As an action learning coach, how would you handle the following situation:
The team is having trouble coming to consensus. You’ve asked what would help them come to consensus – they say ask more questions and immediately start asking questions before you have closed out the learning.
First, I would let them continue and observe how they would perform.
If the team was still not arriving at a consensus, I will intervene using SID:
– Team, I noticed that we still having trouble agreeing on the problem. A while ago, you decided that asking more questions would help and you immediately started asking them without waiting for me to finish my intervention.
– What was the impact of this to the team’s performance for the past few minutes?
– Why do you think this happened?
– What does the second ground rule say?
– How does the team want to proceed?
If the team was able to arrive at a consensus, I will express my observation during the learnings and reflection:
– Team, I have observed that during one intervention when the team decided to ask more questions when you were having trouble coming to a consensus, you immediately started asking questions without allowing me to finish my intervention.
– How did this impact the team?
– What could the team have done differently?
– Ask more questions on building team learning.