Reviewing what you have learned and learning anew, you are fit to be a teacher.
Confucius (551—479)
Chinese politician and philosopher
Wonderful! After all the talking we can swing into action! By now you will have grasped that we don’t do anything without objectives and a plan.
Two Types of Action Plan
There are two types of action plans:
- A simple task list with responsibilities and dates. This could be the result of a business meeting moderation. Task Responsible Date Draft report Ali S. Nauman 11.11.2015 Protocol Karen Mittman 05.06.2015
- The other one is a Personal Action Plan for participants. The aim is to develop a practical work plan for continued learning and for applying what a participant has learned during your workshop.
Three Stages of a Participant’s Action Plan
There are three stages in developing a Personal Action Plan:
- Record your strengths as identified during the workshop.
- Record areas for personal improvement. These are the objectives of the personal action plan. Where do you or a participant want to improve?
- Outline key steps needed to realise these objectives.
As with the SWOT analysis, the magic words are match and convert. Match your strengths with opportunities and convert weaknesses into strengths.
For example, you might have identified as a strength that you can learn quickly. Another strength is sociability. On the other hand, you are not very disciplined and you have to improve your resource management in order to be a good moderator. The deadline you set for yourself is two months.
The outline of the key steps for achieving this objective would be to meet once a week for one hour from next week with an experienced administrator (or different ones so as not to take up too much time from the same person) and exercise resource management. In order to measure this, your training could be to offer your services after two months for managing the workshop resources.
In the Annex you will find an empty form to use during workshops. Participants can develop and write down their own action plan. As moderator you have to make sure that the objectives are SMART. Especially, during an energising workshop atmosphere, goals are often too ambitious and do not meet realities of daily life. The objectives should be broken down into small and easy-manageable steps.