Maximize your return from conferences and training: Maximize your return from conferences/training: Be fully present
Loriana Sekarski
Loriana Sekarski is the founder and president of BONSAI, a consulting company that transforms leaders (and businesses) into the best version of themselves. Outside of BONSAI, Loriana serves as an adjunct professor at Washington University's graduate student program. Additionally, she's fine-tuning her passion project, TakeFlight, a program that addresses domestic abuse within the Christian community.
This is the second article in a 3-part series prompted by a reader who asked, “What is the best way to use ‘training’ after you’ve gotten home and filed the handouts?” As I contemplated Dave’s question, I realized there are three distinct opportunities to boost the value you receive—how you prepare, how you attend, and what you do when you return.
If you have questions you would like to see addressed in a future article, please email me at Loriana.Sekarski@GrowWithBONSAI.com.
If you have done your preparation work, you are walking into your conference armed with:
- Knowing your objectives
- Having prayed for powerful encounters
- Meetings planned with key people
- A schedule focused on what you need to learn
- An updated LinkedIn profile and elevator pitch geared to this audience
- Ideas and resources you might contribute to help others.
Now it’s time to put that plan into action and get the most from the conference. These tips can help you be fully present and maximize opportunities to learn and connect.
Revisit Your Objectives with Intention
Make sure you read your objectives every morning, so you focus your energy on meeting them. Upon arrival, it can be easy to drift into auto-pilot mode or only focus on your primary goal (like learning) and forget secondary objectives (like making critical connections). If you’ve put the time into writing down your objectives for the conference, be sure to revisit them each day (or even during the day if needed) to stay focused on what you want to accomplish.
Bring Your A-Game
Whether an in-person or virtual session, it is important to bring your best to sessions. Even if you are an introvert, matching people’s energy levels is critical in the first 30 seconds of a conversation. Especially on Zoom, I find people with low energy can drain the life out of a session, and that’s not something you want to be remembered for.
Here are some things you can do to bring your best self to each session:
- Smile
- Get involved in asking questions
- Engage in small talk before the session starts
- ALWAYS have your video on unless taking a short break
- Participate in the written chat (a great strategy for introverts)
- Speak with fluctuation, including a higher volume and a more rapid pace in the first 30 seconds of an interaction.
Keep the Phone Down
It is so easy to pick up our phones at breaks and check email. Doing so projects an attitude of “I am too busy to be bothered with,” and that means you are missing out on someone approaching you that perhaps you need to meet. Limit yourself to checking for a crisis—I ask clients and employees to text me if there’s an emergency so I don’t need to check emails. Since a true crisis should be rare, put the phone down and start meeting people.
It may be uncomfortable to network, but God doesn’t call us to work alone or only do what is comfortable. Be courageous and go find someone and seek to learn their story. Taking that approach gets the attention off you, which is another helpful strategy for introverts.
"Since a true crisis should be rare, put the phone down and start meeting people."
Choose Sometimes Not to Attend
A few years ago, we were on a cruise and booked an excursion in Belize for snorkeling. That morning we were exhausted, the waves were rough, we learned we would have to tender to the shore, and we noticed a hanging sign off the ship saying something like “boats coming close to the ship might be shot at.” Even though we hated forfeiting the money we had already paid for the excursion (bad stewardship, right?), I felt like that sign was the final sign we needed. We stayed put … and learned not going ashore was amazing! We had the pool to ourselves, enjoyed a peaceful day, and later learned the 40-minute tender made people sick and the water was so choppy they canceled our excursion anyhow!
Sometimes the best use of our time is not to attend a breakout, but rather use that time away from the office to reflect, brainstorm, or just see who you might meet. It can be hard when we feel like we must go to everything because we paid for the training. But really, we paid for getting our objectives met—and they may be best served by doing something else at that moment. So, if you are looking at the schedule and not feeling moved to attend or feel like you are picking from the best of the worst offerings in one session, consider sitting it out. It might be your best bet.
Have a Plan for Taking Notes
When you do participate, plan for if and how you will take notes. Some people learn and retain best by not taking notes, and that’s ok. I would suggest even in that case, at least write down any actions you plan to take based on what you hear.
I suggest that you color-code your notes so information is easy to find, such as:
- Black – general information
- Red – actions you plan to take
- Green – ideas triggered by what you heard that you want to explore later
If you don’t want to carry multiple pens, you could also use a system of symbols in the margins, such as an arrow for actions you plan to take and a star for ideas for further exploration. Each night, skim through your notes and add in any additional information necessary to ensure they will be clear in a month. That way you’re not asking, “What was that about?” after the flurry of conference sessions has ended and you have returned to your regular routine.
Capture Key Take-Aways and Action Steps
Each evening, take a step back and review your overall notes from the day. If you didn’t take notes, think back on the day as a whole and jot down at least a few ideas. Highlight your top three takeaways and your top one or two actions you plan to take based on what you learned that day. Then, at the end of the conference (perhaps on the flight home), create a draft action plan that summarizes your key takeaways and action steps. Capturing all of this during and immediately after the conference helps channel the ideas and energy you felt while there into action when you return home.
Make Connections Immediately
If you wait until you’re back in the office to follow up with people, there’s a good chance it won’t happen. It is easy to get back to work and your usual routines and not take the time to reach out to the people you meet. And, let’s face it, after meeting so many people, you may not remember who they all are a few days after the conference. Here’s a possible solution to implement while attending:
- As you meet people during the day, write something that will help you remember them on their business card or your phone. This might be a brief note about topics you discussed or where they are from or, for the more visual people, a note about what they were wearing.
- Each night, send a LinkedIn invitation with a note about your conversation to people you met during the day.
- For those contacts where you want to schedule a follow-up conversation, go ahead and send an email asking to get that scheduled.
Depending on the person, conferences and pieces of training can be energizing or exhausting or a combination of the two, but they present many opportunities to connect with others and accomplish your objectives. When you arrive with a clear understanding of your objectives and have a strategic approach for how you will connect with people and you’ll capture key takeaways and action steps, you can be a good steward of the time and budget spent on the conference and maximize your return.
Coming soon: Part three, which will focus on how to ensure you don’t lose what you gained in a training or workshop.
