“The CCAR Recovery Coach Academy is a 60-hour training masquerading as thirty,” is a refrain my fellow teachers \/trainers \/facilitators* have been hearing from me for a decade.\u00a0 The observation is both compliment – the program references so many basic coaching tenets – and frustration.\u00a0 Lately, the frustration is winning out.<\/p>\n
Two items:<\/p>\n
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When pressed on how we’ll manage to “get through all the material” if we can’t call on Elmo, Phil Valentine earned my undying (yes!) respect for responding, “that’s the facilitator’s job; trust the facilitator.”\u00a0 Phil is a master.<\/p>\n
Over the years, as I increasingly enjoy developing PowerPoints, I have less and less use of them.\u00a0 (I created the above graphic in PowerPoint.)\u00a0 Shadowing me as he prepares to become a teacher\/trainer\/facilitator, one intern looked me in the eye recently and asked, “how much of the material you prepared did you actually deliver today?”\u00a0 Great question!\u00a0 (The world needs more questions.)<\/p>\n
“About 50%,” I acknowledged.\u00a0 But feedback from his fellow participants told a more important story: we hit all our learning objectives for the day.\u00a0 By the time we regrouped the following morning and reviewed the previous day’s lessons, participants again hit the top notes.\u00a0 How?\u00a0 They were engaged and workin’ it.\u00a0 In their own time and without sabotage from the phony demands of prepared material or Elmo.<\/p>\n
And, yes, we closed the day at the exact time promised.<\/p>\n
So how is this done?\u00a0 Very simply.\u00a0 Stop – a lot.\u00a0 Get spontaneous.\u00a0 Trust that responding in the moment to something apparently off-track can be a terrific opportunity for skills practice in real time and rich conceptual discussions.\u00a0 If you’re truly present to your group and your material, you’ll ultimately keep the focus on what matters.<\/p>\n
One participant recently observed, “You knew all along where this conversation was going when you asked that first question (that’s not in the facilitator guide), didn’t you?”\u00a0 No, I didn’t.\u00a0 The question occurred to me because it was in the group.\u00a0 I asked the question because, as Claudia Black once remarked to me, “I wanted to hear the answer.”\u00a0 (Ah, curiosity – the trainer’s secret ingredient!)\u00a0 But I did know how the question was relevant, and how I could relate it to the day’s objectives.\u00a0 Which, to paraphrase Phil, is my job.<\/p>\n
No disrespect, but too many trainers come into the field by accident, not by a passion or a talent to teach\/train\/facilitate.\u00a0 I was horrified to learn that many behavioral health agencies think so little of these arts that handing a Facilitators Guide – and told to deliver it – is believed to be enough preparation for trainers.\u00a0 Whaaaat!!!!!<\/p>\n
These same agencies (or their cousins) are currently lobbying to destroy the NYCB Trainer Registry by restoring opaque vetting authority to themselves and away from an organization expressly established to elevate training standards by vesting authority in trainers themselves.\u00a0 In its day, not only did NYCB introduce minimum experience as a Trainer Registry member requirement but pioneered a training profession-specific ethical code – the Member Standards of Practice, complete with a transparent complaints protocol.\u00a0 As you would expect in any profession.\u00a0 We may hope that NYCB sticks to its foundational principles.\u00a0 The field needs it!<\/p>\n
I’ve been a professional trainer for decades.\u00a0 In that time, the very worst training I’ve attended has been in the peer recovery profession.\u00a0 I’ve listened to self-styled trainers misinterpret the meaning and value of the concepts they’re trusted to convey.\u00a0 I’ve been in classes where the facilitator was so out of his depth that, with vestiges of co-dependency, I was tempted to deliver the material for him and put him out of his misery.\u00a0 I’ve been in groups where not knowing the meaning of “self-seeking” was considered OK for a module exploring the Promises of Sobriety from AA literature.<\/p>\n
But I will not despair.<\/p>\n
There’s always hope in a new generation, and trainers are coming into the field from inprov theater and psychodrama; modalities without workbooks or slidedecks, but skillful in spontaneity and highly attuned to the energy and attention of the moment.<\/p>\n
Bring ’em on!<\/p>\n