💡 Brilliant Class Activity - The Debate: “In order to improve the retention of what we have learnt, we should..”

This was hands down my favorite class activity throughout the recent Managerial Excellence training, occuring towards the end of the course. It was an exercise in quick brainstorming, elevator pitch presentation, team upskilling, active listening, and a mega plot twist we didn’t see coming, that totally subverted our expectations and challenge our ways of thinking. 

The premise of the activity was built upon The Forgetting Curve, conceptualized by the 19th century German psychologist, Hermann Ebbinghaus: information is lost over time when you don’t try to retain it. 

In other words, whatever you learnt throughout this course, if you don’t put in any deliberate effort, you will most likely forget everything. All that money the company has invested in you to be here would have gone to waste. We’re not talking about months or weeks - we’re talking DAYS, here. 

So, what would you do to retain it? 

There were 5 tools: 

1. Recruit an Accountability Partner - recruit a mentor or coach figure to “pressure” you, give some general direction. Think of this person of a bootcamp instructor or gym coach. 

2. Coaching Conversations - setup 1:1 conversations with your superior to plan out your leadership approach, goals and future plans

3. Learning Club - setup a “community of practice” within our course groups to share ideas, best practices and lessons learnt

4. On-the-Job Actions - walk the talk, immediately put those teachings into action at work

5. Teach Back - schedule a knowledge sharing session(s) with your team to convey what you’ve learnt

So here was the class activity: 

Step #1: Each team was assigned one tool. Our team was assigned #5: Teach Back. Now, what you have to do is brainstorm within the team a “poster” and 1-minute elevator pitch about why your team’s retention tool is the BEST. 

To prepare yourself for step #2, we need to make sure everyone within the group understood and was fully committed to it, because every single person will be doing the elevator pitch to other groups. 

Step #2: Present your elevator pitch with the rest. One member from each team will form a small group to present to each other. Each of our team members did the pitching to other teams, listen to others and provide feedback: “what went well” (appreciative feedback), and “even better if” (constructive feedback)

Now that we’ve given the best elevator pitch we can muster up, and listening to other group’s ideas, we get back to our own teams.

Step #3: Plot twist! Now that you’ve heard other teams, discus why OTHER team’s tools and proposals are potentially better than ours, and look for the value of the other ideas. And don’t cling to your own ideas!

This was a brilliant twist and subversion, pulling the rug under us that forced us to undergo a complete paradigm shift:  challenging our own previous thinking (despite the initial zealous effort in pushing the idea why ours was the best), forcing us to see things differently of the advantages of other ideas, by putting our egos aside to look for faults and flaws in our ideas. In the end, we could see the pros and cons of all ideas, and come up with a strategic approach on which one we should prioritize, and understand the potential shortcomings.

After giving it much thought, what’s so awesome about thie exercise is the additional “life lesson” takeaway - This scenario is that it simulates scenarios that can totally happen in real life: Having the tables turned completely. 

We might be in one department, face “problems” with another department - only to then transfer to that very same problematic department! We might be putting so much passionate effort in one project, only to be transferred out or have that project delegated to others. We might be frustrated with certain leaders, only to be promoted to their position and suddenly now experience first-hand why that job was so challenging, and made us empathize why they may have behaved in a certain way. We might be having brutal confrontational negotiations with a contractor, only to have that person resign, then join our organization and become our boss!

The Life Lesson here? Be humble. Yes, be passionate about your ideas, give it your best, and make the best of what you have. But don’t cling stubbornly to your past, don’t burn your bridges along the way, and be ready to move on, empathize with other perspectives and correct yourselves - the tables might turn at any moment. 

Genius exercise 👏🏼. Bookmarked for future ideas 😄