Meaningful Growth: How to Make the Most Out of Every Learning Opportunity

Are you tired of leaving conferences or trainings feeling overloaded - like you missed what mattered most? 

Today, we reveal a simple, powerful practice that can turn every professional development opportunity into meaningful, actionable growth. Get ready to take charge of your learning with intention!

In this episode of the Practicing Connection podcast, Coral and Jessica dive deep into the art of setting learning intentions to get more from your professional development experiences. 

Jessica shares a practical reflection exercise designed to help you filter the noise, focus on what matters to you, and connect your learning to your real-world goals.

 Whether you’re attending a conference, a webinar, or any PD event, discover how a two-minute pause can make your growth more personalized, empowering, and connected. 

Tune in for step-by-step guidance, insightful questions, and actionable strategies to transform the way you learn. 

Links and resources from this episode:

• Join our LinkedIn group: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/12879756/ 
• Send us a message: practicingconnection@oneop.org 

OneOp Academy is a free online series designed for anyone interested in positive change, whether you're an educator, community leader, student, or just passionate about supporting families.

This year's Academy spotlights the unique challenges facing military connected youth, from mental health to resilience education to community support.

 Explore the 2025 OneOp Academy and register today at oneop.org/series/2025academy

Transcript

CORAL OWEN: [00:00:00] Hello. Thank you for listening to the Practicing Connection Podcast. I'm Coral, my co-host, Jessica is here today as well, and we're going to be talking about setting learning intentions. Jessica is going to be sharing today's practice with us. Jessica, how are you?

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Hey Coral. I'm pretty good. I'm actually really looking forward to this topic series, because I've had a few professional development opportunities lately, and I realize how long it's been now since that's happened. To be honest, going to these professional development opportunities, it all felt so hectic that I've really appreciated what I'm learning.

As we've been putting these episodes together, the really nice thing is that even though it's been a while since the last conference I attended, I'd actually forgotten how refreshing and inspiring and motivating it can be to hear how others are approaching their work, to talk with them in the hallways and to ask them questions about how they approach [00:01:00] their projects.

It's really been nice and it came at, I think, the perfect time for me.

CORAL OWEN: Those can be such great touch points. I agree. I remember actually we met at a conference, I think it was in San Antonio, a very long time ago. 

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah, 2016.

CORAL OWEN: I think so. I had first begun with OneOp, and you weren't even quite on the project yet. Look at us now.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: I know, I know!

CORAL OWEN: But yeah, just so many wonderful, just kind of a-ha light bulb moments, and seeing people doing similar things, maybe with a slightly different approach or angle. And it's just like a great, you know, idea incubator and some fresh inputs to kind of reenergize your work. So I'm so glad that you've had that opportunity recently. Good deal.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Awesome. And that was a really good conference too, I remember.

CORAL OWEN: For sure. Oh man. And we would always love to hear what's inspiring y'all, our listeners. So do drop us a line if you'd love to reach out. You can reach us at Practicing [00:02:00] connection@oneop.org. We do see and respond to every message, and we can't wait to hear from you. 

- break -

Alrighty. Let's learn a little bit more about setting learning intentions. Jessica, can you share a bit more about the practice you're going to be discussing today and why you selected it?

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah. You know, as a team we've been kind of going round and round thinking about how we can best support all the participants who will be attending our annual academy this year. And our co-producer, Erin, she's, you know, new to the team, within the first couple of minutes of a brainstorming session she said, “Well, what if we produce episodes about making the most of professional development opportunities?” I don't even think we came up with other ideas because it just felt so perfect. The idea for this series came out of the recognition that participating in professional development can often [00:03:00] feel really overwhelming. Kind of like drinking from a fire hose. 

Like I just said before, right, it's been a little bit hectic and overwhelming being at these opportunities. So with so much information coming at you, it's really easy to walk away feeling like you may have missed what mattered the most. That's why we're starting with exploring the practice of setting a personal learning intention.

And that's what this practice is all about. Even a simple two minute reflection, asking yourself what you most want to take away can really transform the experience from just kind of an information overload into maybe some meaningful growth, or some meaningful learnings and takeaways.

And I would say that we see this idea of a learning intention, and I'm saying we, because I think, you know, this has been a very co-produced episode - We see this helping in several ways. First of all, setting a learning intention can help you design a [00:04:00] personalized experience for the learning, right?

The presenters have really great learning objectives, but if you're setting your own learning intention, it can ensure that you get what you wanted to get out of it, so that the content is really meaningful and relevant to you. And then part of the reason for that is that it helps you focus.

It helps to kind of filter the flood of content so that you can recognize and retain what's most valuable to you, because you've identified what's most valuable to you. And I'd say the other thing that we see this, potentially helping with is kind of putting you in the driver's seat of what you want. So, I mean, because you're in the driver's seat, you've been empowered to listen for the content that you really want to listen for. You have developed that personalized experience.

You're able then to kind of possibly increase your engagement and the likelihood of applying what you'll learn, because of this empowerment and the focus you've been able to put on [00:05:00] the topics that are meaningful to you. And then finally, it really encourages connection, right? If you set an intention about what you wanna get out of this, it encourages you to notice the opportunities to connect with your peers and to tailor the experience to collaborative growth.

And we'll talk more about this in an upcoming episode. We'll dive into this idea of connection, and making that part of your plan for making the most out of your professional development.

CORAL OWEN: I absolutely love the intention for this episode. So can we go ahead and just dive right in?

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah. So like I mentioned a little bit ago, even doing a two minute reflection can really help. So I'm going to start with an approximate two minute reflection. And then I'm going to share some follow up questions that can help if you're stuck or unsure about what you learned. So for this two minute [00:06:00] reflection, you're going to start with just taking a moment, get out a piece of paper if you want to write it.

You can also just think about this, that's fine. Get out a piece of paper, a pen perhaps. If you want to, you can close your eyes, take a couple of breaths, and just think, “What do I want to get out of this? How does this connect to my current work or goals? What has made learning hard for me in the past and how can I support myself this time?”

If you identify a couple of things that you need in order to support yourself, you may want to set those things up for yourself, right? So write down what you need, and kind of pursue those things that will help support your learning. So let me give you an example. Maybe because it's a webinar, for example, it's easy to be distracted by email or other notifications coming in.

So [00:07:00] maybe you need to just turn off all notifications, close your email. Or maybe you need to identify if there's anyone else you know that's attending, where you could maybe organize a watch party, a virtual watch party, or a discussion group so that you've kind of committed to the learning. So, whatever it is you need, try to arrange for that so that it will support you.

And then lastly, try to capture this. I know I said you don't have to write it down, and you certainly don't, but you may want to capture it and write it down. So, for example, my intention is to learn practical strategies for leading meetings so I can help my department communicate more effectively.

Refer to this at least once during the event and maybe revisit it at the end to reflect on your progress. So if you're stuck, we do have actually a short list of questions that you can use to help [00:08:00] you identify what might be most important to you. I'll admit there are times when I can't think of an intention because I'm feeling rushed.

I maybe just got back to 15 emails, and now the webinar's about to start, and I just didn't have any time to do it. And so, the set of questions that we have can help support, you could do either before the session or after. And we're gonna have them available as a download, but I wanna share a little snippet with you.

So these questions help you do things like uncovering your personal motivation for being involved, in this particular webinar or training, connect your learning to real world context. So that's kind of about how does it support the work that you're doing already, to explore growth and change. So what might you do differently in your role? And then to focus on connection and collaboration. Who can you connect with about this? [00:09:00] 

So, we have a set of, I think it's about a dozen or so questions that can kind of help you think through that and support your professional development.

CORAL OWEN: This was so wonderful, Jessica. Thank you so much for guiding us through these questions and reflection points today.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah. You know, I know that we do have so many great intentions when we sign up for webinars and conferences. I can't tell you how many webinars I've signed up for and not been able to attend, right? And I am always looking for ways that I can maybe just slow down my brain just a little bit. And it's one of the reasons why I've really enjoyed diving into this topic, because I think it's something that I could work on quite a bit myself.

CORAL OWEN: Absolutely. Just to be able to filter some of the inputs that we're receiving and give it greater context into how it can apply, I think is just always such a wonderful skillset to have at hand. 

Well, that is it for today's episode. Thank you all so much for joining us. If you enjoyed this [00:10:00] episode, click the share button in your podcast app to share it with a friend or colleague who may find it of interest.

We'll be back next week with a new episode, and until then, keep practicing. 

CREDITS: The Practicing Connection Podcast is a production of One-Off and is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, US Department of Agriculture and the Office of Military Family Readiness Policy, US Department of Defense under award number 2 0 2 3 4 8 7 74 3 3.