I am running a Train the Trainer Programme in a week’s time and am very excited about it. It is a while since I have done one, and for me, in working life terms, life doesn’t get much better than training trainers. Hence the excitement!
Part of my planning has been updating or preparing new handouts for certain models and topics, and this has reminded me of some of the excellent models and theories available to assist trainers in their work and own personal development.
I have just completed handouts on two of John Heron’s models – 6 Category Intervention Analysis (6CIA) and Dimensions of Facilitator Style (DFS). As I completed them, I was left wondering whether these are perhaps the best models available for a trainer to use to assess whether they are a ‘complete’ trainer?
Heron first developed the 6CIA model. It was designed to assist people involved in 1-2-1 helping relationships, such as a doctor working with a patient. As the name suggests, it categorises the helper’s Interventions into 6 Categories (Prescriptive, Informative, Confronting, Cathartic, Catalytic and Supportive). By using this model, trainers can ascertain whether they are using all the Categories, and whether they are using the most appropriate Category at the most appropriate time. I have seen it help a person understand a potential ‘blind spot’ they have by it illustrating to them how they were only using 5 of the Categories.
DFS also has 6 groupings, but here they are referred to as Dimensions (as opposed to Categories). These dimensions are Planning, Meaning, Confronting, Feeling, Structuring and Valuing. Heron developed this model to assist facilitators working with Groups (as opposed to 1-2-1s), and these Dimensions cover all aspects of how a facilitator and a group works together.
This model is sometimes also referred to as 18DFS. This is because not only does it have the six Dimensions, it also has three Modes – Hierarchical, Co-operative and Autonomous. Heron used the Modes to describe the exercise of power in the running of the group by the facilitator – moving from Hierarchical, where all the power is with the trainer, through to Autonomous where the group has the freedom to finds its own way. As each Mode can be combined with each Dimension, this gives eighteen possible combinations.
I find that one of the best ways of explaining this model is to imagine, as a trainer, you have a ‘mixer’, as a producer would use when recording music. On the producer’s mixer they have 6 controls managing the loudness or softness of each instrument making up the track, which they can change as they see fit – thus enabling them to create the perfect sound. As a trainer, change the instruments to Dimensions, and the loudness / softness control to the Modes. You then use your mixer to set the Dimensions and Modes at their appropriate level for the needs of the group, amending them as you see fit.
If you want more details of these models, you’ll find them on the ‘Discussions’ area of the Breathe Facebook Page. If you would like Microsoft Word versions (which contain additional information that I cannot reproduce on Facebook), please drop me an email and I’ll happily send them to you.
Are these the two best trainer models, or would you suggest any better ones? I’d be very interested to hear your views.
Paul
