It’s that time of the year again when all of the world and its mother rave about the number game.
Not finances, I’m talking about “The Results”. It’s that time where several Boards across the country announce their earth-shattering “Board Exam Results”
This brings me to share a quick moment of nostalgia with you…
When I served as a French Facilitator for about 6-7 years, having experienced ages 3 to 85, I was met with all kinds of parents and students. While each came with their own flavours, the one common underlying theme for them (especially the parents) was always “scoring the highest marks”.
As for me? I was unphased by the “results”. Appalling thing for an educator to say out loud, I know. Hear me out…
My focus always remained on the journey, and the progress every student made. That was my gasoline.
Now I’m not saying marks aren’t important. In all these years I’ve had 100% success rate with 90% of the learners as toppers. But the focus was never to get those marks. It was, instead, always to make them fall in love with the language; to make sessions too compelling to miss out on; and to build a learning curve together with each learner.
Over a period of time, you become their confidante and their safe-space.
This rapport deep-rooted in them, a sense of ownership, accountability and mutual respect for the subject. Which, in turn, automatically ensured they’d put in all the hard work needed to get through.
But as I said, my high was in this journey I shared with each learner. Watching them grow from not being able to recognise the language, to speaking it. From making blunders, to realising their own silly mistakes. From multiple corrections, to muscle memory. Taking them from “I hate French because it has so many rules” to “I want to go to France and study further”; from “I don’t care, I just want to pass” to “how can I perform better the next time?”- This experience, this journey is truly rewarding and remarkable. And I wouldn’t trade it for the “highest marks”. (Aka the deemed end-results)
When I pivoted from Learning into the learning and development space, this is the one thing I still carry with me. And it works magically even in the corporate training space.
The success measure of an impactful facili training intervention is never “perfection”. Neither is it the number of activities you do; the flamboyant props; or the fancy sticky wall that’s merely a check-in-the-box.
Achieving the Desired outcomes are a non-negotiable, true. But how are we doing that is more vital.
It’s in the way you hold space, and allow your participants to come into their own.
It’s the journey you take the participants on- going from unknown-to-known and known-to-unknown.
And it’s about trusting the group to each make their own choice of takeaways and reflections. There are no hard and fasts, rights and wrongs.
Here’s to more people-centric, qualitative interventions!
The Journey or The Destination ?
