The Simple Way to Celebrate Your Own Learning 

🗝️ A key heads-up: we’re continuing our month-long celebration of learning, and there’s a prize in it for you, including the chance to win a 1:1 call with me. Why? It’s the one-year anniversary of the Transformative Trainers Academy (my membership for experts who’ve been asked to teach but never trained to teach). Details below. Now on to …

Last week I sent an email reminding people not to forget the playlist. That sentence may mean nothing to you right now. But by the time you finish this post, it will because you’ll see how it relates to my T.O.S.S and P.U.L.L. tool.

You’ll also have two simple four-letter tools you can use to name what you’re learning, right now, in the middle of whatever chaos you’re currently working through, instead of waiting until the debrief that may never happen.

Bonus: you can use the tools to plan your learning, and/or to plan workshops you may want to teach.

That time the roof caved in

I was all ready to train a UN team who are essentially the UN police. That morning a massive rainstorm hit and the roof of the training space caved in. Not leaked. Caved in.

Here’s the thing about prepping for a training, or a hard meeting, or any moment where you’re supposed to show up ready: you can do everything right, and the roof can still fall in. 

Literally, in my case. 

The prep isn’t about controlling every variable. It’s about doing the best you can with what you know, and building in enough flexibility that when the unexpected shows up, you’re not starting from zero.

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I’m proud and slightly amazed to report that the team still received their training. Different room, same content, same me, albeit with slightly more adrenaline pumping and way soggier than usual. (I was literally leaving wet footprints everywhere I walked.  The picture above is of drying my shoes later on.)

The conflict that was already in the room

For another training I did for a team doing high-stakes conservation work, in my usual prep work, I found out that one specific team member was the focus of most of the team tension. Knowing that going in changed everything about how I set up the room, how I structured small group work, and what I paid attention to.

That’s a Team-level insight (T of the T.O.S.S. tool which is coming up).. But learning doesn’t only show up at the team level. 

A few years earlier, working with UN staff in Mogadishu, I was constantly balancing two things that never stopped being interwoven. 

How dangerous it was for local staff just to be seen on the U.N. compound (because of conflict with Al-Shabaab), and the broader push for societal change that the work existed to serve. 

Self and Society, tangled together, every single day (from the T.O.S.S. tool which we’ll get into now).

Two very different trainings. Two completely different levels of learning, which informed …

The T.O.S.S. and P.U.L.L. tool

That’s what these two tools are for. Not for after-the-fact reflection sessions that, let’s face it, rarely happen. For real-time noticing, so you can catch what you’re learning while you’re still in it.  

And pro-tip: you can also use them to more effectively and more easily plan your own workshops.  

Because let’s face it, learning can be complicated and designing workshops that stick is even more so.

T.O.S.S. asks: What’s the focus?

• Team: the dynamics between the people in the room. Like knowing ahead of time who was carrying most of the conflict in that conversation team.
• Organization: the systems, organizational culture, policies, etc. that affect the team and the work.
• Self: what’s happening for you, personally, in the middle of it.
• Society: the bigger picture the work sits inside. Like the layer I couldn’t separate from Self while working in Mogadishu.

Most of us default to noticing one level, usually Self, and miss the other three entirely. 

T.O.S.S. is a quick check. Which level am I actually leaning into right now (whether focused on your own learning or planning a workshop)? 

BTW, sometimes it’s more than one at once, and that’s worth noticing too.

P.U.L.L. asks: What do I do with this learning?

• Prepping: getting ready, knowing you can’t control everything. The roof caves in sometimes. You go anyway.
• Using: emphasizing and including how to apply the learning the moment it shows up.
• Leveraging: setting things up so the learning outlasts the moment it happened. A.K.A. “getting the learning to leave the room.”
• Leading: helping other people learn it too, not just banking it for yourself. 

Leveraging is where that playlist comes in that I started this post with. 

I shared a music playlist last week, a small easter egg tucked into a bigger contest, built specifically so people had a reason to come back to the material after the official learning moment ended. That’s Leveraging in action. Learning doesn’t stop mattering the day the workshop does.  

More on that below in case you missed the playlist and want access.

Try it this week

Pick one thing you’re in the middle of right now. A project, a hard conversation, a training you’re prepping for. Run it through T.O.S.S. Which level is the real learning happening at? Then run it through P.U.L.L. Are you prepping for it, using it, leveraging it, or leading someone else through it?

You don’t need a debrief meeting to celebrate your own learning. You need to enjoy the ride between tossing and pulling.

Want to make it even easier? I put together a free, editable TOSS and PULL worksheet you can download and fill in for whatever you’re working through right now. Catch that link below.

Enter to win a 1:1 call with me

We’re continuing the weekly celebration of learning all month long, in honour of the one-year anniversary of the Transformative Trainers Academy. You have a chance to enter to win a 1:1 call with me, where we can chat about the topic(s) of your choice. Need some help with a communication issue? Want to explore your creativity? The sky is the limit for the person who wins the 1:1 one-hour online call with me. How do you enter? Great question. Simply by completing a minimum of one of the week’s gentle challenges.   Each challenge you complete gives you one entry into the contest. I’ll announce the randomly drawn winner on Oct 6th/Oct 7th here in the article/newsletter. Last week’s challenge was that playlist I made for you to discover the message spelled out by the first letter of each song. If you haven’t already, email me (laragan at rpsinc.ca) with your answer. This week’s challenge is to email me with a comment about the T.O.S.S. and P.U.L.L. tool, for example, how you’d like to use it. Remember, we’ll be celebrating all things learning this month, so stay tuned for next week where I’ll share another chance to win a 1:1 with me. It’ll be fun and fabulous. Just like you. I promise.

Take Action Now – go on and learn, laugh, and lead

Learn

• Nab your T.O.S.S. and P.U.L.L. worksheet here, which is editable once you download it.
• And don’t forget to enter the contest to win a 1:1 session with me (details above).

Laugh 

• Danger ahead if not tossed correctly!

Lead

• Curious to learn more about the Transformative Trainers Academy?  By all means, it’s waiting for you here.

P.S.

• Special offer!  Join before October 6th, when I announce the winner of the 1:1 with me, and you’ll get one additional month of TTA membership for free!

Since 2009, I’ve been writing weekly posts across five topics. Click into whichever one makes you lean forward just now … you’ll find everything I’ve written on that topic waiting for you there.

• Working Better Together – communication, conflict, creativity, collaboration, change. The so-called soft skills that turn out to be the hardest ones.
• Learning and Development – practical tools and fresh thinking for your own growth … because you deserve the same attention you give everyone else.
• Training of Trainers – if you’ve ever been asked to teach, train, or share your expertise with a group, this one’s for you.
• Tech Tools – not the scary kind, I promise. The kind that saves time, cuts overwhelm, and makes you look and feel like a rockstar.
• Life Lenses® – because the lens you look through changes everything. Posts on perspective, perception, and the Life Lenses® framework for understanding why we all see things so differently.