What Does it Take To Train People in Person Centred Thinking?

If you’re going to take that step of standing up and teaching person centred approaches to others, then It's obvious that you need to know and understand how to use the person centred skills and tools you wish to teach.

To me it's also obvious that you must have a deep commitment to the values the underpin person centred approaches, you must also be hungry to learn more, and be eager to share what you learn with others, so that more people can be supported better to build better lives, with valued social roles in their community.

Background knowledge of the social model of disability, of Social Role Valorisation theory, of the five accomplishments, of capacity thinking will give a trainer good grounding. Your thirst for further knowledge will help you learn these things if you don't know them already.

Without doubt, you'll need good mentorship from an experienced trainer, and be able to use every opportunity you can to explore the art of planning and training with others who belong to the community of person centred practitioners, a warm, welcoming community that will appreciate what you bring to it.

But when it comes to standing in front of a group of learners, it's much less a matter of what you know, than about how you help others dig out what they ALREADY know. You must almost forget what you know, and instead work on creating conditions where people lead their own learning, where deeper learning can happen.

Because you're stood up at the front, people will wish to see you as the expert, but person centred thinking is trying to demolish the view that some people are ‘experts’, and that everything must go through the experts in order to be valid. We are trying to build instead the view that everyone has knowledge that is based on their own experience and their own lives, and has the capacity to learn more. The right questions asked in the right way can help bring this knowledge to the surface, and help focus people’s attention onto what they still need to learn for themselves.

This is the trainers’ job: to help people and groups rediscover the knowledge they already have, and stimulate the curiosity to learn more. This is also what person centred thinking aims for. Person Centred Thinking tools are really tools that help people and groups rediscover what they already know, or open them up to seeking for what they don’t yet know.

Therefore in order to train person centred thinking, it’s necessary to train in a person centred way. More important than how you speak and what you say is what happens in the gaps in between: How you LISTEN, how you give people time to THINK, the RESPECT that you show to learners, the gifts they bring with them and the feelings that training evokes.

Poor trainers stand in front of a powerpoint and talk and talk, and talk, and talk...

Good trainers ask questions that stimulate discussion, use techniques that give everyone a chance to think and speak and open themselves up to listen well to everything that the group is saying, with their words and with their whole selves. People learn far more when they voice what they’re learning, and listen to and help each other. Good trainers don't talk for the sake of filling up silences. They don't fear silence. They use silences as a tool, a space where people can think and be together, a space for learners to fill with their own learning.

People learn person centred approaches by immersing themselves in person centred work, not by watching a powerpoint: Conducting an experiential exercise, then discussing the learning from it is the beginning of this, as people use themselves as their own ‘focus person’. Time should be balanced so that 20% is explanation, 80% exploration.

Your learners will know far more than you do about their own work situations and about themselves. Respect this, bring it out. Your job is to ask the questions that will help people allow this deeply stored knowledge to spout upward from their own internal wells, so that it can be pooled and swum in. If you’re doing this right, you will learn just as much as your learners do from a training session. With such deep wells already there, there’s no need for you to be the fountain of all knowledge, learners are not empty vessels, they are full to the brim.

Finn McCool and the Salmon of Knowledge

It was said that Fintann the bradán feasa or Salmon of wisdom, had swum in the well of knowledge, and eaten nine hazel nuts that fell into the well from the nine hazel trees that grew around it, and that therefore this salmon contained all the wisdom in the world. Moreover, it was said that whoever could catch and eat this salmon would in turn, know all there was to be known.

When Finn McCool was a young man, he was sent to learn with the poet and teacher Finegas. Finegas spent 7 years with Finn, and did most of his teaching while they fished together for Fintann, the salmon of knowledge.

Finally Finegas hooked the magic and immortal fish. He was keen to consume it's flesh, know everything, and thus become the greatest teacher there had ever been.

"Start a fire and cook this fish Finn!, but whatever you do, don't eat it, it's mine!" said Finegas.

Finn loyally did as he was told, but when the fish got really hot, fat started spitting out of it, and a sizzling hot drop landed on his thumb. Without thinking, Finn put his thumb into his mouth to sooth it. All the precious knowledge in the salmon was focussed into that little drop of fat, and wham! now it was inside Finn.

When Finegas got back he could see Finn had changed, his eyes were sparkling with experience and wisdom. Finn explained what had happened.

"Finish eating the salmon" said Finegas "It's you who is destined to know, not me".

After that, Finn became the wisest of all leaders. Whenever he was presented with a problem, he would simply suck his thumb, and know exactly what to do.