US Department of Housing and Urban Development Office of Chief Information Officer Learning Sessions. Dr. Michael Marquardt explains Action Learning as a Powerful New Tool for Developing Leaders, Solving Problems, Building Teams and Transforming Organizations
Learn how Action Learning is not only an effective problem solving process but also has been valuable to a growing number of organizations worldwide as a powerful tool for developing leaders, teams and organizations. Discover the six essential elements for successful action learning programs, explore the steps and processes of action learning, and have the opportunity of practicing action learning.
In this thoroughly updated new edition of his business classic Leading with Questions, internationally acclaimed management consultant Michael Marquardt shows how you can learn to ask the powerful questions that will generate short-term results and long-term learning and success. Throughout the book, he demonstrates how effective leaders use questions to encourage participation and teamwork, foster outside-the-box thinking, empower others, build relationships with customers, solve problems, and much more. Based on interviews with successful leaders who “lead with questions,” from such organizations as DuPont, Alcoa, Novartis, and Cargill. Marquardt reveals how to determine which questions will lead to solutions in today’s complicated business world. Step-by-step, he walks you through the process of learning the art of questioning and shows how to use the techniques of active listening and follow-up, presenting guidelines for using questions in myriad situations with individuals, teams, and organizations.
Organizations in all sectors and in all industries are and will continue to be confronted by the challenge of multiple changes in their external environments. For example, creation of disruptive technologies, fluctuating economies, increasing or decreasing governmental regulations, demographic shifts, human and natural disasters, expanding globalism, and aggressive competition. As the environmental landscape changes unpredictably along many different dimensions, organizations must recognize and adapt to the discontinuous threats and opportunities that these changes create. This calls for organizations themselves to change in ways that their unique histories have not prepared them. Thus, organizations today need effective tools to enable them to quickly create solutions for complex, systemic, important, unprecedented problems.
This book fills a conspicuous gap in the Action Learning literature – providing specific principles, strategies, and recommendations to coaches for developing the questions that are the foundation of effective Action Learning. Many other books provide the theory of Action Learning as well as recommendations for setting up Action Learning projects. In addition to this information, this volume provides the specific information that the coach needs to ensure the success of the Action Learning project. While the principles, strategies, and recommendations discussed in this book are based upon the methods developed with others at the World Institute for Action Learning, the authors provide many new practice principles and models which will be appreciated by experienced Action Learning coaches who want to be considered expert Action Learning coaches and who want to ensure the success of their Action Learning practice.
