Reflection sessions can be a really important part of the package that we offer to clients, in terms of evaluation services.

Encouraging people to think back and spend a little time being in a more reflective state of mind can be a great way to improve your work over time. Having discussions about what has gone well, what could be done better and bouncing ideas off your peers and colleagues can reveal some great next steps.

One example is the facilitation we carried out recently for a town deal project. We went to a beautiful venue in the hills and had an ‘away day’ with the whole team. It was very helpful to bring together people who work at all different levels of their organisations. In fact, on this day, it wasn’t just people from all different levels but people from three different key organisations who came together.

At this session we asked ‘what do we know now that we didn’t know a year ago?’ This question can help people to understand their learning during the work they have been doing.

The day helped to:

• Reflect
• Reinforce what they knew
• Build relationships
• Plan new work together

Some of the most important decisions that came out of that day were really simple. In fact,  the partnership was taking over a new venue and hoped to all work from that venue one morning a week. Two of the organisations had chosen a morning and, on the day, it was realised that it was not a good fit for all three organisations and so a simple shift, right at the beginning, before it got bedded into diaries, would make a big difference to that project.

There were other really important improvements made, such as deciding together ‘how often shall we have a conversation?’ and ‘should it be on slack or more formal?’ ‘How do we keep in touch? Little and often?’(Rather than it being big, planned meetings) and ‘how can we coordinate programming more effectively?’

You don’t always know what’s going to come out of a reflection session but encouraging other people who are taking part in the program, to listen to other people’s thoughts and reflections, gives ideas some space to bounce around and improve.

When we facilitate something like this, we also spend a lot of time making sure that everyone gets a chance to use their voice. There is a concept of the HIPPO voice being the most often heard (Highest Paid Person in The Organisation) and the more senior people tend to be better at speaking up.

As passionate devotees to democracy we also want to hear from people who are more junior or merely just shy in general. Their knowledge and life experiences are really valuable.

The way we go about this is we plan a lot of activities and games which not only make the day fun and make time pass quickly, but they also give everyone a chance to speak.

Our facilitation days do get booked up quite quickly so if you are looking for an evaluation to include every voice – please get in touch.