Wednesday, February 10, 2021

Facilitate a meeting

What I really enjoy at work is facilitating a meeting. I believe that facilitation plays an important role in an effective meeting and building a good team.

For me, a good meeting is when the objectives are realized, the participants engage in the discussion, and the team is connected. Facilitation can help.

1. Solid agenda

Meeting facilitation begins before the meeting. We need to define the purpose - why there should be a meeting? objectives - what are the expected outcome of the meeting?

Topics - what topics should we discuss to realize the objectives of the meeting

2. Pre-work

To prepare for a good discussion, the facilitator can send the participants some relevant materials, short survey questions, etc. so that participants are well-prepared for the meeting.

3. Check-in and ice-breaker

For a meeting, where participants don't know each other, the icebreaker session plays an important role in building common ground, building rapport so that they can have a safe environment to discuss, engage in the conversation.

While within an established team, short check-in is also helpful to create the energy for a better engagement in the meeting.

4. Active listening

Active listening is one of the most important factors of a good facilitator. As a facilitator, you need to ensure that 

- Everyone has a safe environment to express their ideas

- Everyone can engage in the discussion

- Participants are heard 

With active listening, you can enable participants to talk and feel appreciated. How?

- Pay attention to what they are saying

- Ask questions to clarify

- Summarize the ideas.


5. Close a meeting

It is important to close a meeting by checking against the expected outcome and agree on an action plan: Who What When

With such an action plan, you can easily do follow-up activities after the meeting.


Do you have other tips for facilitating a meeting? Please feel free to comment.

I wish you a lot of effective and joyful meetings.

Monday, June 22, 2020

How to learn German and prepare for a German Exam?

I have been learning German for a long time, I really enjoyed it and could develop a habit of using the language every day. Lately, I have passed the telc Deutsch C1 Hochschule so I would like to share with you in this post my experience and some resources for learning German and preparing for a German Exam. 

1. Motivation and Goals
Answer to yourself why do you want to learn the language and what do you want to achieve. Be as clear as possible because the clearer you are, the more likely you are successful in learning the language and achieve your goals.

Plan so that you can learn frequently. Ideally, you arrange your time so that you can learn at least 30 minutes every day or every two days (read the news, watch a video, write a diary, etc.) When you are in the flow, you can increase the learning duration very easily.

2. Get familiar with the exam structure
Before learning, you should take the time to study the test sample/ mock exam, provided by the exam centers. The mock exam materials give you an overview of exam structures, which parts are they, what types of questions are asked, etc.

These mock exams you can google to find the free version and buy from the exam centers. (I put the links for your reference, I don't earn a commission from it)

Below are some materials for the telc Deutsch C1 Hochschule
Übungstest 1 - for free
Übungstest 2 - 4 - you can buy on Telc shop

3. Practice Practice Practice
  • How to prepare for Reading and listening parts
Practicing mock exams facilitates you to improve the reading and listening skills, prepare yourself for the time pressure and the speed of the listening exercise, and develop proper strategies for individual exercise and practice taking notes.

But if you just focus on practicing mock exams, you improve the "do the test" skills and not your language skills and you can not score well when facing unfamiliar topics. Therefore, it is very important to expand your language knowledge on different topics, make your comfort zone of "familiar topics" wider and wider. Below is how.

By reading: Reading is a powerful way to learn. Firstly, you can "meet" again the vocabularies that you have learned, it also helps you to expand your understanding of the words in different contexts, you also learn how native speakers write, how they structure the ideas and sentences.
Reading the text with audio makes it a lot easier for you to improve your listening comprehension and pronunciation. I usually read on DW.de, even when I was at level A1. From the beginning, it was difficult but very interesting and I could learn a lot of vocabulary and expressions.
Additionally, I read my favorite books in German and in English at the same time. By doing this, I can understand German easily, and learned how beautiful German can be.

The Books I read:
By watching Youtube channel: This is an amazing resource to learn German, I practiced a habit of watching Youtube for around 45 - 60 minutes in the morning. The videos enable me to understand German faster and it is also more interesting to learn. Not only did I learn pronunciation, vocabulary, improve my listening skills but I also learned a lot of social and scientific knowledge through these videos

My recommended youtube channels:
These are also good resources, in terms of vocabulary, and ideas for your speaking and writing parts.

  • How to prepare for speaking part
- Know the structure of speaking session
- Search for speaking mock test questions
- Have a buddy to practice with you
- Prepare the topics and practice
- Give feedback to each other

If you don't have a buddy, you can record your speaking part, and ask a native speaker for feedback. 

Such activities give you the opportunities to have the confidence to speak and know your frequent mistakes so you can correct yourself when speaking.

  • How to prepare for writing part
- Know the writing test structure
- Compose a list of sample sentences to structure your text (introduction, content, and conclusion)
- Practice writing 
- Get your text corrected by a native speaker and learn from your mistake
- Practice writing on various topics so you have more ideas about different topics.

Tips:
- Quickly draft an outline for your text before writing so you have a clear structure.
- It is better to write a simple and correct sentence than a complex sentence but full of mistakes.
- Manage your time, save the last 5 -10 minutes to double-check the text again, and correct any grammar and spelling mistakes.

Tuesday, May 26, 2020

Being proactive

These days I own more projects, which potentially help me to learn and grow extensively. I believe that being proactive is the key to growth and success
  • proactive to learn
  • proactive to take responsibilities
  • proactive to connect, inspire and co-create
...

By being proactive at work, you have ownership of your work, you contribute more and achieve more.

How to be proactive at work?
  • Consider it is your own business
  • Awareness: 
    • Understand the business objectives
    • Understand your customer (employees when you work in HR, end-consumer when you work in Customer Service, etc. )
  • Decision:
    • What we can do better?
    • What we can do more?
  • Propose the ideas (if needed)
  • Take action

The same process applies to life/ learning
  • Know that it is your life
  • Understand your objectives, goals 
    • What do you want to accomplish this year and why? (in the family, at work, for your own development, emotion, health,etc.)? 
    • It is important to be clear with yourself about these objectives and goals. Use SMART principle: Specific, Measurable, Realistic, Timebound
  • Decision
    • Draw a plan of what should be done
  • Take action


Wednesday, May 20, 2020

The Power of Purpose

Hello sunny friends,

I have been being a learner for the whole of my life and I have been working in business and social sectors for many years. The most valuable lesson that I have learned is the Power of Purpose. 

Oxford dictionary’s definition: “Purpose is the intention, aim, or function of something; the thing that something is supposed to achieve”.

A purpose helps us to be more efficient, more productive, more authentic, and more connected. With purpose, we can live a better life, create more value for the society, and make the world a better place. One common mistake is that we think that the purpose is clear, but actually not. We start learning at school and keep learning as a habit, without knowing why we are learning these subjects, topics, or languages. That is one of the reasons why learning is not effective since students are not engaged and most of the knowledge is not applicable to their real lives. Another example is the repeated frequent meetings, these meetings are on our calendar and we often come to the meeting without purpose. In the end, it turns out that 80% of the meeting contents are not relevant to us. How could we afford to be so inefficient? 

A purpose can also transform every single daily activity. A purpose enables people to bring love into the conversation, talk heart to heart, listen attentively, and have an enjoyable and meaningful time together. Without a purpose, we are not engaged, even in our own lives. For instance, when we are having dinner together, a basic purpose is limited to enjoying the food and having energy for the evening. But when people are not clear about such a purpose, they grasp some fast food, which harms their health, they eat hastily without taking joy in eating, they are angry about what happened today, or worrying about tomorrow, etc. With a clear purpose, they can pick nutritious dishes, and leisurely enjoy a meal. Building closer relationships, enriching understanding are other purposes of eating out together, but when such purposes are not clear, people check their phone, focus on their food, talk without taking into consideration if the topics are relevant for the listeners, and they don’t listen to each other closely. How can we afford to be so surficial? 

So, define a purpose for every learning activity, business project, social events, etc. as clearly as possible. It is the guide for our awareness of where we are and where we want to go. It is the filter for us to make better decisions and perform better actions. It also arouses/ awakens our passion, keeps us motivated and resilient during the progress. And more importantly, it allows us to live a life that we want.

Sunday, May 17, 2020

How to learn effectively

Dear friends, education is my passion, and learning is my hobby. Today I would like to share with you some tips on “how to learn effectively”. They are the tips, which help me to learn faster and remember more when learning. I hope that they are also helpful for you on your learning journey.

Start with your goals
Learning materials are effective and interesting when it is RELEVANT to you. Therefore, the first step is to define your goals for the upcoming weeks or months.  And then, try to figure out what kinds of knowledge and skills you should have to move closer to your goals, overcome your challenges, and achieve more. The objectives will keep you motivated when learning and will guide you to draw your learning path and action plan. 

Don’t read from the first to the last page of a book
When you have good materials, for example, a good book in your hand, don’t read every page of the book. Instead, you can go through the Table of Content and see which chapters are important for you, for your objectives for now. By doing this, you can save a lot of time and effort by not overwhelming yourself with many irrelevant pages. 

Take notes
When learning, you can take notes on the most important ideas. Because even if you read the most important chapters of the book, not every idea or argument in these chapters is helpful for you. So by taking note, you can filter the interesting ideas for yourself. Taking notes also helps you to remember the ideas more and saves your time if you want to review it once more later.

Apply the ideas into your real life
As a saying goes: "Practice makes perfect", the knowledge turns to wisdom when you apply it to your real life, experience it. Also, only when applying the knowledge into your life, you can test if it is right for you.
For example, when you read these tips, try to put them into practice in your daily learning activities. 

Share the ideas with others
Sharing these ideas and your experience with others allows you to repeat the lessons which you have learned, helps you to connect with people of the same passion, and to learn from one another.

Thank you very much for being with me today. I wish you a lot of joy when learning. Remember: the more you learn, the wiser you are!

Soleil