Balcony Reflection Practice
Successful companies are companies that learn and develop. While learning may happen on-the-go, there are practices that teams and organizations can adopt to encourage learning to take place. One such practice is the balcony reflection.
The skill is to “get off the dance floor and go to the balcony”. This metaphor captures the mental activity of stepping back from action in order to ask, “What’s really going on here?”. As you step onto the balcony, you take yourself out of the fray in order to observe and see the bigger picture. You become a participant and an observer.
But seeing what’s going is not enough. Speaking out is what’s needed for learning to happen. Many of us have left meetings we’ve found ineffective and then shared our true thoughts with a trusted colleague over coffee afterwards. In a deliberately developmental organization, the goal is to take that conversation into the meeting itself. While this may feel uncomfortable at first, this will allow teams to have the honest conversations that will promote collective learning and improve productivity.
Balcony Reflection Practice
Spend five minutes at the end of each meeting or 1:1 you have to “get on the balcony”. Reflect on and share your thoughts on the productivity of the meeting. You may use the following questions for guidance:
How productive was the meeting?
What work did we do?
What work did we avoid?
How high or low was the heat? (comfort zone? learning zone? panic zone?)
What would we like to do differently or what would we like to improve during our next meeting?