Leadership

This video will discuss the leadership model from Tannenbaum & Schmidt.   It will help you understand how to adopt different teaching styles which are suitable for different situations. 

As a facilitator, your group will see you for a little while as their leader, and we would like to just offer you one leadership styles model from a couple of people called Tannenbaum and Schmidt, it is a leadership styles continuum. And what the model says is that you can adopt a range of different leadership styles which are suitable to different situations. And these different styles will be useful to you when you are working with your group. Initially, you might need to tell, you will tell your group who you are, you will tell your group why they are there, you will tell your group some information about the housekeeping. So where are the fire exits, etc? So there will be some telling, and that is the first part of this leadership styles continuum.

You may need to do a little bit of selling, so selling the idea of the facilitated session, selling the idea that these people can talk to you, selling the idea that their information is going to be used appropriately and constructively. Once you have sold your session to them, then there will be an air of consultation that is going on because you are asking questions, you are consulting with people about their experiences, you are consulting with people so that they will share with you their ideas. So consult is the third part of the leadership styles continuum.

And then finally, the final style is empower. So what facilitation is all about is empowering people to have their say, to get their voice heard. So you will be a really successful facilitator if, during your session, you can move through those different styles and then hand over control to your group. So we have said all the way through these videos it is not about you, it is all about them. So by empowering your group to have their say, have their voice heard, then that is a successful facilitation.