Having productive professional discussions

Having productive professional discussions

Neither an informal chat nor a terrifying ordeal, a professional discussion designed to be constructive and supportive for the Apprentice as they demonstrate how they have met the relevant KSBs.

There are three stages to a professional discussion:

• Planning: as the assessor, you need to be clear about the purpose of the discussion and what KSBs will be assessed. 
• Facilitating/assessing: as the assessor, you need to lead the conversation so as to give the apprentice the best possible opportunity for demonstrating their KSBs. This means a professional conversation has to be managed so that the assessor keeps things on track and focussed, without being overly directive or continually 'leading' the conversation
• Recording: a record of the conversation needs to be produced to demonstrate how the KSBs have been evidenced and to support the final mark awarded for this assessment.

Tips:

• Remember, this is a conversation rather than a question and answer session. If an Apprentice addresses a KSB that you had not expected in a response to a pre-planned question, remember to record and give them credit for this. There are no 'right answers' in a discussion, rather this is a chance for the Apprentice to give further information and evidence to support or enhance what has been provided in the portfolio.
• Use the relative informality of the professional discussion to put the apprentice at their ease. Interpersonal skills are very important for a successful professional discussion so use these to help adapt and facilitate the conversation.
• Think about the order of your questions, it can be productive to ask easier questions first to put the apprentice at ease.
• Plan a range of question types based on the portfolio 
• open questions (that can have a large number of potential answers)
• specific questions (that are targeted towards a specific topic or KSB)
• probing questions to go deeper and elicit more information (e.g. 'and?', 'so?', 'what led you to say that', 'that's interesting, could you give a bit more detail?')
• Avoid closed questions (that only require yes/no or very specific answers) as these can shut down rather than open up discussion.
• Your contributions to the discussion are not limited to pre-planned questions, you can also summarise and ask probing questions for more information or to clarify points made.