Just as we “check-in” with group members at the beginning of each day of a workshop or meeting, we also “check-out”, or close our workspace, by taking time for personal reflection and sharing at the end of each day.
We usually arrange the chairs in a circle for this activity.
Once in the circle, we can chose from many questions for “check-out”. If we are doing a multi-day meeting or workshop, on the first day, we often choose to take the pulse of the group to see how the agenda is fitting with participants’ expectations and energy. This is a good time to use “Plus/Delta”.
The Plus/Delta questions are:
- What is going well so far? (Plus)
- What can we do better tomorrow? (Delta)
The key is to ask the questions in an open-ended way (as written above) so that participants can choose to reflect and talk about whatever parts of the experience most resonate with them, such as group dynamics, workflow, facilitation, or content.
Facilitators can ask participants to write their answers on sticky notes, which can then be posted under each question, or they can take notes during participants’ check-outs.
Facilitators thank participants for sharing their responses.
After the meeting is adjourned for the day, facilitators review the feedback from Plus/Delta. They can use this feedback to adjust the agenda for the rest of the program. Or, in response to comments, they may be transparent during the opening of the next day’s session as to why they are making certain choices about process and workflow. We have found this transparency central to building trust and to responding successfully to emerging needs, ideas, and relationships in multi-stakeholder teams.