Kirsty Lewis On Best Facilitation Practices For Trainers & How To Create Behaviour Change For Learners

It'd be great to start with your background in learning and development, how you first got into training, and the journey that's brought you to where you are today.

I started my career in the corporate world, working for Guinness and then Diageo. My background was originally in commercial roles before I moved into a global position called Global Sales Capability.

At Diageo, there were around 10,000 salespeople globally and, at that time, all of the learning and development was kept in-house and delivered through managers and leaders. To make that work, there was always a core team of custodians responsible for the different capability programmes, whether that was the Diageo Way of Selling, the Diageo Way of Brand Building or other global learning initiatives.

I joined the global team that looked after the Diageo Way of Selling and discovered a whole new world of designing learning. I found myself writing workshops, designing learning experiences and delivering programmes. At exactly the same time, I was also studying NLP and broader learning and development, and everything seemed to come together. It all made complete sense to me and felt like the place I was supposed to be.

Eventually I decided to take the leap. I resigned from Diageo and, in 2008, started working for myself as a freelance trainer and facilitator, initially specialising in commercial capability.

That's interesting that your background was in the drinks industry. What was the training culture actually like inside Diageo?

Looking back now, I think Diageo was ahead of its time. If you ever saw any of the internal learning materials they were producing back then, people sat at the centre of everything they did. A lot of the conversations organisations are having now about people development, leadership and capability were conversations Diageo was already having in 2003 and 2004.

One of the phrases you hear a lot today is leaders as teachers, but that wasn't just a slogan there and it was how the business operated. Leaders delivered the learning. They owned the development of their people. Learning wasn't outsourced to HR or external providers and then forgotten about. It lived inside the business.

Everybody was measured on two factors of “what” they achieved and “how” they achieved it. Hitting your commercial numbers mattered, of course, but so did the way you led people and developed them. If you were a manager, part of your performance wasn't simply whether your team hit the target. You were measured on how well you coached your people, how effectively you gave feedback, how you created the right team culture and how you developed capability within your team. 

Those weren't nice-to-have behaviours and they formed part of your annual performance review. If certain elements weren't achieved, you simply didn't receive your bonus. That sends a very powerful message because it tells everyone that developing people isn't optional. It's part of what good leadership looks like.

Almost all of the learning was delivered internally by leaders themselves. The only exceptions tended to be highly specialist areas, such as negotiation skills or technical expertise, where they'd occasionally bring external experts into the business. But the overwhelming majority of development belonged to the organisation itself.

I think the biggest difference compared with a lot of organisations is that ownership of learning didn't sit solely with the individual and it didn't sit solely with the organisation either. It sat with the manager as well.

As an employee, you knew you could go to your manager and ask for coaching. In fact, you were encouraged to do exactly that because coaching wasn't viewed as something exceptional and was simply part of the culture.

Even within the sales teams we had language around it that everybody understood. We used to talk about two in a car and three in a car. Two in a car meant a sales manager would spend the day with a salesperson. So, if my manager came out with me, I knew I'd be coached throughout the day. We'd have conversations, feedback and opportunities to improve while we were actually doing the job.

Then there was three in a car, where another level of leadership joined the process. That meant a senior sales manager would coach both the sales manager and the salesperson at the same time. So while I was receiving coaching from my manager, my manager was simultaneously being coached by their manager.

The coaching culture didn't stop at one level of the business and it cascaded all the way through the organisation. What that created was a consistent way of working because everyone understood what good looked like. Everyone was being developed using the same principles, the same language and the same expectations.

There wasn't this disconnect where one level of leadership talked about coaching while another level ignored it. Everybody was involved. And because of that, coaching simply became normal. It wasn't something people were nervous about or something that only happened when performance was poor. 

Listening to that, it sounds like a good example of what we'd now call psychological safety. Would you agree with that?

I don't think we would have used the phrase psychological safety back then in the way we do today, but when I look back, that's exactly what we were creating. People knew they could ask questions. They knew they could ask for help. They expected feedback rather than feared it.

When that's the environment people operate in, they're naturally more willing to experiment, make mistakes, learn and improve because they're not worried about being judged for every conversation they have. That was embedded into the way Diageo operated long before psychological safety became the language everybody now uses.

On that note, what do you think are the principles of creating a strong culture of psychological safety where this kind of learning and development can happen in a safe and meaningful way?

You have to start with the bigger picture before you ever get into the workshop itself. If we stay with the Diageo example, there were a couple of things that made it work.

The first was that it was genuinely a top-down approach. We knew that the leadership team had already been through exactly the same learning we were going through. They weren't asking us to do something they hadn't experienced themselves, and they walked the talk. You could see senior leaders coaching people, having meaningful development conversations and investing in their own growth. They had coaches themselves, and that was visible. 

That visibility is important because, in a lot of organisations, people are told they're going on a workshop or that the business is introducing a new programme, but the leaders don't participate in it. They don't demonstrate the behaviours, they don't use the language and they don't reinforce what people have learned once they leave the room.

At Diageo, it flowed all the way from the top of the organisation down through every level and then back up again. You could see it everywhere, and because everybody had experienced the same development, we all spoke the same language.

We all understood what particular values meant. We all understood the sales capabilities we were developing. When somebody talked about coaching or feedback, everybody knew exactly what that looked like because we'd all experienced it.

I was coached against those capabilities. I was measured against them in my annual appraisal. My managers were measured against exactly the same framework, and so were the senior leaders above them. It was the business and didn’t sit alongside it. 

Because of that consistency, people trusted what was happening. There wasn't that disconnect where somebody would come back from a workshop inspired, only to find their manager had no idea what they'd been learning or didn't value it. Everybody understood it, everybody reinforced it and everybody was accountable for it. That's the first part of creating psychological safety. It's about the wider system.

The second part is the learning itself. The workshops were written and designed in a way that placed trust right at the centre of everything. The way the exercises were constructed mattered. The way facilitators introduced activities mattered. The way questions were asked mattered. The way people were invited into conversations mattered. Everything about the design encouraged participation rather than judgement.

People weren't worried about getting something wrong because the environment had been deliberately created to make it feel safe to contribute. Then you layer coaching on top of that.

If you stripped away all of those principles you've just described, why is it so difficult for learning to translate into true behaviour change? 

One of the biggest reasons is that businesses often see learning as something separate from the wider culture of the organisation. Learning becomes its own function or department rather than something that's woven into the way the business operates. The irony is that it absolutely can become part of the culture.

I don't think organisations intentionally separate it. Their intentions are usually good. They're looking at learning as a solution that will help people develop, and if people develop, they'll perform better in their roles and deliver better results for the business.

The intention is the right one. Where I think things fall down is that, sometimes, learning receives a lot of support before people attend a workshop, but once they return to business as usual, that support simply disappears.

There can be a lot of enthusiasm around sending people on programmes, but then very little happens afterwards to reinforce what they've learned. That's where I sometimes wonder whether a little bit of lip service gets paid to learning.

People are encouraged to attend the programme, but they're not necessarily supported when they return to the workplace. Their managers aren't reinforcing the learning and they don't have opportunities to practise what they've learned. If the workplace stays exactly the same, it's incredibly difficult for people to change their behaviour.

Behaviour change doesn't happen because somebody sat in a room for a day and listened to some ideas. The environment has to continually reinforce the ideas. That's why I always come back to culture. If learning sits inside the culture, behaviour change becomes much more likely because people are reminded of it every day. If learning sits outside the culture, then eventually people drift back into old habits because that's what the organisation naturally pulls them towards.

That leads nicely into your School of Facilitation. It'd be great to learn more about that as a community. What do you do, who do you help, and what was the motivation behind creating it?

The School of Facilitation started in 2014 because it became apparent to me that people's understanding of what good learning design and facilitation looks like varies wildly.

You have everything from what I call the trainer tainer, the person who's there to perform and the kind of trainer who wants the spotlight on themselves where they have the attitude of “let me tell you everything I know about this particular subject,” rather than creating an environment where other people can contribute and learn.

I wanted to create something that helped people understand what great facilitation looks like. Not just how to stand at the front of a room, but how to design learning properly, how to deliver it well, and how to create an experience that makes a difference for the people taking part.

The School of Facilitation works with organisations and corporate teams, but we also work with freelance facilitators and trainers. Ultimately, we're helping people learn how to do the job well. It's about giving them the confidence and the capability to design better workshops, facilitate better conversations and create learning experiences that people genuinely remember and apply.

I also think there's another side to it. Particularly as freelancers, we're constantly asking other people to invest in their own development. We're encouraging clients and learners to keep growing, keep learning and keep challenging themselves. If we're asking that of other people, then we need to be willing to do exactly the same ourselves. We have to eat a slice of humble pie every now and again.

We should be continually developing our own practice, questioning our own assumptions and improving the way we work. I don't think you ever get to a point where you can say, "I've cracked facilitation now. I don't need to learn anymore." The moment you think you've arrived is probably the moment you stop getting better.

Moving more towards the corporate side of learning and development, I think one of the biggest challenges organisations face is demonstrating return on investment.

Business leaders naturally ask what the ROI is and If you were advising an L&D professional, how would you encourage them to frame that conversation and demonstrate the value of learning?

I'd point them straight towards Melanie Martinelli's work on the 12 Levers of Learning Transfer because it's one of the strongest frameworks I've seen for understanding how learning actually translates into performance.

I'd also recommend looking at Chris Taylor's work at Actionable. He's produced a huge amount of research and openly shares white papers on LinkedIn around learning transfer and behavioural change. There's a lot of evidence there that's incredibly useful if you're trying to build a business case for learning.

The important thing is that learning transfer begins a lot earlier than when a learner walks into a workshop. You have to ask questions like how willing is the organisation to support this learning? How willing is it to hold people accountable afterwards? Are line managers involved from the beginning? Are they committed to reinforcing what's being learned?

Then you have to think about whether people are going to be given opportunities to practise what they've learned once they return to work. Do managers even know what their teams are about to experience?  When people come back using different language or trying new behaviours, are their managers going to recognise that and support it, or are they going to look at them and think what on earth are you doing?

Those conversations happen far more often than people realise. That's where the real impact sits. Of course, organisations ultimately want to see a financial return. That's completely understandable. But humans don't change in neat financial metrics.

The financial outcomes are usually the result of behavioural change, so you have to look for evidence that those behaviours are changing first. If you focus only on the financial outcome, you're missing everything that leads up to it.

One of the themes that's come up repeatedly in these conversations is the balance between qualitative and quantitative data. The metrics matter. The numbers matter.

But equally, there's something powerful about hearing learners talk about how a programme has changed the way they work or even changed their lives. How important do you think that balance is, and are there particular feedback mechanisms you find especially useful?

There are some straightforward things you can do. One example is using a simple quantitative self-assessment. Before somebody joins a programme, ask them to assess themselves against four or five statements or measures that are relevant to whatever they're about to learn.

Then ask exactly the same questions immediately after the learning. Then ask them again a month later. Then again after another month. What you're looking for isn't necessarily dramatic transformation overnight. You're looking for those little nudges. You're looking to see whether confidence is increasing, whether people feel they're applying the learning more often, whether they're gradually moving in the right direction. That gives you one form of evidence.

Then you've got the qualitative side. We had a good example recently after one of our workshops. The next day one of the participants emailed us to explain why the workshop had worked so well for her, how it had shifted her thinking and how she believed it was going to help her moving forward. That feedback was passed on to HR and they were delighted because it's incredibly powerful hearing someone articulate, in their own words, the impact the learning has had.

Those stories matter. They're often the moments people remember. But I always say to clients that collecting those stories isn't where the work ends. You need regular check-ins. You need those little nudges that encourage people to stop, reflect and ask themselves if they are applying what they said they were going to apply. 

Another theme that comes up time and time again is the idea that learning and development needs a seat at the table. It's often grouped into HR, and I wonder whether you think L&D deserves that strategic position. 

If it does, how can learning professionals position themselves so the business sees them as strategic partners rather than simply a support function?

This is one area where I think Diageo got it right. We were called sales capability and sat within the global sales leadership team and were never part of HR or called learning and development. weren't part of HR.

That made a huge difference. Because we had a seat at that table, we were involved in strategy conversations from the beginning. When the leadership team discussed where the business wanted to go, what it was trying to achieve and what success looked like, we were sitting there listening to those conversations. That meant we could immediately start asking different questions.

Instead of thinking about what training to deliver, we were focused on what capabilities would people need to achieve a certain strategy. People definitely needed technical skills. That's the what. But then there's the how and asking questions like how are your people going to achieve these goals? Do they have the capability to deliver what the strategy requires?

That's why we were called Sales Capability rather than Sales Learning and Development. The focus was on enabling performance and not delivering training. Sadly, I think a lot of organisations have gradually moved everything back under HR.

I understand why they do that. There are efficiencies around budgets, governance and procurement. But rightly or wrongly, HR often carries certain perceptions within organisations, and I think learning can lose some of its impact when it becomes just another function inside HR.

I'd much rather see capability leaders embedded within the business itself. I'd like to see capability sitting inside Sales, Marketing, Operations or Supply Chain, with a dotted reporting line into a central function that oversees budgets and procurement.

That way you're still buying solutions efficiently across the organisation, things like presentation skills as an example But the capability teams remain deeply connected to the commercial realities of the departments they're supporting.

You mentioned post-training support earlier like nudges and ongoing accountability. I appreciate every programme is different, but are there any general patterns you've found around timing? 

Whether it's six weeks, two months or something else entirely, is there an approach that tends to work particularly well?

This is where I bring up the research from Melanie Martinelli and Chris Taylor again. One of the most important things happens before the learning even begins. Before any significant programme, there should be an engagement conversation with managers.

That conversation explains exactly what their teams are about to experience. It sets expectations. It helps managers understand what the learning is designed to achieve. But, 

Then, after the programme, participants should go back to their managers and have another conversation. They should explain what they've learned and discuss what they’re planning to do differently and agree to the next steps together. 

Another thing I really like is accountability buddies. During the workshop, participants identify someone they'll regularly check in with afterwards. That might only be a ten or fifteen-minute conversation each week, but the important thing is that they're talking about the actions they've committed to taking.

You can layer technology over the top. Automated nudges can be incredibly helpful. Whether they're emails, prompts or short reflective questions sent by the facilitator or coach, they encourage people to stop, pause and think about what they're actually doing differently. Those systems reinforce coaching. 

The biggest factor that ties all this together is giving people the time and space to apply what they've learned. If somebody walks straight back into an overloaded diary and nobody ever asks them about the programme again, it's easy for the learning to become nothing more than a feeling of it being a good workshop without any follow up. 

What do you think about learning fatigue, and how can people become more intentional about where they choose to learn and gather information?

The first thing is recognising that because we have so many options available now, you can identify the two or three ways that you personally like to learn. Is it talking to somebody? Is it reading a book? Is it watching a video? Is it listening to a podcast? Is it doing a deep dive and just going off on an exploration for an hour?

Whatever it is, identify those different ways that work for you. Then from there, you can decide, "Right, I'm going to give myself one hour every week for learning time." You need to put it in the diary.

That might be reading articles. It might be doing an e-learning course. It might be exploring something completely new. But the thing we have to remember is that while humans are naturally curious and want to explore, not all of us like to learn. You could be pushing against a closed door when you're encouraging some people to go and do learning.

You see the people in your workshops or groups who are enthusiastic. You can tell by the way they ask questions, the way they show up, the way they get involved. I think we have to focus on the people who want to be there rather than spending all of our time trying to convince the people who don't.

Moving towards qualification and credibility, what are your thoughts on the idea of formal qualifications? 

Take the CIPD. It's not regulated, but some people feel they need it because they want to demonstrate credibility. Equally, you can have someone without qualifications who has spent years practising and has built a strong reputation.

Do you think qualifications really matter for trainers, or is it much more of a case-by-case basis?

I think if you're a trainer on a subject matter, you have to have that experience and you have to be able to evidence that experience and your subject matter expertise. Nothing frustrates me more than hearing people say, "I could deliver that workshop," when they've got no knowledge of the subject. Or they have a little bit of knowledge, and then suddenly they think, "Well, I've got the slides, I could just deliver it."

In the case of the School of Facilitation, I don't accredit facilitators or trainers. What I offer is a learning journey over four months where people can come and deep dive into what facilitation actually is, get feedback, receive coaching, develop themselves and leave knowing that they understand more.

I think that good facilitators and trainers also have therapists, supervisors and mentors. Those are the things I would be looking for. If I was an L&D manager looking to buy services from someone, those are the sorts of questions I'd ask rather than are you CIPD qualified? or have you got an IAF badge?

That’s like having the exam and then never practising afterwards. It's like getting your driving licence. Unless you actually practise driving, it doesn't mean anything.

I think it’s also about getting references from previous customers and asking did the training work and what the style of the trainer was like. A lot of people don’t ever ask those questions and just go off a recommendation or because of polished marketing. 

How do you keep learning and what are some of your favourite practices? 

I always keep learning. Recently, I sat for about two and a half hours to catch up on a call I’d missed and took notes. Then I went into AI and asked it a load of questions, did some more reading and some writing.

I often have notepads everywhere that I use specifically for my learning.  If I'm working with clients, I use the Remarkable, but for my own learning I love having physical notebooks.

I will always go to retreats and business retreats to do learning around my own business. I often have coffee chats with other business owners where we talk about what they're doing, how they're doing things, and vice versa. You end up ping-ponging ideas between each other.

I go to Happy Startup Summer Camp every year, which is an amazing place for entrepreneurs to go and develop themselves, learn about running a business, but also meet lots of like-minded people.

I also learn every time I run a workshop. There are times when someone answers a question or an activity happens that doesn’t go according to the tried-and-tested route expected. And then I’ll think “Oh, I hadn’t thought about it like that.”  I keep editing my own thoughts whether I’m reading a good book, having an interesting conversation, listening to an educational podcast and keep going.