Giving Instructions
By Adam Chan

Instructing and Debriefing
From the behavioral school, carefully crafted instructions are able to condition the participants to act in the way as structured by the design of the activity.

Ensuring success in any debriefing session definitely has a lot to do with the questioning skill of the facilitator. Without a doubt, asking the right question is the key to unlock the reservation in participants’ sharing but the overall success should not be solely linked to questioning alone. What make debrief rich are the learnable moments that occur during the activities. One should not take for granted that any teambuilding activity will deliver the right amount of learnable moments all the time. When facilitators intervene, essentially they are creating those learnable moments. However, interventions like this are active and highly visible. Only when giving instructions is given its fair share of attention would the facilitators craft the instructions carefully. While interventions are explicit, the art of giving instructions that influence is implicit. Doing so will create the right amount of contrasting behaviors / assumptions thus providing sufficient learnable moments for the participants to infer upon. When the facilitator is able to identify these moments, the debrief session will have adequate and relevant topics to be worthy and meaningful.

Facilitators have ample of opportunities to give instructions. If the facilitators overlooked the importance of giving instructions, it is easy to imagine how many potential opportunities can be lost. The art of integrating the principles of conditioning into giving instructions is done by giving instructions explicitly but carrying implicit meanings. As a result, influencing is being achieved unobtrusively.

Let’s look at the types of instructions commonly used by facilitators.

Explicit instructions – the aim is to achieve clarity for the participants, usually it emphasize the A to Z of the activity. It covers safety pointers, duration, requirements and learning objectives.

Implicit instructions – usually being weaved into the explicit instructions to induced cognitive ambiguities to the participants’ interpretation of the activity. While ambiguities are deliberately induced, it should not affect the clarity built up by the explicit instructions.

Let’s use the classic trolley as example;

The facilitator started with inviting the participants to stand on their respective skis without emphasizing the different ski’s colors. The briefing went on to cover some safety tips on handling the ropes on proper skiing posture. When the participants started to exhibit signs of eagerness to start, the facilitator can commence instructing them the essence of the colored plastic balls in the field. Here is an extract of the instructions of trolley;

Facilitator: (point to one team at a time) What color balls do you think your team is in-charged of?

Amazingly, they will assume the ski’s color to be consistent with the plastic balls’ color.

Participants: Blue! (if you point a team standing on blue skis)

Facilitator: Your team is required to collect all the colored plastic balls you have mentioned. However, if anyone makes contact with the yellow ball, the entire team must get off the ski and carry the ski back to the start!

Take note of the participants’ immediate interpretations of the yellow balls.

Participants: (some participants may say) Remember guys, don’t touch the yellow balls.

If the given instructions are able to induce the participants in saying above, it would be considered as successful. After all, the purpose is to get the participant to make assumptions that later turned into inhibitions or obstacles during the trolley activities as a result in competitive behaviors and only to found out later there was little gain to compete at all.

Next Time
Use the below rule of thumb the help you in crafting the instructions the next time you are planning for a program.

- Always know the desire outcomes of the activity
- Be familiar with the activity flow
- Giving instructions can be achieved in parts or at a single attempt
- Get an unsuspecting victim to test the instructions

The next time when you give instructions or training another rookie facilitator, place the needed emphasis in giving instructions as like stripping before shower. We should probably not take stripping properly for granted if we wish to successfully take a shower. Cheers.