Scenario: Exhaustion
As an action learning coach, how would you handle the following situation: You’ve been working many hours and the team is clearly exhausted.
Scenario: Silent Observer
As an action learning coach, how would you handle the following situation: A member of the team decides they know the problem and the solution, so they will sit quietly until everyone else figures it out.
Scenario: Individual Issue
As an action learning coach, how would you handle the following situation: A member of the team doesn’t understand the process and decides “EVERYONE” doesn’t understand.
Scenario: Extended Break
As an Action Learning Coach how would you handle the following situation: The team agreed to a 15 minute break, it’s 30 minutes before you get everyone back in the room and ready to restart.
Scenario: Solution Statements
As an Action Learning Coach how would you handle the following situation: When members of the team read their problem statement, what they read is clearly a solution. For instance – “Joe needs to hire me to do a team building activity with his team”.
Scenario: Too Slow
As an Action Learning Coach how would you handle the following situation: You are coaching a leadership development program with a group of senior engineers…One of them is a Six Sigma Black Belt with years of experience in problem solving methods. During the middle of your second meeting to frame the problem, the Black Belt […]
Scenario: Multiple Variables
As an Action Learning Coach how would you handle the following situation: The team is attempting to analyze the problem situation in a search to identify the one key variable that they can influence or change to create movement in the direction of their established goal or end result. They are debating the relevance of […]
Clowning Around
As an Action Learning Coach how would you handle the following situation: One team member begins to make fun of one point the group is discussing. Initially, this is creative and brings happiness to the group. Then this joking is repeated sequentially among team members … a competition emerges to come up with the most […]
Outlining the problem in a SPAL
When working with a client on a business problem through action learning, I ask the sponsor or problem owner to answer a number of questions, in writing, before the first session starts. I have created a one page form with the following questions: Describe the problem … describing context, history and some basic data, key […]
Everybody takes the same action …
During the Single Problem Action Learning session, the coach reminds all team members a few times that they have to think about the actions they will commit to at the end of the session, in preparation for the follow up session. When the coach asks for the actions at the end of the session, several […]