That's a chair in my son's kindergarten class from a couple of years ago. The intention was not to shame or punish the child for "mistakes" in behavior, but provide an opportunity for reflection and learning. Two weeks ago, I had an opportunity to have a discussion at the Community Roundtable on the topic "How do you create a culture that is not afraid to fail?." There were many takeaways, including providing a safe place for social media pilots.
June Holley left a comment that was very thought provoking and wanted to elevate it into a blog post:
What questions would you add to the list?
I've found that it's not just that we avoid talking about mistakes, we avoid reflection that explores all the breakthroughs we've made and never see because we're too quickly onto the next action. Here is a quick brainstorm of questions we could ask that might help networks reflect more effectively.
Questions to Help Deep Reflection Occur
1.What worked really well in this project?
2.Did it accomplish goals or outcomes? In what ways?
3.Did it fall short? Why?
4.What would you do differently?
5.What surprises came up during the project? What unexpected happened? What could you learn or capture from that?
6.What insights did you get during the project?
7.What processes did you use that worked well? Which didn’t work so well? Why do you think that was?
8.How did people work together? Were there conflicts? How were they handled? Did people get any new insights or perspectives as a result?
9.Were there people or perspectives missing from this project that you would include next time?
10.What skills and processes did you help people learn as part of this project? What skills and processes would you spend time on if you did this over again?
11.What were the most innovative aspects of the project? How did they work?
12.What did you do in this project that you could transfer to other projects?
13.What is the most troubling aspect of the project? What might you do to deal with it differently?
14.What skills came in most handy during this project? What skills did this project make you realize you need to acquire?
15.What really puzzles you about this project? What are unanswered questions you have about what happened?
16.What intrigues you about this project?
17.What would you like to learn more about that would help this (or other projects) in the future?
18.Where did we mess up? Make mistakes? Fall on our face? What can we learn from this?