Here’s something that’s a long-standing tradition at HBG that I thought you might like to know about in case it’s something you can add to your internal learning/training schedule.
You know how, when you go to a conference, it seems like there’s at lease one session that ended up being wildly popular that you unfortunately missed. Or maybe you were the lucky draw-er of the best-session-of-the-conference ticket, and you have lots to share about it.
Well, we think it’s really important to share that information. First of all, it solidifies and helps you retain the information you learned if you share it with others. And, of course, your organization benefits from more than one person learning whatever it is.
Here’s what we do to make this happen: every month we have our regularly scheduled “3T” meeting. That’s the staff meeting on the third Tuesday of every month, and it’s always a learning session. At the next 3T after a conference, everyone picks one session to report on – something they learned – like a website or resource, or they’ll provide a general overview of a good session, or point out important slides.
If more than one person attended a session, it can be really interesting to hear completely different things that people took away from the same session. Or excitedly sharing and agreeing on the same cool new resource.
I’m especially thinking right now about how great this tradition is because we all just came back from the fantastic NEDRA conference and our 3T was filled with great information and praise for standout speakers and sessions. It was a super-energizing meeting with lots of notes taken.
These sharing sessions don’t have to just be your unit or department, either. Anyone who goes to any conference should consider bringing back information they learned and sharing it with colleagues – cross learning is important, too, for department and personal growth.
After your next conference, give it a try and let me know how it goes!
