After years of fumbling about physical routines and numerous excuses, I finally feel I have settled on a body practice with my new physiotherapist! I attended a four part session in January with her to start with focusing on hips, shoulder, upper and lower back mobility. She shared recordings with me later. I tried in my earnest to make these exercise a daily part of my routine for next couple of months. I put up a visual poster with the routine on my cupboard, placed my yoga mat in my room at night and started my day with the routine! (Thanks James Clear for the habit teaching)! My son would help me keep track which exercise I had to do every day! Yes I did slip/ skip on some days - on the whole I have never been this consistent with my own physical routine.
Yesterday I had a follow up session where she reviewed all that we had done, corrected some, added more challenge to existing ones and added some new ones! I am so amazed that finally the habit and consistency has come and I really appreciated her approach! So this blog post is inspired from my morning exercise - where it dawned on me how her approach can teach me a lot about facilitating learning and change.
Lesson 1 - Build an emotional connect
From my first session with her, I had the feeling that she started from where I was and my reality mattered. She made me do some stretches to see what my current state was. She heard where I was coming from and what made me want to do these sessions with her. She smiled, corrected, held me when I was breathless or howling because I felt muscles I had never felt before or had never been moved before! She was emotionally connecting with me - I felt a human connection not just a transactional robotic exchange.
As facilitators, yes we have the "technical" knowledge/ skills/ behaviours to impact - we have goals to achieve - all this cannot happen (at least "willingly" or "meaningfully") unless we make this human connection with the group.
Lesson 2 - Check understanding of learning through live repeated demos, the SMALL steps matter!
She would first show me the exercises, then see me doing them - and she helped correct so many small things - how far my arms/ legs stretched, how much my hips/ body were turning. At one point she made me do the stretch the wrong way so I could myself feel the difference. This is what made me listen to her recordings - the value were in her specific bite sized feedback on what I needed to do better. In the next session, she would ask me to repeat the previous set just to ensure I was doing them right. Even in later follow up yesterday, she saw I could some better and showed me what exactly to do.
As facilitators, we have a lot of content to cover - it is very useful to stop regularly and check in through various ways how are the folks with what has happened - either through demos/ live practice or through asking reflective questions to check understanding and processing of what has happened. This needs scheduled time in the design almost I would say 60:40 ratio of content to processing of content!
Lesson 3 - Frequency matters more than quantity
She kept telling me its more important to do even if just for 5 min rather than wait around for the time to do the whole 30 min! I noticed the change of this immediately....there were times I was rushed or just did not feel like doing the whole set, I would do some bits of them at some other time of the day. My body slowly started responding to this - it felt more open, more energised and it was interesting these stretch routines actually made me want to go for walks/ runs/ cycling! As if my body was primed and ready for action:)
When we help people/ groups make action plans - what is critical is how do we help them set up the right systems to make those actions happen consistently? For e.g. I am helping a group in "strategy in action" phase and we have worked together to define habits at individual and organisational level, tracking these, having clear accountability for the follow up. The actual & consistent execution of the strategy - even in small steps - will be a much more likely indicator of success from the strategy!
Lesson 4 - Rely on learner's sense of where they are and how far they have come
In my follow up yesterday, she asked me on a scale of 1-10 where was I when we started. And now where am I? This helped look back at my own journey and share what I felt had improved and where I still faced some challenges! We worked on those aspects and set up a time again a month later for a follow up!
As we move with a learning process, it is so critical to keep checking where the learner is compared to where they were - and find those little possibilities/ opportunities of focus - which can help take them to the next stop....again scheduling time and having the right language to do this - and the "strong heart" to accept when things are not exactly where you thought they might be!
Lesson 5 - Look for what else impacts the learning goal, its not just you!
I have the issue of leg cramps at night and even after these exercises they persist. So now she advised me to do some blood tests and maybe I need supplements to deal with that issue.
When we work with a learning goal - there are sometimes so many other factors that would impact whether or not the learner can or will apply the learning in their lives - we can be open to have these conversations with them in the hope that those aspects can also be shifted in ways to help them get to where they want to go!
Thank you Doc!
P.S. if you are curious about who I am talking about, take a look.
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