Counselor Training Session: Communication and Facilitation

By Shirley Tsui & Tony Cheung

A new range of Bronze Award activities organized by ‘Vision Youth Leadership Program’ will begin around the end of June. To facilitate a better training for the visioneers, counselors will be arranged for each group to check with the team’s progress and provide adequate assistance. The training sessions for the counselors was started in May to help the counselors equipping themselves with skills and knowledge to face the coming challenges in the activities.

In the third session, Lynda Watson from Dreamation was invited to talk about Communication and Facilitation. Dreamation is a non-profitable organization which has been organizing leadership training workshops and experiential learning activities. Dreamation emphasizes ‘Forming Foundations; Unlocking Passions; Realizing Dreams’ and ‘Dreaming without Limits’. Lynda is an expert on youth engagement, and has a life mission to make positive and peaceful change in the world while inspiring and supporting others to pursue their dreams.

The session began with the discussion on challenges and joys in leading groups. Difficulties may arise when we are facing a group of energetic teenagers, including arguments and distrust between group members. At the same time, they are also the nurses of greatness, as these challenges can bring us joys and learning opportunities, make us smile, establish remarkable relationship and nurture mutual growth. Lynda stressed the importance of forming the linkage between difficulties and joys and ‘never doubt your impact’, as they are the motivations for many people to continue volunteering.

Communication plays a vital role in facilitating group interaction. In the following part of the session, Lynda introduced the concept of ‘personal space’, which can alter the flow of communication, and varies among individuals. If we accidentally step into a person’s personal space, he or she may feel unsettled and thus adversely affect the communication within the group. By observing an individual’s petty actions, such as leaning back, moving backwards and laughing embarrassingly, we can understand if we have stepped into one other’s personal space. As counselors, we should be aware of group members’ personal space and step in or out at the right time so the group can be enveloped in an atmosphere of comfortableness.

In addition, making use of different learning methods can be so helpful in progressive learning. To tailor made teaching plans that fit to learners, Lynda introduced seven learning methods, which can be used in groups and workshops to boost each member’s learning potential. They include:

1. Linguistic, the learners who love to read, write and tell stories,

2. Logical, the mathematically inclined learners who enjoy solving problems,

3. Spatial, who are the visualizers that have natural artistic abilities,

4. Musical, the type of learner that is the best at noticing details, pitches and rhythms that escape the normal listener,

5. Bodily, those who are always on the move and prefer active education,

6. Interpersonal, the learners that adapt easily to any type of social situation, have many friends and are excellent leaders,

7. Intrapersonal, strong willed leaners who work best alone and have a deep understanding of themselves.

What’s more, Lynda precisely delivered the skills of debriefing before the end of the session. A good debriefing can help members to consolidate their experience and foster their learning of knowledge. One of the debriefing skills makes use of Kurt Lewin’s Model of Experiential Learning and Kolb’s Learning Cycle. Undergoing ‘Genuine, personal experience’, ‘Observation and reflections time’, Forming ideas and generalization’ and ‘Testing implications in new situations’, visioneers would be able to better re-structuring their own experience, and apply what they have learnt to the daily life.