Action Research and Technical Solutions

Action Learning and Leader Development

Industrial/Organizational psychologists, experienced management consultants, and certified Action Learning coaches work with you to develop a program grounded in the time tested principles of action learning, supported by scholarly research from the organizational, management, and adult development literature.

We start by asking, as many corporate leaders have asked, how do you develop leaders capable of dealing with things like…

a turbulent business and economic environment
a dizzying array of new communication and business process technologies
demographic and cultural changes in the workforce
increasingly complex interrelationships and dependencies in organizational systems and processes?

We know that leader development programs need to engage individuals early in their careers. They also need to provide opportunities for challenge, support, and feedback on the job. And perhaps most importantly, in addition to sharpening skills and developing competencies, programs need to enhance each individual’s capacity to continue to learn!

The most successful leaders from others – those above, below, and all around them; and they learn from day-to-day experiences as well as the spectacular crises, successes, and failures.

Action Learning is designed, above all, to enhance the capacity for learning, so that individuals continue to extract “lessons learned” from the problems they tackle, the processes they use to tackle them, the changes they institute, and the people they work with.

What are the Components of Action Learning?

1. A Problem (project, challenge, opportunity, issue or task). The problem should be urgent and significant and should be the responsibility of the team to resolve.

2. An Action Learning group or team. Ideally composed of 4-8 people who examine an organizational problem that has no easily identifiable solution. The group should be diverse in background and experience.

3. A process of insightful questioning and reflective listening. Action Learning tackles problems through a process of first asking questions to clarify the exact nature of the problem, reflecting and identifying possible solutions, and only then taking action. Questions build group dialogue and cohesiveness, generate innovative and systems thinking, and enhance learning results.

4. An action taken on the problem. There is no real meaningful or practical learning until action is taken and reflected on. Action Learning requires that the group be able to take action on the problem it is addressing. If the group makes recommendations only, it loses its energy, creativity and commitment.

5. A commitment to learning. Solving an organizational problem provides immediate, short-term benefits to the company. The greater, longer-term multiplier benefits, however, are the learnings gained by each group member and the group as a whole, as well as how those learnings are applied on a systems-wide basis throughout the organization.

6. An Action Learning Coach. The Action Learning coach helps the team members reflect on both what they are learning and how they are solving problems. The coach enables group members to reflect on how they listen, how they may have reframed the problem, how they give each other feedback, how they are planning and working, and what assumptions may be shaping their beliefs and actions. The Action Leaning coach also helps the team focus on what they are achieving, what they are finding difficult, what processes they are employing, and the implications of these processes.

What Benefits are Derived from Action Learning?

Action Learning benefits the organization as a whole and its members individually and in teams.

Action Learning can:

Assist succession planning by developing highly qualified candidates for executive leadership positions.
Deepen participants' confidence in their leadership and team participation skills.
Enable participants to establish effective, mutually respectful working relationships at all organizational levels.
Develop competence among individuals and teams in problem-solving and decision-making processes.
Relate action research/action learning theory and methods to organizational challenges.
Enhance participants' capacity to reflect on and learn from their individual and collective experiences.
Develop in participants an awareness of how their implicit assumptions, beliefs, attitudes, preferences, and organizational interests influence their thinking, decisions and actions.
Increase competence in preparing and presenting recommendations concerning urgent organizational issues to executive management.

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As WIAL's Director of Research, Dr. Lappin applies her research training and over two decades of research experience to foster applied and theoretical research to assess the effectiveness of Action Learning, as well establish evidence-based practice principles and standards for Action Learning around the globe.