Self-Reflection

Objective

By the end of this activity you will be able to identify what change has taught you.

Materials Needed

  • Chart Pack Paper
  • Chart Pack Pens
  • Projector (optional)
  • Handout

Participants

  • Your team
  • If you have to max out at 20

Instructions

  1. Break out the staff members into teams or table groups of at least 3, no more than 5.
  2. Give each staff member the handout.
  3. From the Handout, touch on the highlighted points to set up the activity.
  4. Give them 5 to 7 minutes to do the Self Reflection. Great time to read the room. If you start to notice they are done sooner you can end sooner.
  5. Table Group Discussion ~ instruct the staff members to have a table group discussion about their responses to change and what they learned from them.
  6. After walking around the room and making sure the discussions are going well. Give them 5 to 7 minutes to review.
  7. Wrapping up. Now we are going to create a word cloud. See example below. A word cloud is a bunch of words captured by a person or a group about a certain subject. Different colors make it stand out also words can overlap. This is a great visual to keep in a central location for the group to be able to reflect back on.
  8. Choose one or both of the questions below to use for the word cloud. Have each staff member come forward and write one word that answers one of the questions below on the chart pack paper.

Debrief

Questions for the groups:

  1. What are the typical reactions, responses, and behaviors associated with change?
  2. What have you learned about yourself and others through your experience with change?

Follow Up:

We are very excited to see your accomplishments from each of these activities! We look forward to your feedback. The feedback can be in any form, but we have outlined a couple of suggestions below.

1.A picture of your group during the activity and we would love to see any of the finished products! (We will post these on our Website to share with all of the branches)

2.Invite us to sit in on your session.

3.An E-Mail to the Business Transition Analyst supporting your district.

We are open to any other forms of feedback, so be creative and most of all have fun!

Self-Reflection Handout

WHAT MATTERS MOST IS HOW YOU SEE YOURSELF.

Change occurs all around us and in many facets of our life – personal, family, professional, and world. Understanding our personal experiences of change enhances our ability to understand our current reality. To realize our full capacity for change, we must build awareness of how our attitudes and responses to change affect and influence our relationships and larger group dynamics.

Your own personal experience of change profoundly affects how you approach and lead change. We begin with a look at your experiences, choices, and subsequent assumptions about change. This is a useful way to uncover your strengths and blind spots in managing yourself and leading others.

For example, if you tend to think about change at a rational and structural level, you may be blindsided by your own unacknowledged emotions.

•Increasing your self-awareness will help you identify areas for your own growth and help you lead change with greater compassion, conviction, and courage. It also helps you understand how others react to change and how you can help them transition.

•It is easy to fall into the trap of thinking that you don’t have time to attend to all of the aspects of change. However, failing to do so will ultimately plague your organization in the form of low morale, low trust, and low performance.

The self-reflection exercise on the next page will guide you in evaluating how you have responded to change and what you know about the dynamics of change.

Self-Reflection:

What Have You Learned about Change?

Instructions: Take a few minutes to reflect on your past experience with change. Use the trigger questions below to guide your thought process. Recall a time in your life when you experienced a significant change that you managed to work through.

1)Think about the event, for example what happened?

a)What challenges did it present?

b)Recall how you felt about the change experience.

2)How did you and others around you respond to the change?

3)How did you move through the change?

4)Among the people involved, what did you experience as…?

a)Supportive

b)Unsupported

Business Transition: Change and Communication