, for instance, talk show hosts. By just asking a few good questions and often without
enormous subject knowledge, they manage to get the people they interview to talk and
discuss.
What they then do is channel the information and manage the conversation. If sidesteps
become too big and lengthy they make sure the conversation goes back into the right
direction by asking another question.
Let s look at how Wikipedia defines the facilitator:
"An individual who enables groups and organizations to work more effectively; to collaborate and achieve
synergy. She or he is a 'content neutral' party who by not taking sides or expressing or advocating a point of
view during the meeting, can advocate for fair, open, and inclusive procedures to accomplish the group's work" -
Doyle[1 ]"
One who contributes structure and process to interactions so groups are able to function effectively and make
high-quality decisions. A helper and enabler whose goal is to support others as they achieve exceptional
performance" - Bens[2]
"The facilitator's job is to support everyone to do their best thinking and practice. To do this, the facilitator
encourages full participation, promotes mutual understanding and cultivates shared responsibility. By supporting
everyone to do their best thinking, a facilitator enables group members to search for inclusive solutions and build
sustainable agreements" - Kaner[3]
Training facilitators are used in adult education. These facilitators are not always subject experts, and attempt to
draw on the existing knowledge of the participant, and to then facilitate access to training where gaps in
knowledge are identified and agreed on. Training facilitators focus on the foundations of adult education:
establish existing knowledge, build on it and keep it relevant. The role is different from a trainer with subject
expertise. Such a person will take a more leading role and take a group through an agenda designed to transmit
a body of knowledge or a set of skills to be acquired.
19. So if we look at the differences between instructing and facilitating we can say that instruction
is primarily a telling activity, where knowledge and skills are developed in trainees through
either direct communication or demonstration, with questioning primarily used to check
understanding or reinforce key messages.
Facilitation on the other hand, can be described as a technique that helps trainees to discover
for themselves what is appropriate and effective, in the context of their own experience and
circumstances.
The principle purpose of instructing is to transfer knowledge and skills efficiently, whereas with
facilitation the principle purpose is to encourage a change in attitude or behaviour by the
student gaining insight or becoming aware of what they are doing, and being motivated to
change.
People tend to only do things they want to do; so telling people that they are wrong and need
to change is rarely effective. People generally do not behave in a way that they think is wrong.
They are aware that others might disapprove, but they will rationalise their behaviour as being
appropriate under the circumstances. Telling them that you think they are wrong gives them
no new information and often motivates them to continue their current behaviour.
The key is for them to understand why others disapprove and the consequences of continuing
as they are.
As you can see, both techniques are used and they both have their function. It is my strong
belief however that facilitation can be used more frequent. Not only in debriefings. Also in
briefings, classroom instruction, meetings, etc.
....people
generallydo not
behave in a way
thattheythinkis
wrong....
20. Let s look at a simple example. You want to teach your trainee how to land in a crosswind.
If you instruct this, you would probably explain the technique and ask your trainee if s(he) has
any questions. The answer in most cases will be no. You will then go to the aircraft and do some
crosswind landings. The trainee doesn t do very well and you then find out that the
understanding of the trainee as to when to align the aircraft with the runway is lacking. Maybe
because you didn t explain it or maybe because s(he) didn t understand what you meant.
Now, if you would facilitate a briefing, you could start with a question on the subject, i.e. “ what
will crosswind do with the aircraft during the flare?” Based on the answer you get, you now get
information as to where the trainee stands. Maybe you get a very good explanation, but it could
well be that you have to fill in some gaps. But listen very carefully, summarise what you hear and
ask more questions. This will give you the information you need to tailor your instruction. Once
you ve determined what bits need more explanation it is your turn to speak.
What you are now doing is combining instruction with facilitation, which prevents you from
having unwanted surprises in flight. You know that s(he) knows. But, more importantly, you put
yourself at a different level. Your trainee has told you what (s)he knows or what his/her thoughts
are and you gave additional information when needed.
Remember: “a wellpreparedtrainee is yourbestdefence
mechanism in flight”
By preparing your trainee this way, your job, in the air or in the simulator, is going to be much
easier. You ve reduced the workload and increased your situational awareness and it now gives
you more time to actually look at your trainee and to analyse his or her progress and behaviour.
When your trainee is well prepared you only need to give short bits of information during the
exercise. When you do need to instruct during the exercise, facilitation is not the best method.
This is where you only give short bursts of information. If you need to speak more than that, it s
probably better to save this for the debriefing.
21. Not so long ago I conducted a facilitated brief with a trainee on how to fly a visual recovery to an
airfield. I started by asking her: “what speed are you going to fly when you enter the downwind
leg. She told me 1 80 kts. I then asked her if she could see an advantage to flying slower (i.e. 1 40
kts) with more flaps. She didn t really have a good answer, so I asked her what would happen to
the pitch attitude with more flaps and a lower speed and made her understand that this would
increase visibility and would decrease the speed difference between us and other traffic: the
airport we were planned to fly into has a lot of VFR slow moving traffic. We then went through
the pattern in the same question and answer technique, making sure I was covering all the
common mistakes.
So, when we arrived at the airport and got the clearance for the visual recovery I didn t have to
say anything. She flew it spot on.
The difference between instruction and facilitation
I think it is pretty clear now what the differences are between instructing and facilitating. The
table below, however, gives a nice overview of the differences.
22.
23. PARTFOURpart four
What can go wrong?
I mentioned earlier that this technique of teaching is not mastered overnight and will need
quite some practise. Experienced facilitators say that it takes about three years for someone
to become an effective facilitator.
24. I made the comparison with being a talk show host earlier on. If you would look at some footage
of your favourite talk show host from the days they just started and compare it to their show right
now you will see big differences. They didn t learn it overnight and you won t either. It needs
practise.
So before you reach that point, and believe me I haven t reached it yet either, you might get
frustrated with it. Later on I will talk about facilitated debriefings and this is where it becomes
really interesting.
The key is that you need to think of the right questions to ask. And this needs some really careful
thought. Especially during your first attempts you will probably ask the wrong questions and you
will therefore not get the answers you expect. So now your whole strategy is gone and you re
moving in a direction you don t want to go. Especially if you want to make a point in a debriefing,
this can be very frustrating and after a while you give up and you might think facilitation is not
your cup of tea.
But don t give up too quick!! When you are reviewing the session in your head later on, think of
other ways you could have started and other questions you could have asked.
Ideally facilitation should be trained in trainer courses by experienced facilitators. But
unfortunately this is often not possible due to time constrains or other factors. Therefore I will
give you regular examples and hopefully some tools to train it through my blog in order to give
you a bit more practice and to show you how facilitation can be used in different circumstances,
like check flights, line oriented flight training (LOFT), basic instruction, etc. Just subscribe to my
RSS feed on www.poweraerobatics.nl to keep you updated.
The keyis that
you needto
thinkofthe
rightquestions
to ask.... and
this needs some
reallycareful
thought.
25. Asking the right questions.
In order to facilitate effectively you need to develop a skill of asking the right questions. Asking
the right questions at the right time is a fundamental skill of facilitation and these are the type
of questions that can be used.
The key is that you need to get information from your trainee. So your role is to facilitate the
conversation and to make sure that your trainee gives you an insight of his or her knowledge
and understanding.
26. Tryto be clear
andto the point.
Itis betterto
waitforan
answerandthen
aska better
question, than
to fixthe
problem with
more words.
So what you need to avoid are for instance leading questions, like You did do that, didn t you'
or ' wouldn t you agree that…… This will probably start an awkward discussion about who is
right and the outcome will be less effective.
If you start by saying your speed was too high on final your trainee might disagree or come up
with all kinds of excuses or maybe even deny the fact. If you ask what was your speed at 4nm
on the approach? you will probably get the actual value. You can then ask if this is normal or
direct the questions towards your trainees understanding to why the speed was too high.
Multiple questions are also to be avoided. You have to give your trainee time to think about an
answer. If you ask multiple questions in one sentence your trainee will get confused. That s why
it is important to make sure that your first question is well thought of.
Other questions to avoid are rhetorical questions and ambiguous questions. Try to be clear
and to the point. It is better to wait for an answer and then ask a better question, than to fix the
problem with more words.
27. PARTFIVEpart five
Debriefing and Facilitation
OK, now for the important bit, the debriefing. This is where facilitation can be a very
powerful tool to make your instructing more effective. In general I think most of the
learning is done in the briefing and the debriefing. This is where you have the time and
resources to make your trainee understand. But it is your task to make this happen!!
28. If you really want to improve your trainees performance you first have to analyse carefully what
went well and what needs improvement. And this can be quite difficult. As I said before, trainees
come with different backgrounds, perception and readiness to learn. So even if they make
similar mistakes, the route cause of these mistakes can be different. By investigating this root
cause you can really make the difference and help your trainee forward.
A nice example of this is a check ride I did with a former fighter pilot. In general these guys have
great flying skills and as did this one. The ILS we flew into Hamburg however was a bit sloppy
and badly managed. I knew he could do better than this and I started backtracking the events.
Before we started our descent we got a clearance to fly direct to our initial approach fix (IAF).
When the trainee typed this into the Flight Management System (FMS) he made a mistake and
we turned the wrong way. He tried to correct this but struggled a bit with the system. This is
quite common for ex fast jet pilots because they didn t have an FMS on their fighter aircraft. This
is also the point where they go into the old habit of solving the problem alone instead of asking
their fellow crewmember for help.
Eventually he managed to fix the problem, but he had to rush his approach briefing, while
starting the initial descent. Checklists were done late and this is where it all started.
So, to debrief this, it would be easy for me to say that the ILS wasn t flown nicely and that he can
do a lot better than that. But by analysing this event I could determine that the cause of this was
some lack of knowledge of how to use the FMS and a need to improve Crew Resource
Management. So this is where I focussed my debriefing on. The sloppy ILS was just a tool for
me to use when I started my facilitated debrief.
Ifyou reallywant
to improve your
trainees
performance you
firsthave to
analyse carefully
whatwentwelland
whatneeds
improvement. This
can be quite
difficult...
29. By asking the right questions and letting the trainee self analyse, I m trying to make him
discover what went wrong.
The big advantage ofhaving yourtrainee discoverhis orhergoodand
badpoints is thatitwillgive them a much betterunderstanding.
You forced them to think about and analyse what they did and it will therefore be embedded in
the memory in a much better way.
By doing this, it is very important to listen very carefully. By answering my questions the trainee
is giving me valuable information. When I analysed the problem for myself, I made an
assumption that this was the reason for the error.
But during the questioning, the trainee might give me new information that will change my
thinking as to the cause of the problem. He might have had a bad phone call from his wife just
before the flight, because one of his children went ill and that was why he was distracted. So you
need to maintain some flexibility to adjust your opinion.
Collecting facts
In order to figure out what your trainee does well and which area s need to improve, the first
thing you need to do is collect data. On most of your training sessions you will be making notes
of the things that happen. If you don t, start doing it, because it is impossible to remember
everything that happened, let alone analyse the causes for the behaviour.
30. Below is an example of part of my notes from a simulator session I recently did.
31. As you can see I make quite some notes from just about anything I see during the session.
Good things and bad things.
Now, to find the points you want to focus on during your debriefing, you have to organise your
notes. It is never a good idea to go straight into the debriefing. Take a break, get a coffee or put
the aircraft to bed first. But take some time to think about what you have seen and look at your
notes.
Sometimes you might be really disappointed with a trainee or frustrated about what happened,
so you need some time to calm down and process the information.
When I go through my notes, I generally mark the individual points with + or – After doing that I
try to figure out if some points are connected or relate to the same problem. On the example
above you can see that a couple of points are proof for some bad Situational Awareness and
Decision Making, while others show good Cooperation. You can also group them relating to
whatever Behavioural Markers system you or your company use. Or related to technical
behaviour such as flying skills.
The importantbithere is thatyou identifythe areas you wantto debrief,
using the proof(the data) you have collectedin flight.
32. In general, try to limit those points to about two to three. In your debrief you will cover them in
decreasing order of severity.
Now you are almost ready to start your facilitated debrief. Remember, to be successful at
facilitation you need to ask the right questions. In the debriefing, more than in the briefing, you
are going to act a bit like the talk show host, up to the point where you have the information you
need and the time has come to instruct. So, you need to think about your first question.
In the case above, the first thing I wanted to cover was Situational Awareness and Decision
Making. A start question could then have been: ‘when did you decide to turn towards your take
off alternate?’ The trainee will then probably tell me that it was late, or that he did it after 1 0
minutes. I can then ask ‘why do we include a take off alternate in our planning during Low
Visibility Procedures (LVP)? or 'what caused you to turn so late'
Depending on the answers I get I will now ask more, or start tailoring my instruction to the
needs of the trainee.
Looking at the initial questioning you will see that open questions, starting with why, when,
how, who, etc, are the right questions to ask. Use the proof you have to start the self analysis.
But go about in a gentle way like a talk show host, not like a lawyer putting a witness on stand.
Remember, to be
successfulat
facilitation you
needto askthe
rightquestions...
33. Levels of facilitation
You will discover as you start facilitating that not everyone is open to facilitation. Some people
will be eager to discuss and analyse their performance, while others will wait for you to start
talking and you will have a hard time drawing the information out of them. Again, good
questioning will help you, but you will also need to have a feel for the crew s capabilities to
participate.
In general, when crews or trainees self analyse, evaluate and draw conclusions themselves with
little guidance from the instructor we speak about a high level of facilitation.
Your role is mainly to listen and observe. You guide the discussion along the various topics,
making sure that everything is covered (objectives are met) and that participation is balanced
between the crewmembers.
In most cases however crewmembers will not be that eager to self analyse and a more direct
approach from you as a facilitator is required. You will have to help the crew to start their self
analysis and to discover the main issues by asking the right questions. This will be an
intermediate level of facilitation.
When you get no reply to your efforts for the trainee or crew to analyse their performance we
speak about a low level of facilitaion.
Apart from the levels of facilitaion, you will probably use many different styles based on the
people you re dealing with. In the picture below you will find some tips for effective facilitation.
34.
35. Debriefing: firstthings saidare bestretained.
In most debriefings you will probably use an intermediate level of facilitation. After your analysis
of the performance you ve determined some major points you would like the crew or trainee to
discuss as in the example above.
One of the current philosophies in debriefing technique is that 'first things said are best retained'.
So you set the agenda for the debriefing by covering your main points in decreasing order of
severity.
Normally you would probably start your debriefing with something good to make your trainee(s)
feel at ease. The good thing about facilitating a discussion however, is that your trainee will not
immediately think something was bad, or that nothing was good at all. Your aim is to let your
trainees find out themselves what was good or bad. Therefore you will see that trainees will be
much less defensive.
One thing to avoid is to short change high performing trainees or crew with a quick debrief. Quite
often people understand things went well, but are not aware why things went well. Facilitation
can be a very powerful tool now to make them aware of their good performance.
36. How to get started
As I mentioned a couple of times already, effective facilitation is not something you learn
overnight.
Facilitation needs practice andthought.
Andmore practice....andmore thought.
One of the things that can help you get going however is to let the crews tell you what went well
and what they could have done better. In many cases they will probably mention the area s you
have on your agenda as well.
When you are debriefing crews, it is sometimes beneficial to have them write down what they
thought they did well and where they thought they could improve. Not only for themselves, but
also for their fellow crewmember(s).
Looking now at what they have written you can start a discussion on the topic you find most
severe. Ask a good question, listen and guide.
A good trick is to start asking a question to a less senior crewmember. Let them start and make
sure they can finish what they are about to say, before you let the other crewmember(s) share
their thoughts. This way you make sure that every participant gets an equal share in the
discussion.
37. Development of the debriefing
So, up to now you have been covering the main points that occurred during the exercise in a
facilitative style. With your questioning you enabled your trainee(s) to find out what went well and
where they need to improve. Once this is clear it is time to instruct a bit more and tell them how
they can improve. Unfortunately this is often forgotten or focussed in the wrong direction,
because the problem wasn t analysed properly.
Once you and your trainee analysed the root cause of the problem, it is now time to explain how
to fix this. Or to explain why things went so well. It is very important that you now give the tools to
become better.
Making people aware of their behaviour is only part of the job and mostly done by facilitation.
After that you give them the tools through instruction or a mix of instruction and more facilitation.
Once you have covered the main topics, you will probably continue with the minor things that
occurred and are not related to the main topics. You can do this in any way you want. I normally
go through the flight in a chronological order.
Summary
At he end of the debriefing you want your trainee to walk away with a good understanding of the
things to improve. It is therefore important to summarise the main points and repeat what needs
to be done to improve. Explain in detail where they should focus on. A statement like ‘you have
to go back into the books’ or ‘read the manual’ is too broad. Try to be specific.
You need to help them and give them direction. This is when most of the learning is done. You
have to use your knowledge and skills now to guide your trainee towards a higher level.
39. One of the items on the list of instruction in this modern world was that women can t fly.
Although I do meet the odd guy that truly believes this (sometimes without even having flown
with the female in question), I think this is total nonsense. I have flown with some very good
female pilots and some of them perform better than many men. In aerobatics competition we
have no real separate class anymore, and the men are struggling to keep up with the level of
the female competitors.
Something that might create some obstacles to learning in our men s world is that women often
have a different perception and therefore need a slightly different approach. From a men s point
of view, of course. When women are teaching men this will work the other way around. In both
cases you might run into a situation where your standard instructional approach might not work.
Of course it is then very easy to blame your trainee, but it is much better to investigate different
paths. Facilitative teaching can be a great tool here to achieve this.
But when it comes to facilitation there is more.Women by nature are very good listeners.And
because of this, women tend to do quite well at facilitation.
Men tend to seek for solutions and will present their solution without listening and fully
analysing the situation. This is often one of the outcomes when relations break up. Women
don t. They listen, ask questions….and do more listening.
And this, dear men, makes them excellent facilitators.
Women bynature
are verygood
listeners.
Theylisten, ask
questions....and
do more listening.
40. Leadership versus facilitation
I was watching an interview not so long ago with a journalist, Jeroen Smit. He investigates
leadership in large companies, banks, etc. One of the things he observed is that most of the
higher management in many of these big companies are white men that studied at similar
universities and have similar background. Only a few percent are female and an even lesser
percentage have a different skin colour.
He also finds that they run the company from their standpoint and from what they think is right.
And most people around them will agree with them, even if they don t. The world smells like
fresh paint. (like when the queen visits your home town and everything is repainted the week
before) But we have clearly seen in the past decade, that this kind of management hasn t been
highly effective. Can you imagine what facilitation could do for them?
In aviation we often say that if we would fly an aircraft like some managers run their company,
we would crash every day. And this is probably true.
As a result of Crew Resource Management we moved away from compliant leadership
towards engaged leadership. The captain has final responsibility, but expects engagement from
his crew to get to the end result.
But in the world of flight instructors I still see a lot of compliant leadership. From the above we
have learned that this is far from perfect.
In aviation we
often saythatif
we wouldflyan
aircraftlike some
managers run
theircompany, we
wouldcrash every
day.
41. Ask yourself: when do you get debriefed as an instructor? Your trainee is certainly not going to
do it. Maybe through a critique form, but everyone knows it s a small world and you will always
run into each other again at some point. So this critique won t be harsh. And in a training
department it is often their word against the “highly valued” instructor.
So, we need to stay critical towards ourselves. And even there you can use facilitation. Here s
an example. If I make a bad landing, as part of the debriefing, I ask my trainee what went
wrong with my landing. First you will get a small laugh and you might have to motivate your
trainee a bit to start talking. But then you analyse together what went wrong. First you admit
that you re not perfect ( you gain respect ) and your trainee will learn from analysing what you
We live in an environment where we can make very little mistakes. We do everything to avoid
them in normal flying. Let s continue this behaviour by being an effective instructor.
Its a win-win situation. Thinkaboutit!!
42. Your turn...
After reading the above it is now your turn to have a go. Remember, I m not a facilitation guru.
In this manifesto I ve just tried to explain how I think instruction can be made more effective. It
works for me and I sincerely hope it will work for you.
If this short guide has meant anything to you I would really appreciate your feedback. Please
share your ideas with me, and all the others that have been reading this. Leave a reaction on
www.poweraerobatics.nl
You might have your own ideas on this and I m really interested in hearing them. If you want to
stay anonymous that s fine.
Since facilitation it still heavily underused in aviation I m trying to create an increasing group of
people that use it and believe in it. So, if it helps for you, don t hesitate to tell others so they can
benefit from it too.
Thanks a lot for taking the time to read this guide. It means a lot to me. I m very grateful!!
Good luck,
Frank van Houten
43. Resources
FAA Aviation Instructor Handbook
Facilitation and Debriefing in Aviation Training and Operations, Key Dismukes and
Guy.M. Smith 2000
Wikipedia
