Scenario: Own World

As an action learning coach, how would you handle the following situation: A team new to Action Learning is working on a problem for a single session. Each member has a clear idea of what the solution is and thus only asks questions related to the solution they believe is the right one.

Tags: Action Learning, ActionLearning Coach, Team Coach, WIAL, WIAL Action Learning, WIAL Talk

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Comments (9)

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    Hèlen Rasenberg

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    As a action learning coach i would instruct the team to ask only open quenstions without any solution. I would tell that everyone must be critical about the questions asked in the group.

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    Bo Ee Bernard Chwee

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    As a coach, i will intervene by asking: – “Team, how are we working on solutions as a group so far on a scale from 1 to 10 (1: – poor, 10: – excellent)?”

    After answers are heard, I will ask: – “Is there an agreement on the solution?”

    After answers are heard, I will ask: – “What is the impact?”

    After answers are heard, I will ask: – “What would help us get to consensus?”

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    Cynthia Wong

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    Ask, “Team, how are we doing identifying the real problem?
    After they reply, we can ask “What is the impact if we do not work on the real problem?”
    After they reply, coach can ask, “What can we do better to identify the real problem?”

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    Przemysław Witka

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    “Team, how effectively we are on asking open questions to root-cause the problem?”
    followed-up by “how close we are to the common understanding of the problem?” followed-up by individually written problem definition.

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    Ngoc Phuong Ngan Nguyen

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    As an Action Learning Coach, I will handle that situation by intervening and give team some questions to improve the session performance:
    – “Hello team, how recent questions are focused on which aspect?”
    – “How deep we are understanding the problem, can the team give me the evaluation by giving the score from 1 to 10, 1 is not understood and 10 is totally understood?”
    – “What should we do to have the same and deep understanding of the problem before finding the solution together?”

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    Elisabete Martins

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    I would intervene by asking:
    a) How deeply are we understanding the problem?
    b) How much are we exploring different aspects of the problem, trying to understand the root cause?
    c) What can we do better to understand the problem?

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    Felix Chen

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    In this situation, I will ask “So far, what do your think about our team performance?”. When the answer appeared, my following question is” If this situation continued, what’s the impacts for our team?” and “What could we do to avoid this situation?”

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    Agnieszka Sybicka

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    I would show and discuss the problem solving cycle. I would say that every element of the problem-solving cycle is important. I would ask the group: where we are in this cycle?
    Then I would ask: What the dangers could be of jumping straight to solutions? Next I would ask: What can we do, what kinds of questions should we ask, to get back to understanding the problem?

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    Jette van der Hoeven

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    In this situation, I would invite the team to explore the problem first. I would have them create an interrelationship diagram so that the team knows what the biggest problem causes are and what the bottlenecks are. From there they can describe the real problem. And when they agree with the real problem, they can start thinking of solutions. I would emphasize that if you do not use the real problem as a starting point, you cannot come up with the right solutions.

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