As an action learning coach, how would you handle the following situation:
The team members address various perspectives of the problem. Clearly seeing multiple views as to the true nature of the problem. They ask questions that cause them to bounce from one perspective to another to another to another and back to the first. They continually repeat the cycle without settling on which aspect of the challenge to address.
As an action learning coach, how would you handle the following situation:
A norm that the team set is not working for them. For instance, they decide they must check with each team member if they want to respond to a question before moving to the next question. They discover this is slowing the process to a painful pace.
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The importance of developing individual leadership skills is further been emphasized by asking questions about individual leadership skill development before team and organizational development in the post-session debriefing process. A problem with this debriefing practice became obvious to me when I noticed that it took much more time to debrief individual, as compared to team or organization, development because of the time it took to address the develop goals for every member of the team (which usually included feedback from other team members).
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I am a coaching associate with Emerging World. Emerging World delivers immersive experiences for global corporations to bring out the best in their people. It enables people to see the world from different perspectives to shift their businesses and help to shape a better future. I returned to Nairobi for my 3rd time in May as part of program called ‘Go with Maersk’. 56 Maersk new and emerging leaders from 26 countries joined some senior Maersk leaders to spend the week assisting local socially based organizations (partners) and communities around Nairobi to improve the conditions and skills to bring change.
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In August 1979, at the age of 16, I became the coach of a handball team of children aged 7 and 8. That is exactly 40 years ago: 40 years in which team coaching in sports, education, and business has always been my favorite and most successful activity. Almost always I started in practice and afterward only took theoretical training: Action Learning pur sang. I would like to share my reflection on these 40 years with you in this article. During my MBA education, I discovered new models that try to predict success. They provide managers with certainty and are based on linear thinking. . But in the current time this is no longer sufficient. The current challenge for organizations is to have teams deliver results and learn from this.
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We are always looking for effective new ways to market what we do. About 18 months back we came up with idea of the “INDABA” workshop.
We believe the meaning of word Indaba captures the heart of Action Learning. An indaba is an important conference held by the izinDuna (principal men) of the Zulu or Xhosa peoples of South Africa to deal with important tribal matters. The term comes from a Zulu language word, meaning ‘business’ or ‘matter.’
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As action learning coaches, we learn to intervene when we see learning opportunities or to improve the performance of the group. This is easier said than done. Knowing when and how to intervene in a group that is functioning well is hard enough. You have to pick the appropriate moment, ask the right questions, and consider the impact you wish to have through the intervention. When group dynamics are tricky, however, this becomes even harder. And while it requires great courage, I would argue that the trickiest, most courageous interventions can have the greatest effect. During action learning sessions, sometimes challenging dynamics arise – so-called “elephants in the room.”
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Action Learning involves attention for both the upperstream and the undercurrent. It also requires a balance in the roles of leader, coach and manager. The power of Action Learning is that it contributes to the continuous process of achieving consensus on challenges and problems. It begins at an early stage! Let’s take primary school as an example. The great Action Learning question in this case is: “How do I prepare children for their unpredictable future? ”. This is absolutely different from the past, since we have always prepared people for a more predictable future.
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Until six years ago, for many years, the late, great Harry Levinson donated 90 minutes a month for six months every year to coach and advise six Division 13 psychologists who were in the early phases of their development as consulting psychologists. Harry worked virtually, using conventional conference calling technology. He felt an obligation to provide new generations of consulting psychologists with a sort of internship that was not generally available at that time for psychologists that were converting from clinical, counseling, or I/O to consulting psychology.
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WIAL Malaysia completed our first CALC Certification for 2020 on 22 February. On 18 March 2020, less than a month after our event, Malaysia was placed under a Coronavirus lockdown directive. All public gatherings were ordered stopped and almost all the country’s economic activities came to a standstill. This situation was unprecedented and it was a great shock to many. In February 2020 I recalled clearly that we had proposed a three months coaching consultancy work, with an option of extension for another two months for the sales team of a small and medium size (SME) financial services entity. We had little experience on virtual training deliveries as almost all our clients expected us to be physically present during trainings.
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