Category: Training

Worksheet and Post inspired and adapted from InterVarsity training experiences.

[2 Minute Read]

What can you do to facilitate personal growth? How can you tangibly grow your emotional intelligence?

Slow down, reflect, and debrief your actions and activities with the Generic Debrief Worksheet.

Reflecting on your actions and activities grows your self awareness. It helps shift your perspective and facilitates and accelerates your growth. 

My Job

At my current job I work as a Product Development Specialist. Our team works together to design and bring to market physical consumer products. We have thousands of different products we have designed and produced. We use a software program to store all the information for each of these products. One of my co-workers was in charge of this process. He would fill in the 350+ data fields needed for each new product. 

Bump in the Road

I never paid much attention to the item setup process.  That was until a couple months ago when that team member left the company. With his departure, the knowledge of how to use the software also left. This was not an ideal situation to have. With this gap in our team I soon found out that this item setup process was going to fall under my responsibility. I then was handed 4 new items that I needed to put into the system. 

At this point I found myself struggling to keep up and frustrated with what was happening. The item setup process is not very difficult if you know what all the data fields refer to. It is a mountain of a task if you are starting from scratch with no training on it. I remember sitting at my computer staring at the screen feeling angry. I was paralyzed by this task as I knew it would take me a long time to figure out. 

Debrief

What saved me in this moment was stopping to debrief and reflect on what was happening. I pulled out my debrief template and went down the sheet. I first thought through everything that had happened and that would need to happen.

I then took stock of my emotions. As I was writing them down I felt myself becoming more self aware as I slowed down and processed what I was feeling. I realized it was okay for me to be upset about this situation. I realized it was okay for me to feel overwhelmed by this large project in front of me. Processing through these emotions helped me to slow down and gain some clarity. 

Turning Point

Things shifted for me when I then reflected in my journal what was really happening. I realized that when seen in a different light, this project had the potential to be a positive thing. I would get to learn something new from it. For me learning new things is something I enjoy so this was very helpful for me to realize. I also realized that this was a chance for me to really step up at my company and provide value. The project I had before seen as a barrier started to look more like an opportunity for growth. 

The Result

The project did end up taking me about a month and had some frustrating moments. But throughout the month I was motivated because I had re-calibrated my perspective. I had stopped to debrief and reflect. And from that I had changed my view and it had helped me move forward. 

I actually recently finished training a new employee in how to use the software. On top of that I even created some video resources for how to use it as well. 

Practical Tools

Reflecting on your actions and activities grows your self awareness. It helps shift your perspective and facilitates and accelerates your growth. 

See the worksheet to try it for yourself.

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