Giving Instructions
By Adam Chan

Giving instruction is almost like the routine of unclothing before showering as in any teambuilding activities must have in order to be successful.

Probably the first thing any rookie facilitator would learn is giving proper instructions. With proficient instructional skills, conducting a good teambuilding program is 50% achieved, right?
Instruction is briefing defined as follows;
Instructions; A message describing how something is to be done, or the activities of educating or instructing; activities that impart knowledge or skill.

If I want to be the best guitarist, I play only guitar and listen to guitar pieces, and nothing else. Would you agree? You may learn that many great jazz guitarists get their major influences not from other jazz guitarist but from other forms of music. Imagine when jazz was yet to be invented, where would those guitarists who later became jazz greats get their musical inspiration and influences from? E.g. the late Joe Pass, touted as one of the best jazz guitarist in the way he improvised. At the time his style was evolving, there were not other guitarists who played with such style. It turned out that his primary influence was from Art Datum’s playing who was a progressive jazz pianist in the 60s. Joe Pass skillfully translated Art Datum’s piano work onto his guitar, overcoming the difficulties in playing piano styled music on guitar that later grew into a genre by itself known as finger-style jazz.

Facilitators commonly discuss methods of facilitation in great depth. They will spare no effort in learning the art of facilitation, even pursuing it to personal mastery. In the book of Fifth Discipline, it focuses on connectivity of all things by some huge complex systems. To become a better facilitator should not mean focusing solely on facilitation methods. Those who isolate themselves to only facilitation skill may miss out a great deal of other complimentary skills. The toddler probably took for granted that mobility is second nature, hence. Guitarists who isolate their learning process may not achieve personal mastery. What about facilitators?

The Art of Instructing
When facilitators give instructions, they were actually making deliberate attempts to solicit expected behaviors from the participants. The instructions were meant to influence the participants to response in certain ways as structured by the facilitator. It is common for many inexperienced facilitators to view giving instructions as a routine to the whole of running any teambuilding activity. This erroneous view of giving instructions lies in not understanding its potential. When a facilitator views giving instruction as a routine, its importance will inevitably be relegated to the standing of auxiliary. What facilitation cannot achieve may be achievable by giving instructions appropriately.

Example one: if a client wishes to promote stronger collaboration among the members through teambuilding activities; a good way to deliver the learning objective is to inject unspoken competition to create greater contrast between the competitive paradigm and collaborative paradigm. The greater the contrast, the higher the visibility in observable behaviors which would be used as discussion points thus leading to deeper learning.

Would the participant naturally engage into a competition without any intervention?
Sure chances can make it happen but for the paying client to accommodate this uncertainty will not be possible by any common industry standard. Creating the intervention starts from delivering the activity instructions. However with some careful thinking, facilitator could deliver a set of instructions to implicitly drive competitive subtlety. If they ended up competing, the facilitator gains, if they collaborated, the facilitator gains too.

Example two: a client may wish to surface some underlying assumptions at the workplace as a mean to diffuse tension between colleagues. Assumption is tacit and there is no good way to demonstrate the effects of underlying assumptions other than inducing them to make some assumptions that result in diminishing of results. To do so, the instructions need to deliberately crafted, using the right words, right tone and right demonstration. Imagine if the activity is left to its natural evolvement and making assumption was not illuminated in anyway. Even with good debriefing ability, the task of achieving the learning outcome through facilitation alone will not be easy.