Experiential Action Learning

Experiential Action Learning
is a fun, engaging and powerful way to learn
and is utilized in the majority of our training programs.

What is Experiential Action Learning?

Quite simply - it is learning through action rather than by words alone.  It is said that, "What I hear I tend to forget, what I see I tend to remember, what I DO I will understand."

Experiential Action Learning provides engaging scenarios which challenge the team to work effectively and efficiently together in order to solve a problem, achieve a goal or realize a vision of success.

Teams will often say all the right things in regard to how a highly functional team might behave.  They will recite what "makes sense" but this is often not how they really work together under actual work and stress scenarios.

As soon as a team participates in an experiential activity designed to simulate a difficult team challenge environment - all those words fall before the TRUTH of their actions.

Having experienced the reality of how they really work together under stressful situations, they can now employ our model of:

Awareness = Conscious Choice = Sustainable Change

Teams that participate in well facilitated Experiential Action Learning sessions come away with.

• Increased awareness of individual and team strengths, motivations and values.
• Increased understanding, respect and alignment with other team member’s coping skills, communication styles, viewpoints and perspectives.
• Developed skills, tools, systems and strategies for moving the team forward from their current condition to an agreed upon ideal state of a high functioning and creative team.
• Increased trust of other team members and a strong motivation for exploring collaborative efforts and building a more dynamically synergistic culture.
• Team Norms identification, modification and change implementation.

The EAL scenarios often are formatted in the following manner:

• Provide the team with a challenge with specific guidelines, parameters and time limits.
• Allow team members to figure out the best way to work together to both solve the problem in a manner which moves them closer to being The Best They've Ever Been.
• Follow up the activity with an in-depth debrief session which explore what's working within the team and what is not.
• Link specific behaviors and team dynamics witnessed during the activity to actual work scenarios and come away with tangible, actionable and targeted solutions that have a direct and positive impact on the team's success.

"Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies
our freedom and power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom"

-- Victor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

Teamwork is the quintessential contradiction of a society grounded in individual achievement

Marvin Weisbord.

If I could solve all the problems myself, I would.

Thomas Edison, when asked why he had a team of twenty-one assistants