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Collaboration & Questions: Remember Facilitating Reliability is a Long Game

Collaboration & Questions: Remember Facilitating Reliability is a Long Game

Asking questions as a technical facilitator is a nuanced and deliberate process. All facilitators guide participants through solutions that are created, understood, and accepted by all. The “by all” part makes the role especially challenging and one that transcends a single session. Asking questions as a reliability facilitator contrasts with persuasion or manipulation, where narratives and emotions carry the day. The long game approach requires empathy, patience, consistency, and an in-depth understanding of context.

“Being a great facilitator requires commitment to your participants.”

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How Technical Facilitators Can Avoid Provoking Others When Asking Questions

How Technical Facilitators Can Avoid Provoking Others When Asking Questions

Technical facilitators should avoid provoking others when asking questions to maintain respect, productive effective communication, and create professional relationships. However, there are situations where provocative questions can be effective. For technically trained professionals, the balance lies in knowing when to use respectful inquiry to foster collaboration and when to employ pointed questions to drive necessary change and innovation. The bottom line is to ask powerful questions. This article discusses how to avoid provoking others when asking questions.

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The Rising Tide of Young Professionals: Overcoming Intergenerational Communication Gaps in Reliability Engineering

Young professionals (under 40) will make up over half of the workforce by the end of next year. That means communication between young professionals and experienced professionals is essential for workplace success. Younger professionals dominating the workforce means that reliability engineering is undergoing formative changes. These are a few general thoughts on the impacts of the changing workforce and five ways it will impact reliability engineering.

Some General Thoughts on Intergenerational Communication

Here are a few thoughts on intergenerational communication from my recent interview on The YoPro Know Podcast.

On Using Social Media

Companies are generally awkward with social media and how to reach the younger generations. On the one hand, companies know to try. On the other hand, the HR people and some of the technical managers are really bad at it.

Companies should do a gap analysis on reaching young professionals. There are inadvertent things companies do that really cause them to stumble inadvertently. Most companies do too much of a cookie-cutter approach to recruiting and retention.

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