The science behind reflection is fascinating. All of life’s learning and growth come either through real time experiences or by making mistakes. The common factor that ties the two is the art of reflection. Reflection mainly consists of actively thinking about life’s experiences and questioning oneself about it. Trying to understand what happened, why it happened, what does it mean and what we can learn from the experience go a long way in helping us grow as individuals. By simply understanding ‘what we could have done better?’ can help us make small, incremental improvements. Making these small improvements continuously are far more powerful and impactful than making a big change once in a while.
In the training profession, the ability to reflect is priceless. As trainers, it is imperative that we constantly take time to reflect on our training experiences and workshops delivered. Nothing helps a trainer learn more about the training workshop than thinking about things done well and things that could have been done better. Also, as trainers we should be asking ourselves a host of questions regarding the workshop. Primarily, did the workshop meet the customer requirements, were participants kept engaged at all points during the workshop, was the quality of content up to scratch, were the key learning’s delivered in a fashion that aided internalisation and most importantly how was the overall impact of the training.
It is important that we be honest about the answers, at least to ourselves. While it is crucial that we reflect both on the positives and negatives, there is no denying that we learn more through our mistakes than our successes. Making small course corrections as and when the need arises does more to improve training quality than trying to make a dramatic change in training style and approach. Long- term improvements are a result of small changes that have become a habit. These are the kind of changes that add to the quality of the individual and training. These changes are only possible through deliberate reflection and therein, lies its value to a trainer.
Successful trainers are those who have been willing to work on their mistakes and are constantly looking back at their training efforts in a candid fashion. This is a trend that we have seen time and again. This week we would like to hear from you about your thoughts on the value of reflection to training, how reflecting on your trainings has helped you grow both as an individual and a trainer and what elements of training do you think one should be reflecting on.
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