SAFETY FIRST

Happy brains learn better and learning requires a bit of vulnerability. One way to support a learning environment is to create some agreements and then make sure you stick to them. Session 1 encourages you to create these agreements.

Ask for openness, curiosity, and confidentiality.

Once you know the Be SAFE & Certain model, this can be a great guide for you. Make sure there aren’t threats to any of these elements and that you have some limbic rewards if possible. Some ideas on this:

• Create a sense of belonging.

• Make sure everyone knows their contribution and experiences are valuable – and make sure you include everyone in the discussions.

• Give people space to choose how they will apply their learning.

• Make sure you are fair in how you interact and what you say. These sessions are not the time to give feedback.

• Create realistic expectations about the material and ask people about their own expectations.

• Set boundaries around the conversations and keep to time limits.

YOUR ROLE

You are the manager and a learner.

For your team, you are a guide – not a teacher; you are not expected to know this material inside and out but it will be helpful if you offer some of your own learning and experiences. And it will be helpful if you keep time and facilitate the conversations.

Each of the sessions has a specific guide with suggested times for watching videos and discussing them. It will be helpful to follow that at least approximately.

FACILITATING A GREAT CONVERSATION TO DRAW OUT LEARNING

• Allow people their experiences. Everyone’s will be different and all are OK.

• Do your best to be curious.

• Adult learning theory shows us that adults learn best through experiences, so it’s important that people get to say a bit about their experiences first.

• Neuroscience tells us that if we want to learn/remember something long term, we need to have our own language for it. So it’s important for people to speak, think or write about what they are learning so they will remember it and be able to use it in the future.

• A useful and productive learning debrief will have these steps:

  • Discuss the experience first, then

  • have people discuss what they are learning, and then

  • have them consider how they can apply this learning for real.

• In this sense learning is: their take away knowledge/wisdom, a nugget to use for later, and instructions to themselves for later.

DEBRIEFING A VIDEO

Discuss the experience (ask one or two of these questions or make up your own along the same lines):

• What did you get from that video?

• What do you think about the topic of (limbic system or prefrontal cortex or management practice X)?

• What do you relate to?

• What was new for you?

• What did you like or not like about the content?

When prompted, people often lead themselves to their own learning conclusions

• What are you taking away from this?

• What did you learn about <example> ?

DEBRIEFING PRACTICE MOMENTS AND experiences from the previous week

Discuss the experience (ask one or two of these questions or make up your own along the same lines):

• What happened when you tried practicing <example> ?

• How did it go this past week working with this material?

• What did you succeed at?

• What was difficult?

• What was new for you?

Refine learning

• What are you learning about yourself?

• What do you want to remember?

• What’s important about the experience you had this past week?

• What do you want to keep practicing?

Make it real:

• How will you apply what you learned?

• What will you do next time?

• What do you want to practice regularly?

• In what situations will you use that?

ACCOUNTABILITY

• Find times between sessions to check in with team members. Begin to use the language from the program in your regular work. Label experiences.

• Learning truly happens when behaviours change and that only happens when people intentionally practice something.

• Pay attention – help yourself and others practice.

WAYS TO ENCOURAGE LEARNING AND CHANGE

• Find some motivation

• Ask for commitment

• Encourage people to be self-disciplined – to stretch their abilities to practice.

• Structures – what are some daily practices that will help? How can you encourage those? Social participation is very useful: Set some structures between people – brief daily check-ins, practicing the practices together, regular check-in times, ways to celebrate learning, new behaviours and applications.