General Chat

I recently started running these for two cohorts of staff in my department, managers (middle and frontline) and administrative support. They're gaining traction.

The way I have structured them thus far is to identify a relevant topic each month based on anecdotal data from cohort members, leadership team members, and my own research/observations. I lightly design each session so there are a series of guiding questions to prompt discussion to help the group get more comfortable with each other. As a facilitator, I'll let the group deviate based on their interests.

My success metrics so far are very basic: overall attendance, repeat attendance, Level 1 reactionary survey feedback. Eventually I'll expand those metrics to something more tangible (and meaningful).

We launched a serious effort related to this in March of 2020 - motivated by COVID. The effort has sustained itself, been expanded, and is being adapted by others. We are limiting sessions to 45 minutes, for small groups (6 is the ideal size and smaller is better than larger) and the frequency varies from community to community. We have also established guidelines for a variety of formats and named them as LearnAbouts, TeachAbouts. ReachOutAbouts, DoAbouts etc. I am eager to share more details if you are interested.