Use these questions to guide personal or team learning, and to support and coach others to learn from experience.

• What experience or experiences from your past will you focus on?
• How do you feel about the experiences and the results as you look back on them.
  • Describe the feelings. There may be excitement, regret, anxiety, good memories, or other feelings.
• Now, take some deep breaths and rise above your feelings. Adopt a learning attitude. Remind yourself that the purpose is to explore what you learned and bring it forward into the future, not to evaluate, blame, regret, criticize, or look or be perfect.
• Objectively – as if you are a journalist -- describe the experience from start to finish – what did you/others plan to happen, what actually happened, what did you and others do, what were the results?
• Now, get others’ views. Ask them for the same information as in the previous question. And ask how they feel about the experience as they look back on it.
• It’s time now, to look for deeper patterns and lessons, including…
  • What was it like for you to be part of this experience? What did others do and say that affected what you did, said, produced… how you felt?
  • What was the overall atmosphere around the experience? What contributed positively and negatively to the atmosphere?
  • With the benefit of hindsight…
    • What were the most positive driving forces for success?
    • What mistakes occurred – or what didn’t work as well or as planned?
• Imagine being in a similar situation today or in the future…
  • What will you do or support others to do again?
  • What will you change/do or support others to do differently?