If you are a systems thinker or development management nerd you will already have recognised this very human way of learning: ‘social learning system’. This isn’t just a way of learning, it’s a basic human need; a central tenet to survival - it’s still all about where the best fruit, gazelles and healing plants are and how to prepare them for the benefit of others. It’s also part of belonging and how we feel good about ourselves and Life in general.

I’m writing this on a Wednesday afternoon, because today our session focused on groups for people on courses. Someone was talking about a group that they’ll be setting up, what they’ll be doing and the outcomes that participants can expect. I realised there was an unarticulated gap – something that for us, as practitioners, the people we work with need us to do. 

As we guide people through any learning situation, we need to do the meta work. They need us to observe and capture what they’re learning as they interact with the materials, exercises and one another. They then need us to learn from their learning and stitch it into our future work. They need us to have learnt from previous participants and to have stitched that into our current work, whether that’s delivering a project activity or specific training, we owe it to them to have done this. How do you do it? Do you do it? It doesn’t need to be convoluted – have a few pages in your notebook or journal where you can jot points and notes as you work with the group, listen to their questions and conversations or scan through their posts in your group. It’s insightful. I guarantee you will gain wisdom, because people rarely notice what they’re learning as they go along, one of our many human foibles… and (if you’re still following and your head is still the right way out), one of the advantages of meta work, we get to learn from both levels at once, as we feed into the other level what we learned from the meta level.

Giving specific consideration about capturing this learning is a vital part of successful project planning and gives an edge in the grant funding bunfight. It’s an inherent part of the ‘Project Planning with Confidence’ Masterclass that I run. Check the events page for upcoming dates, or message me about delivering bespoke training for your organisation.