Tell me more about this ripple effect….
Water... the ocean, a river, a pool, the lake... those have always played an important role in my life. Whether it was waterskiing on the river, swimming at the lake or exploring the ocean, I have always been fascinated by water. I think back to when I was a kid and my father was playing with me at the lake. I was trying to catch fish and wasn’t having any luck, so instead of that we skipped rocks. These rocks would skim across the calm water and change the visual of what we were watching. A once calm lake changed to a ripplely waterscape all because of one small stone.
Now fast forward to 2017, an email pops up in my inbox from a student I had taught in a leadership course a year before. The title was “I did it!” Now this intrigued me in the ocean of emails that I normally got. I clicked it excitedly and began reading. This once student had told me that they had just come from an onsite visit of a their facilities and meeting with their site manager. During that onsite the leader went to the site daily kick off meeting and during this meeting the site manager started teaching their employees about coaching and the GROW method (another Blog post all about that coming!). Now the manager at the site had never been to the leadership class and could not have been familiar with GROW. The leader that emailed me had told me that they were using their monthly staff meeting to review their takeaways from the leadership class and apparently this stuck with one of their managers.
Now this to me was the ripple effect... one small stone, changing the landscape, rippling throughout the water and making waves. To me this is what learning is all about... starting the ripple effect, teaching people ideas/skills that they can then carry to their organizations and utilize that ripple effect throughout the team. It is important when you create a learning experience or attend one that you make sure you have information to ripple, to carry forward. It only takes one small stone!
I was once told that for learning to be impactful the end goal has to be to help the learner do something better or differently after the experience. Are you better after the experiences you take?
Three Ripples to Take Away
1. Have you ever started a learning ripple?
2. Were you ever part of a ripple and helped keep it moving?
3. Have you ever stopped a ripple, if so how come?
Comment below or in my LinkedIn or Instagram post!