Are You Getting The Most Out Of Your Meetings?

"We don’t learn from our experience- we learn from reflecting on our experience." John Dewey

As a preschool teacher, I learned quickly that going on that field trip to the farm wasn’t the learning opportunity I thought it was. The trip was the experience, but not the learning. The real learning came when we got together as a group and discussed what we saw, heard, felt, smelt, and tasted. The debrief.

I took that new knowledge into my new role as a professional development trainer and speaker and learned how to do many kinds of debriefs. I realized the teaching/speaking part wasn’t as necessary as the debrief after!

"Reflective thinking turns experience into insight." John C. Maxwell

As I moved along in my career and became a coach/consultant for leaders, I had the pleasure and honor of attending and influencing many meetings, the good, the bad, and the ugly. One thing I learned was that not all meetings are created equal.

The teams who consistently used debriefs had better meeting attendance and engagement, higher productivity levels, and more people being promoted inside and outside the company or business. Does this interest you at all? If you lead people, it should!

Here’s a simple debrief for you to practice:

• Apply: How does what we just talked about apply to your life- personal and/or professional?
• Change: What will you change about yourself because of this meeting?
• Teach: what will you teach or share with others about this meeting?

You can have them do this debrief in writing, verbally, pairs, small groups, out loud, or simply reflection time. But the point is, have them sit and think about what just happened.  

Don’t’ waste an opportunity to help your people grow! One thing you’ll notice as you begin putting the debrief into practice is that you will need to beef up your meeting so people can actually answer these three questions! If you need help designing meetings, that’s one of the four topics we focus on in the Empowered Leaders Membership group. See if it’s right for you!

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Empowered Leaders Group