As I have said in previous articles, at The Leadership Program we use a specific questioning process called the Experiential Learning Cycle, with students and adults alike. The basic idea behind this process is that greater learning and meaning can come out of ANY experience, if only you take the time to reflect on it.
Our use of the Experiential Learning Cycle follows five steps Experience, Publishing, Processing, Generalizing, and Applying.
Here we are going to focus in on the fourth step of this process, called Generalizing, where participants are challenged to think about how their thoughts and feelings displayed during the group’s experience together can be true “in general,” or elsewhere in their lives.
If you remember, in the publishing phase participants are only reflecting on themselves. And then in the processing phase they reflected on what they noticed happened with others, and in the group as a whole. Both of those phases ask participants to share their thoughts on the experience that just happened in the room together. In the generalizing phase, you are asking participants to take their reflections out of the room, so to speak, and to the world at large. So, we started with “self,” moved to “group,” and now we’re expanding our focus even greater to look at “world.” This is a critically important step in the cycle, because it’s the one that gets participants thinking about the life lessons contained in even the simplest of games or activities. This is also considered the “So What?” portion of the cycle, charging participants to think about why any of this matters.
Some examples of questions we ask during this phase of the cycle, to prime the conversation, include:
As the facilitator, your goal during this phase is to get participants making “generalizations”—reflections that are true in general, in life. You want to get them thinking about how what happened to them in that room could also impact what happens to them in their job, with their family, with their friends, etc.
A few other tips on how to facilitate effectively the generalizing phase of the cycle:
Okay! So you’ve had the Experience, you’ve given your participants the space to Publish their thoughts and feelings about the Experience, and you’ve allowed them time to Process their observations about the group dynamics that showed up during the Experience. Then you’ve challenged them to Generalize their experience, thinking about other places in their lives where they might think/feel/believe similarly to how they are thinking/feeling/believing about the current experience. Next up, the last step—Application—where participants will think about how they can take what they learned during the Experience and apply it to their lives moving forward.
Questions? Thoughts? Please post me in the comments below or Tweet to @ErikaPetrelli1