A Facilitator's Conundrum: Facilitating in a Multi-generational Learning Environment
Michele Hickman
Sullivan University
Managing Organizational Conflict
CMM521X
Dr. Susan Raines
May 7, 2014

A Facilitator's Conundrum: Facilitating in a Multi-generational Learning Environment

Introduction
Learning and development are essential tools in talent management for the American workforce. The ability to learn and grow helps an organization recruit and retain top talent, as well as grow existing talent. These learning opportunities are presented to various individuals at various times. When new talent is hired, individuals with a variety knowledge, skills, and experiences are pulled together in one learning environment, a classroom, to learn the essential tasks required to perform their new role. These individuals are guided on their learning path by a facilitator. The facilitator’s role is to ensure knowledge transfer occurs to each individual in their classroom audience while maintaining an environment conducive to learning. Today’s classroom audience makes this responsibility even more challenging. The facilitator not only has to find the common denominator in knowledge, skills, and experiences; he/she also has to deliver the content simultaneously to a multi-generational audience. An audience with participants who has only heard of a typewriter or seen one in “historical” pictures to others who remember the major family purchase of a colored television and each generation in between. Therefore, the facilitator’s biggest challenge is transferring knowledge to this multi-generational audience that makes up today’s workforce.

Today’s Workforce
“Demographic trends in the United States have brought us to a unique place and time.
Americans are extending their careers and, as a result, we are seeing an unprecedented phenomenon: no fewer than four