Consultant Hat

Another facilitator tactic I often apply in Data & AI Business Design Workshops: the 🎩 Consultant Hat. Let me explain the problem with a story.

Once upon a time, there was a customer who wanted to use text mining (basically the precursor to LLM 😜) for fraud detection. But he had no idea about NLP (NOT Neuro Linguistic Programming BUT Natural Language Processing 😉).

So it came to pass that, as a workshop facilitator, I eventually started filling out the Datentreiber canvases myself. The participants leaned back, relaxed, and watched me do it.

The problem in the end: it wasn’t their solution but mine. I had the expertise and experience to implement it. They had neither the capabilities nor the capacity to do so.

My mistake was: I switched from the role of facilitator to that of consultant BUT DID NOT switch back.

To avoid this in the future, I have adopted a tactic: in such cases, I explicitly state during the workshop, “I am now switching to the role of consultant.”

If the workshop takes place on site, I emphasize this by moving away from the canvases.

Online, I still lack a visualization for this – please let me know your ideas and suggestions in the comments. 👇 Maybe I should really get myself a 🎩 consultant hat. 😜

Important: then say again that you are switching back to the facilitator or moderator role. This will help you to know your role and to manage the expectations of the workshop participants.

Are you familiar with this problem? And how do you solve it?

By the way, it’s best to prevent such situations from arising in the first place. In a workshop, be the facilitator, not a consultant. Your main job is to ask the right questions—not to give the right answers.  I call this tactic “Ask to guide“.