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Roger Greenaway's Active Reviewing Tips ~ ISSN 1465-8046

is no longer published but you can view more back issues in the ARCHIVES

For Roger's blog and other writings please see the Guide to Active Reviewing



Active Reviewing Tips 2.11   Developing Potential
  1. What ''offers much more and costs nothing''?
  2. DEVELOPING POTENTIAL
    1. Childhood: Where has all the potential gone?
    2. Youth Development: How can you raise Self-Esteem?
    3. Adult Development: What's in your Success Store?
  3. 'Reviewing Success' article - now available in MS Word.
  4. Internet Resources for and about Experiential Learning
  5. COMING ATTRACTIONS: Ezine, Forum and Workshops

Active Reviewing Tips for Dynamic Experiential Learning
http://reviewing.co.uk

Roger Greenaway's Active Reviewing Tips 2.11 ~ ISSN 1465-8046
This free opt-in publication from Reviewing Skills Training
reaches 655 enlightened people interested in reviewing.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

A C T I V E . R E V I E W I N G . T I P S
~ ~ FOR DYNAMIC EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING
~ ~ the free monthly newsletter associated with the
~ ~ 'GUIDE TO ACTIVE REVIEWING' http://reviewing.co.uk
~ ~ Editor: Roger Greenaway roger@reviewing.co.uk
~ ~ Vol. 2.11
~ ~ DEVELOPING POTENTIAL
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This issue of Active Reviewing Tips is about using activities and
active reviewing to 'DEVELOP POTENTIAL'.

This is a new angle on a theme that will be familiar to regular
readers. It is also an opportunity to introduce new methods to
you. First a little celebration ...

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CONTENTS (TOP)

~ 1 ~ What ''offers much more and costs nothing''?

The November issue of Training Journal included a two page review
of www.facilitationfactory.com

The sting in the tail of this review delighted me so much, I just
had to tell you. It reads:

    "If you are interested in facilitation, then I would suggest
    that Roger Greenaway's site at http://reviewing.co.uk offers
    much more and costs nothing."

So here's a special welcome for readers of 'Training Journal' as
well as for other new readers. Thank you also to readers who
are telling others about reviewing.co.uk and Active Reviewing
Tips. More than anything else it is your personal recommendations
that bring these 'active reviewing' resources to the attention of
others.

In each issue I will do my best to deserve such recommendations.

This issue is dedicated to a fundamental theme in education and
training: DEVELOPING POTENTIAL. As usual I aim to provide lots of
practical advice. Some tips are easy to apply. Other tips you
might find more challenging - both for you and your learners.

After reading these tips you should have a bigger and better
toolkit for developing potential - yours and theirs!

This month's sister ezine 'SiteFinder' on 'Fun and Games and
Flow' features a review of deepfun.com a generous website where
you can gain some very useful insights into game playing and ...

sign up for this free monthly publication at http://reviewing.co.uk/_ezines.htm

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CONTENTS (TOP)

~ 2 ~ DEVELOPING POTENTIAL - Introduction

A glimpse at how adults treat small children introduces the
topic. This is followed by practical sections on how reviewing
can be used to bring out the potential of young people and
adults. [Developing the potential of organisations follows in the
next issue.]

Most of the methods described can be adapted for all ages.
Many of these reviewing methods (I have recently discovered) are
closely aligned with Appreciative Inquiry (AI). But AI is based
on questioning, so in the next issue (with reference to reviewing
tools on my website) I will show you how AI questions can be
converted into more dynamic reviewing methods.

Taken all together, these 2 issues of Active Reviewing Tips
provide you with a philosophy, a system and a reviewing toolkit
for bringing out the best in people. If this is what you want,
then why not take part in a training workshop that will help you
to bring these ideas to life! [see later]

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~ CONTENTS (TOP)

2.1 ~ Childhood: Where has all the potential gone?

Watching young children at play is almost as interesting as
watching adults watching young children at play.

Many of my climbing friends have been quick to point out how
their toddlers have a natural talent for 'climbing'.

Other parents watching their offspring's antics think their
children will make good clowns.

When toddlers grunt or bang spoons, friendly adults say they will
be pop stars.

When babies smile, aunties say they'll be famous models.

And when babies dribble witty uncles say they'll make good
football players.

Every micro-sign of potential gets identified and magnified -
in the first years of life.

But ten or fifteen years later the OPPOSITE is happening.
Every micro-sign of a problem gets noticed and commented on by
teachers, parents and other critical adults. Most teenagers will
tell you this is so.

And ten years later in the workplace it is WEAKNESSES and
MISTAKES that will often attract more attention and comment than
strengths and potential.

Why?

How on earth can 'potential' develop in such unfavourable
circumstances?

In 'The One Minute Manager', Hersey and Blanchard implore
managers to catch people doing things right, and to reverse
expectations that ''management = fault-finding''.

'Learning Organisations' can help to reverse this negative
spiral - but ONLY IF their learning culture gives sufficient
attention to successes and possibilities - so as to balance the
inevitable (and necessary) attention that learners give to
mistakes and difficulties.

Appreciative Inquiry is a philosophy and a bundle of practices
that is designed to counteract such negativity. It is an approach
to research, to organisation development and to personal
development. It is optimism turned into a science. And there is
plenty of evidence that it works.

Making the switch in emphasis from fault-finding to
talent-spotting is the key to developing potential. Faults should
not be studied in isolation from the very forces that can prevent
and solve them.

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CONTENTS (TOP)

~ 2.2 ~ Youth Development: How can you raise Self-Esteem?

5 confidence-raising combinations of activities and reviewing

1) REPLAY RELATIVE SUCCESSES
Ask learners to repeat an activity. Second time round highlight
their relative successes during the review. You can emphasise the
difference by asking them to perform two ACTION REPLAYS back to
back. The first replay shows edited highlights (or freeze frames)
of the problems and difficulties experienced. The second replay
highlights things that went better second time round. This method
is well suited to reviewing TEAM performance.

2) HIGHLIGHT CONTRIBUTIONS TO SUCCESS
Review positive experiences in ways that highlight how
INDIVIDUALS contributed to success. This can be done
retrospectively, but a lot of important contributions to success
may have passed by unnoticed. So it is better to have OBSERVERS
(participants or facilitators) looking out for examples of
POSITIVE behaviour. These observations can be saved until the end
of the activity, or you can have a review break as soon as the
observers say they have positive feedback for each member of the
group. Always invite participants to add any positives that went
unnoticed by observers. [If everyone wants to be part of the
action, then set up a 'buddy' system in which each individual is
responsible for taking special notice of one other person while
taking part in the activity.]

3) CELEBRATE HIGH POINTS IN FAVOURITE ACTIVITIES
Use activities in which people already feel confident. Then use
review techniques that help individuals to EXPRESS and CELEBRATE
their feelings of confidence. You can also invite personal
feedback amongst learners through GIFTS or ROUNDS. A nice way to
give feedback actively is through SNAPSHOTS... Split a group into
subgroups.  Ask subgroup A to think of moments where they think
individuals in subgroup B would like to have had snapshots (or
MOVIE CLIPS) taken of them - because they were doing something
well. Subgroup B prepares in the same way for As. The subgroups
come together and present their feedback in snapshots, movie
clips or both. [If there are 3 subgroups, subgroup A gives
feedback to individuals in subgroup B, B gives feedback to Cs,
and C gives feedback to As.]

4) RELIVE THE STORY: ''HOW I ACHIEVED THE IMPOSSIBLE''
Do an activity once - to overcome a fear. Don't leave the review
at the point ''Well done - you overcame your fear''. To increase
the chances that the individual will be able to use this
experience to overcome other fears, carry out a detailed review
in which the individual tells the STORY of before, during and
afterwards. Ask what was going on 'inside' during this process,
and what was going on 'outside' (e.g. was there support and
encouragement from others?). To bring the story alive, everyone
in the group can help ACT OUT THE STORY as it is told - with the
space inside a rope circle representing 'inner' thoughts and
feelings, and the space outside the circle representing the
visible 'outer' world of things and people. A nice set up for
such reviews is to invite each individual to record their
feelings about a challenging activity on AUDIO-TAPE just before
embarking on it - and then playing back their words as a prelude
to their story-telling.

5) COMMUNICATE ON ALL CYLINDERS
Use a VARIETY of review techniques in order to give individuals
plenty of scope for expressing their positive experiences.
Remember that individuals learn in different ways, so provide
opportunities for private reflection as well as for small and
large group reviews. Also provide opportunities for art work,
writing, talking and for acting or performing. Vary the pace.
Vary the setting - use indoor and outdoor locations for
reviewing. Include music. Use meandering, open-ended methods. And
use business-like tightly structured ones. Involve learners in
setting the agenda, but don't abandon your own. The more variety
you provide in reviews, the more you are helping learners to
mobilise their WHOLE BRAINS for learning. Stimulation is as
important during reviews as it is during the activities being
reviewed.

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CONTENTS (TOP)

~ 2.3 ~ Adult Development: ''What's in your Success Store?''

The more learners know about their own ''recipes for success'',
the greater the chance that they will use them again. Also the
very process of studying the ''secrets of this success'' makes
future success more likely - whether or not clear recipes are
produced.

Ask learners to imagine they run a SUCCESS STORE.

This store is full of items that will help them to be successful.
Ask them to take a look in their store and tell you what they
see. This is similar to the 'My Ten Best Points' exercise.
But 'best points' is about things that people ALREADY do well,
and may not reach into their latent capacity and unformed
potential. The 'Success Store' identifies early signs of success.
It catches them in the bud. If success is not spotted and
encouraged in its early stages it may not put in another
appearance. Supporting the early stages of developing a new
talent is the most critical job in developing potential. Mature
lifelong learners may need even more support at this stage of
learning than do young lifelong learners.

Ask people from time to time to check the shelves of their
'Success Store' and tell you what they see. As they get used to
the idea, the shelves will slowly fill up. See it as a
stock-taking exercise.

This is NOT a needs analysis (That would involve itemising what
is NOT on the shelves). It is an audit of what you already have -
even if in only small quantities, or even if it is something that
is not always visible on the shelf. Every 'Storekeeper' also
works as a 'talent scout'. They need to get used to the idea of
noticing what is in their own store and what is in other people's
stores.

When a group first meets, or when a familiar group starts out on
new projects or adventures, no-one quite knows what they will
find in their own store or in each other's stores. Initial
thoughts might be:

    ''Do I have what it takes?''
    ''Do we have what it takes?''
    ''What will we find out about ourselves and each other?''

There is a natural curiosity to ask such questions at the start
of any training programme - whatever the nature of the challenges
it presents. The 'Success Store' builds on this natural
inquisitiveness. (It is tempting to rename it the Curiosity
Shop!) To start with the shelves are fairly empty. That is not
because people lack talent. It is because people's talent is
locked away in the store cupboard at the back and is not out on
the shelves.

In many work cultures, the prevailing humour is often about
'empty' shelves. It involves cutting people down to size by
focusing on their blind spots. Such humour can at times be very
funny - especially when it is an attack on pretentiousness or
when it is someone laughing about their own empty shelves.
Pretentiousness is people pretending to be greater than they are.
But many people play safe and pretend to be less than they are -
and get stuck like it - sitting on their latent abilities.

So a key strategy in reviewing (represented here by the 'Success
Store') is to provide people with a whole range of opportunities
in which they will discover untapped potential in themselves and
in others. Ideally this variety of opportunities extends
throughout a programme - and applies BOTH to the learning
activities AND to the reviewing methods.

    When did you last look at your own 'Success Store'?
    How carefully did you look?

The point of this stage of reviewing (we're not finished
yet!) is to get people tuning in to each other's qualities,
talents, interests, strengths and potential. That's a fairly
random list. These can be labels on different shelves. Each label
represents different sets of qualities that individuals might
draw on in order to help them achieve their objectives.

An appreciative review helps to develop potential. There are many
ways of structuring and showing appreciation. Where groups are
not naturally appreciative, or where people are not specific
about the qualities and talents they are appreciating, it is
necessary for facilitators to do some structuring and enabling.

ALTERNATIVE METHODS

The 'Success Store' provides a useful metaphor, especially if it
captures people's imaginations. Alternatives in the same family
of appreciative reviewing techniques are: 'My Ten Best Points',
'A Vote of Thanks', 'Personal Recipes for Success', 'Team Recipes
for Success' and appraisal sessions in which there is a built in
positive bias together with an opportunity to use symbolism. This
is because symbols and imagery can capture qualities that are
difficult to describe adequately in words alone.

This is where appraisal exercises such as 'Gifts' can be
particularly useful and powerful. Action Replays can be even more
effective for highlighting and celebrating successes. Replays
tend to be most useful for celebrating a group success. But
replays can be directed in such a way that individual
contributions to success are clearly highlighted and celebrated.

[Use the search box on my home page to track down details of the
'alternative' reviewing methods mentioned above.]

TIP: When trying out new reviewing exercises like 'Success
Store', test the water with an abbreviated version. If the
metaphor catches on, build on it - or encourage learners to do
so.
Keep an eye out for what's working well - and use it. If you
prefer to put all your eggs in one basket, don't let me stand in
your way! But remember that more cautious approaches also pay
off - IF you are observant enough to work with early signs of
success, and astute enough to know when it's time to try
something else.

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CONTENTS (TOP)

~ 3 ~ 'Reviewing Success' article

Two different versions of 'Reviewing Success' are now available.
[My 'Reviewing Success' article overlaps with these tips about
'Developing Potential' but most of the content is different.]

The web (html) version of 'Reviewing Success' is at:
http://reviewing.co.uk/success/index.htm
(and takes up several web pages).

This and the next issue of Active Reviewing Tips contain new
material that will eventually be added to the ''reviewing
success'' section of my website.

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CONTENTS (TOP)

~ 4 ~ Internet Resources for and about Experiential Learning

I only include advertising that is
    (a) relevant to this newsletter and
    (b) that is about resources I can personally recommend

No money changes hands, but I am keen to swap adverts with people who like my simple advertising policy above!

=============================================

CONTENTS (TOP)

~ 5 ~ Coming Attractions: ezines, discussion and workshops

FUTURE ISSUES OF ACTIVE REVIEWING TIPS
The next issue of Active Reviewing Tips will include feature a
dynamic approach Appreciative Inquiry. Future Issues will include
how to use reviewing methods to develop teamwork skills,
leadership skills, learning skills and transfer skills.

Use your power and influence! ... To balance this issue's
positive emphasis, perhaps you would appreciate a focus on
learning from negative experiences or reviewing with resistant
learners? If you would like to request particular reviewing
topics or contribute to them please let me know at
roger@reviewing.co.uk


DISCUSSION FORUM FOR ACTIVE REVIEWERS
Look out for this in the new year/century/millennium!
Meanwhile you are welcome to use this newsletter as a forum
roger@reviewing.co.uk


INFORMATION OVERLOAD? TRY A TRAINING WORKSHOP!
If you ever get to the end of an issue of Active Reviewing Tips
wondering how you are going to use these reviewing tools in your
own work, then why not enquire about opportunities to take part
in a training workshop? At these lively events you will have
plenty of opportunity to experiment with these tools and adapt
them to suit your own way of working. Opportunities to try things
out clearly increases the chances that you will actually turn
this information into practice. My practical workshops help you
to convert 'information overload' into a 'bulging toolkit' of new
and improved reviewing methods that you will be wanting to try
out for real.

Workshop titles include:

PB2 DISCUSSION-BASED REVIEWING
PB3 ACTIVE REVIEWING
PB4 CREATIVE REVIEWING

OA1 REVIEWING OUTDOORS
OA2 REVIEWING OUTDOOR ACTIVITIES
OA3 WHY REVIEW ADVENTURES?

YP1 REVIEWING WITH YOUNG PEOPLE
AL1 REVIEWING WITH ADULT LEARNERS
AL2 TOOLS FOR REVIEWING in OMD

TT1 PROMOTING EFFECTIVE REVIEWING
TT2 REVIEWING WITHOUT A FLIPCHART
TT3 REVIEWING ISSUES IN GROUPS

201 HOW TO TRANSFER LEARNING
202 REVIEWING FOR TEAMWORK SKILLS
203 REVIEWING FOR LEADERSHIP SKILLS

For more details of workshops contact me or take a look at:
http://reviewing.co.uk/_wkshops.htm

If you want evidence of the effects of my workshops, click
'testimonials' my home page at http://reviewing.co.uk

If you want to HOST a CUSTOMISED or OPEN workshop, please write
to me at roger@reviewing.co.uk

If you are looking for a CALENDAR of events, keep reading -
year 2000 will see several open training workshops in the UK and
other countries - maybe yours!

  DON'T JUST DO IT -
    ACTIVELY REVIEW IT !!

I look forward to meeting many more readers in the year 2000!

On the theme of 'Developing Potential' if you spotted something
in Active Reviewing Tips that you liked, or that you'd like to
try - please let me know. Your comments (positive, negative or
lateral) can help to develop the 'potential' of this ezine. I will only publish comments if you give your permission.

Roger Greenaway's Active Reviewing Tips ~ ISSN 1465-8046

is no longer published but you can view more back issues in the ARCHIVES

For Roger's blog and other writings please see the Guide to Active Reviewing



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