BM Thinking Out Loud

Action Learning field trip – Speaker: Dr. M. Marquardt at Academy of HRD pre-conference

                                             February 18, 2009

The trip to the AHRD conference was an enjoyable experience overall. The company was great and I enjoyed the fellowship a great deal. The train ride went right on schedule with no complications.

Dr. Marquardt’s presentation and facilitation was excellent. He is, of course, the foremost expert on action learning and is very skilled in facilitating that work. Much of the content of his speech was reflective of our text, however it was very valuable to hear him talk about it and relate his many experiences with facilitating action learning in many organizations and across many different countries and cultures.

His description of action learning included some of its most common uses including learning, solving problems, leadership development, team building, and changing culture. Dr. Marquardt pointed out that action learning is built on human nature and organizational dynamics. He also talked about how the process enhances systems thinking and can help to develop a learning organization and establish communities of practice. This point ties into what we are learning in our change skills class as well.

Dr. Marquardt did emphasize a few points that he feels are especially important to the success of the process. Among these points is the fact that if reflection is not taking place – learning is not taking place, which is why the role of the coach is so important in action learning. In the session we were able to watch an action learning set in action with Dr. Marquardt as the coach. This was very helpful to see. Prior to this I did not have a good understanding of the role of the coach. This demonstration made it clear to me that the coach is not working as a participant in the reflective questioning process, but rather is solely focused on the learning taking place in the group. The coach is monitoring the behaviors of the group and the process of reflection in order to facilitate learning. The script of coach questions that Dr. Marquardt gave us makes that point clear. These include: at the mid-point of the session: ‘How do you feel about our progress? What are we doing well? What can we do better? Do we have agreement on the problem? and at the end of the session: (to the presenter) What action are you going to take as a result of this session? Were you helped? How? (to the group) What did we do best as a group? How did everyone do on their leadership skill? What did everyone learn that they can apply in their lives/organization? Coaches have to learn to read the set members and intuitively feel the mood and atmosphere of the learning and guide the group toward effectiveness. It is apparent that being a good coach takes skill and lots of experience.

Later in the meeting we all have the change to participate in an abbreviated action learning set. I served as the coach in my set and learned that being a coach can be difficult. I found it difficult to keep my mind on monitoring the learning of the group and to not focus on the problem and the lively questions and statements in progress. I know I need much more experience with being a set coach.

Another important part of the process that he emphasized is the practice of identifying a leadership skill that the set members would like to develop in themselves and subsequent questioning by the coach on how each set member practiced that skill during the set meeting. This is a great way to not only develop that skill, but to help place that skill in the subconscious of each set member to ‘brew’ at some level while working on the problem at hand. I think that this idea of layering the development of concepts is actually very effective in my own experience.

As side note at this point is that I have been very impressed with the way that the teachers I have observed working with adult literacy through the READ Center use this technique as well. While working on a specific skill, they are all the while teaching so many other skills in quiet and uncelebrated ways. The constant messaging that goes on about a host of other topics and skills as a backdrop to the instruction at hand is such an effective means of reinforcing ideas and concepts.

This experience also reinforced some of the fundamentals of action learning that we have talked about in class. Among these points are some of the functional requirements of set meetings including the ideas that the purpose of action learning is to take actions, solve problems, and to learn, actions must carry accountability, a commitment to learning is required, and that the set must utilize all of the knowledge of the group, as well as programmed knowledge. It was also reinforced that great questions lead to great reflection.

Dr. Marquardt talked about many other important aspects of action learning and the theories upon which the process draws. A few other points that stuck with me include the fact that behavior brings about learning (we have to do something in order to best learn about it), in a set group don’t ask negative or leading questions, coaches have to dig for the feelings of the set members, the importance of the use of questions in developing leadership skills, the importance of reframing the problem and understanding the context of the problem is absolutely necessary to finding realistic solutions. We were also reminded that the seeds of a problem’s solutions are in the questions and that in order for action learning to be successful the set members must have the power to take action, a passion and a sense of urgency about solving the problem, as well as strategic knowledge about the situation. I know we have talked about many of these points in class as well, but somehow being involved in this experience reinforces them.

There was much more valuable information covered in this conference, as well as some interesting learning as a result of interacting with the other conference attendees and Dr. Marquardt himself. In this post I have focused on those things that I seemed to affect me the most. I find experiential learning like this to be the most affective learning for me. This field trip was extremely valuable and like Dr. Carter, I wish the entire class could have been able to attend.