I was attending a workshop on how to facilitate a presentation, meeting, seminar, etc. It started out well. The instructor gave us helpful information. Then the wheels fell off her wagon and I began to think, “I want to be anywhere but here.” How did such an abrupt transition occur?

First, she stopped providing useful information. What I was hoping for was, “In facilitation you can run into the following difficult situations [she lists them], and in the next hour I will discuss ways to handle each situation, as well as invite feedback from you about how you may have handled it.” The strength of this approach is it guarantees useful information will be shared. But she didn’t want to walk down this path. Instead, she wanted to levitate in a different direction.

I should have headed to the door the moment she started ringing her meditation bell. But I didn’t. Curiosity kept me glued to my seat. I thought, “Maybe she’ll start chanting, “Hare Krishna,” or belt out a sonorous, “Ommm,” but she took this first-ever experience for me no further. Nor did she take the learning of the class any further.

What she did was make the bell seem like incidental contact when compared to the full-contact approach that followed. Her second grievous sin was to lie. She said what was going to happen next was not role play, but psychodrama, Gestalt, whatever, but I’ve been in hundreds of role-plays and this looked, sounded and smelled like a role-play.

Role plays are okay so long as you provide a safe environment. This one was anything but. She asked a person to facilitate a conference call and the moment he began to speak about how he would be coaching each person individually she stopped him and asked the group, “Has anyone else started to check out of this conference call since it will not involve everyone?” After he tried to defend his approach she dismissed him to return to his seat and replaced him with someone else.

I wanted to say, “You’ve certainly caused me to check out.” Somehow an unkind, insincere and fruitless approach to teaching others has a way of causing that effect.