5 MINS | 0-5
Check your own emotional state.
Create and maintain a safe space.
Consider taking a minute of silence and eyes closed (or soft focus) to create a mindful space and help everyone be fully present in the session.
This session introduces the practice of 'Make Time to Reflect and Adapt'. Today we will talk about why it's important (and hard!) to make time to reflect and adapt, and discuss some practical strategies to help us do more.
15 MINS | 05-20
If you would like a reminder of what was covered last week, you can find a summary of the 'Build Ownership' session here (under the 'topics' dropdown).
Before we dive into this week's material, let's reflect on what we practiced in the last week.
What have you noticed about your sense of ownership of your work this week? And your authority?
What did you discover when thinking about the ‘why’ or purpose of your work?
What have you learnt about your ‘problem solver switch?'
Have each person share as much as they are willing to and try to create a discussion between team members. Share your own reflections, to model openness and vulnerability. This helps build trust in the group.
20 MINS | 20-40
Now we will move to today's practice: 'Make Time to Reflect and Adapt.' The first ten minute video will give us an introduction and some practical tactics we can use to reflect and adapt. We will explore together how we can use these.
10:10 MINS
When have you taken time to reflect? Personally? As a team?
What is different when you have had the chance to reflect and adapt? What gets in the way?
What questions/formats might help you reflect?
How might we get better at carving out time for reflection?
How can we be intentional at using our reflection time for:
Looking at difficulties or failures?
Celebrating what has gone well, or what we have learned?
What would be the impact of taking smaller decisions more often?
10 MINS | 40-50
Now we will talk about how 'diversity is powerful', especially if 'every voice matters.' How can you seek out different perspectives when you are reflecting? We will also talk about how to move forward after reflecting.
5:14 MINS
click here to open the video in a new window for full-size view
How have we done at listening to all the voices in our group, as we reflected each week?
How can we make sure we’re encouraging and honoring independence of opinion in our team?
How can we encourage (and listen to) a diversity of perspectives?
10 MINS | 50-00
How can you make time to reflect and adapt this week?
Try using the techniques in "Additional Resources" below.
How can you help each other/hold each other accountable?
Be aware of what is different when you take time to reflect.
How will you include some of these reflection techniques in your 1-1 meetings with team members?
How can you have more reflection time and focus on learning in your 1-1 meetings and make sure they are not only task focused?
Take time to reflect about the 1-1 meetings you have. How effective or successful are they and how might you want to improve them?
How will you and your team establish a habit of reflecting together?
Take time to reflect on your participation in team meetings. What can you learn about your contributions and your impact on others? How might you want to adapt those?
How could you introduce new team members to this practice of 'Make Time to Reflect and Adapt?'
What is your on-boarding process? Who could be involved in reflecting on this process and how might you adapt it?
Here are some prompts for when you are doing personal reflection:
How have I shown up this week?
How did my attitude or way of being impact others?
Have I had any feedback that I could act on?
How did that meeting go?
What gave me energy?
What did I feel wrung out by?
What am I really pleased with?
What have I learned?
Here are some prompts for team reflection:
What did we expect?
What actually happened?
Why was there a difference?
What have we learned?
Another mechanism for team reflections is a pre-mortem. This is an opportunity to tap into what you or your team already know but are probably too polite to bring up.
Imagine this project has failed.
What happened?
Why?
Get every team member to write down ten things, ten reasons why they think that might happen. Then you can compile the list, and that will represent your collective wisdom on this. You can then prioritize and address or at least talk about the first few.
This is a tool for moving away from confirmation bias and groupthink. It can also help ensure that a conversation isn’t overly influenced by a manager or the most experienced person.
Identify someone to play the "devil’s advocate," to take an opposite position to what the group’s thinking.