The beauty of Action Learning is its process. You just can’t read it from a book and suddenly own it. It is like a form of art. You must do it, practice it, and become better each day until intuition takes over your choices. Becoming a musician, playing in an orchestra or ensemble, and practicing Action Learning has a lot of similarities. As a musician, you must practice getting better on your instrument, but at the same time, you must solve the problems which are holding you back to become a genuine performer. These problems are mainly mental. Read More

Action Learning changes our world view. It prompts us to work together, expands into new contexts and provides solutions in the most unexpected places. This was Mat’s on ground recent experience working in Papua New Guinea. This magnificent country contains a very significant portion of the world’s biodiversity, most of which is on customarily owned land and sea. The people are legal custodians, responsible for social, economic and environmental sustainability – goals that are often in tension with each other. It’s no wonder that mainstreaming conservation at the customary level has been tough going. Read More

The Adult Learning Symposium is a bi-annual learning event organized by the Institute of Adult Learning, an institute under SkillsFuture Singapore. This year, the symposium took place on 1-2 November at Sands Expo and Convention Centre with the theme “Work and Learning: Conquer New Frontiers!” Against a backdrop of rapid technological advancements, disruption across industries, and fast-changing workforce needs, the challenges facing adult learning are momentous. But for the adaptable and resilient, it is also time to seize the opportunities hidden in the sea of challenges and thrive in times where disruption is the norm. Read More

Action learning has been a core part of the Cru leadership program (SLI) since 2005. Cru, a global Christian non-profit organization with over 25,000 staff in 191 countries, uses action learning not only to build great leaders but also to solve major problems faced by the organization and its volunteers. Mike Marquardt and Bea Carson provided a 4- day CALC training program for 22 senior leaders in December 2018. The Cru action learning program follows the format shown in this graphic. Each participant also receives an Action Learning Handbook. Read More

Three days in Washington DC. In August 2017, the International Coach Federation held its first large-scale global conference since 2012, ICF Converge, which brought together coaches from all over the world to network and learn from each other. Held in Washington DC, ICF Converge was designed to strengthen connections across the coaching community and offer best-practice learning around topics such as the art and practice of coaching, how to develop a successful coaching business, how to create a coaching culture within an organization, coaching science, and the future of coaching and of the workforce. Read More

An AL team developed more than 40 strategies to address these challenges. The solutions included rap lyrics for customer service, shirts with logos that fit within the bank’s branding scheme, quarterly meetings with fun activities, a “meet-and-greet” training initiative on how to exchange pleasantries with customers, and a new reward system for service staff. Sample rewards are vouchers for vacations, shopping trips, and electronic products, items that are less expensive than those top management had been considering. Read More

A gamechanger. That, according to Jos van den Berg, is Action learning. A way of thinking and working together that he was introduced to several years ago and not only uses in his work as director-owner of Repair Care, but has integrated into his whole personality. “They say I’ve turned 180 degrees and I think that’s fantastic,” he says.
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As part of the WIAL Gives Back initiative, the Dominica Red Cross Society (DRCS) received free WIAL coaching for four Action Learning sessions so that it could find breakthrough strategies for an urgent and important problem. For the Action Learning exercise, the organization’s Director-General, Mrs Sandra Charter-Rolle, selected a diverse group comprising employees of the organization, a Red Cross volunteer from the community, and two representatives from the private sector. Mrs Charter-Rolle participated as a member of the group and as a problem presenter. Read More

This is the first time Action Learning was used as a tool for a succession planning project in an organization. One’s experience as a senior executive coach with more than 1,000 coaching hours is a good basis for becoming an Action Learning Coach. In addition, having worked in the Human Resource Development Department and Organization Development in a large organization for 20 years, and combining both one-on-one and team coaching with Action Learning in the whole development process are very beneficial for this successor development program. Read More

The participants of the ALS training comprised mainly experienced mental health nurses, who wanted to advance a particular project they had been tasked with and or implement a new way of thinking about how they engaged in problem solving approaches. Problem-solving approaches in mental health nursing has generally been based on a consensus model which seeks to obtain the agreement of those concerned. In contrast, action learning and in particular the use of Socratic questions to critically examine an issue is based more on dialectical inquiry where values and assumptions are challenged. Read More