How many trainings have you taken in your professional life? How many have you run? As you progress through your career you will hopefully find that you still have a lot to learn, and that lifelong learning in itself helps you to grow in your chosen profession. You may also find that you are training and developing others to an increasing degree. In both cases, how do you help that training stick? What are some simple practices you can build in – whether you’re running the training or simply taking it – to help the training’s value not fall victim to the forgetting curve?
Learning & Development expert Katrina Kennedy, author of Learning That Lasts: Reflection Activities for Trainers and Designers, suggests a bookend approach for facilitators and trainers that I would argue is equally valid for training participants to build in to any training or workshop they attend – and, perhaps, to any meeting!
I’ve written multiple times about the value of reflection – many of the weekly tips included in these pieces mention some aspect of reflection. Kennedy suggests an opening bookend, though. At the beginning of a training – or any gathering of consequence – Kennedy suggests the facilitator builds in some “pre-flection”. An example of this might be asking participants what they hope to get out of the session; what their goals are. Another example might be starting a team meeting not just with a look at the agenda, but asking for, or aligning around, the goals for this meeting. Specifically, without getting into specific action items (this will come later), what are the kinds of end goals that the group wants to leave the meeting with. Depending on the context, this might be that you want to leave with specific action steps for the next week, or overarching goals for the quarter, or you want people to leave this meeting with clarity on an upcoming product launch. Or perhaps the goal is to help your team reconnect with each other on a human level after a challenging season. Depending on your leadership style and the context of the session, this could be generated in the group, or could be communicated ahead of time so people come in knowing the stated goals.
This might seem obvious, or intuitive, but it often doesn’t take place on a conscious level and doesn’t get articulated, without which the group might think they have the same goals in mind, but these individual goals are not, in fact, aligned.
That said, if you are not in a position to build the pre-flection piece into (or before) such a gathering, you can still build it in for yourself. Before going into a meeting, ask yourself what your goals are for this time. Ask what goals you think the rest of the participants might have. Is there an overall group goal that people could be aligned on?
As a closing bookend, Kennedy suggests moving beyond simple reflection to “RAP” – a Reflection Action Plan. Takeaways from a gathering won’t last unless there’s an action plan associated with it, she argues. Taking time at the end of a gathering to create your RAP – the next steps, and most importantly when specifically you will take them, and who else needs to be involved – turns a gathering from good to useful. Kennedy suggests that the most effective way to do this is to have people share their RAP with someone else in the gathering; partnering can be a productive way to build some accountability – and some connection along the way. Ending with “And that’s a RAP” can help cement the takeaways in your mind.
Again, if you’re not in a position to build the RAP into the meeting format, you can still take a few minutes immediately after the gathering to jot down your own Reflection Action Plan and share it with someone else; doing so will build the same level of accountability and connection for you, and will contribute to building a culture where this can happen in a wider way.
This Week’s Tip:
Incorporate Pre-flection and RAP into your practices for the week. Bookend each gathering of consequence with thinking through your (and the group’s) goals beforehand, and close with creating your Reflection Action Plan. If you’re in a position to build these into the structure of meetings and gatherings yourself, try it out, and pay attention to what happens as a result.
Try these out this week, and let us know how it goes – we’d love to hear from you.
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