How to Make the Most of Every Learning Opportunity

I’m in Dallas for a couple of days with our Cross Point Executive Team.  We’re hanging out at Leadership Network with about a dozen other churches talking about leadership development.

I love these opportunities to get away with our team.  Here are a few things that I recommend to make the most of leadership development opportunities.

1) Listen.  Disconnect from the ordinary noise of your work routine to hear the voices of a different pace.

2) Get out of your comfort zone.  Particularly when you go to a conference as a team, it’s easy to hang out just with each other.  Push yourself to engage with others and learn more about what they’re doing.

3) Ask more questions than you answer.  When you’re having conversations with other churches, try to watch your question to answer ratio.  If you’re answering more questions than you’re asking, you may be losing an opportunity to be teachable.

4) Take notes.   Write down what you hear, what you think and what you hope.  While taking notes of what a speaker is saying, also capture the ideas or action points that are being triggered in your mind.

5) Follow up.  Revisit what you experienced once you get home.  Schedule time for your team to get back together to talk about what you learned and what you hope to implement now that you’re back home.  Knowledge is useless without action.

How do you make the most of learning opportunities?