Thinking of becoming an action learning facilitator?

Update: March 2020

Until further notice, we will be delivering action learning facilitator training as a virtual course. This is an offering that we deliver regularly, and has been offered alongside our face to face programme successfully for many years. You can find out more about it here.

Working virtually like this will be an even more valuable experience as we all adapt to new remote working practices. This course will give you additional skills for running virtual meetings and managing dispersed teams.

Current course bookings will transfer to virtual. We will be in touch nearer your start date to ensure your are comfortable using virtual technology (we use Zoom) and to answer any questions you may have.

Course details

If you are a professional working in the field of learning and development, or you use facilitation in your work, this is a great way to supplement your skills and add to your credentials.

Or you may wish to add the skills of in-house action learning facilitators to your organisation, to embed a continuous process of management and people development. If so, we can provide a tailored course to train your staff to facilitate action learning sets, either on site or at your chosen venue.

The ALA training course was endorsed by the ILM in 2008, in recognition of its professional standards and we have now trained in excess of 1,300 Action Learning Facilitators.

It was a real privilege to be trained by someone who remains so passionate and committed. It is quite transformative if you allow it to be, on many levels.

The facilitator training process

The training programme takes participants through a process to develop all the skills needed to become an action learning facilitator, including:

• the principles and conventions of action learning
• setting up new sets
• the skills of facilitation
• coping with challenging set members
• enabling sets to become self facilitating
• alternative models of action learning
• evaluation of action learning

How long does it take?

The course takes three days, during which time everyone will be thoroughly immersed in an action learning set. We’ll also offer you the opportunity to further develop your skills, 6 – 9 months later, on one of our ILM Professional Development days.

The three day course allows all participants the time and practical experience to fully understand the process and principles whilst taking part in and facilitating a set. With a maximum of six people on each course, everyone has the opportunity to gain first hand experience of facilitating an action learning session and receives feedback on their performance.

You’ll come away with confidence in the action learning process, ideas about how to apply action learning and a sound basis to further develop facilitation skills.

Our training has been endorsed by the ILM since 2008 and many participants go on to complete the additional ILM Endorsed Professional Development Day as part of their CPD. This course takes place usually between 6 and 9 months after the 3 day action learning facilitator training course. During this time, participants are required to complete a Reflective Learning Log. More details can be found here.

Take-aways

We provide a comprehensive workbook full of excellent resource material and references, plus a learning log for you to add notes towards your ILM accreditation. There are templates that you can adapt to use in your own work and a section for skills review and reflection.

If you choose to register for the ILM endorsed course, you will complete a Reflective Learning Log as a record of your learning and attend a follow up development day to complete the process (generally three to six months later).

Life-long learning

Experienced action learning facilitators can train in a variety of CPD activities, for example; virtual action learning or evaluation, on one of our regular CPD programmes.

Great preparation and facilitation. Give yourself the gift of this course!

Further reading for insights into what it’s like to participate in this course: Reflections on an action learning facilitator training set by Julie Kenyon, Sharing Questions, Not Cleverness – by Julie Luscombe and Exploring New Horizons with Action Learning, by Ruth Cook.

Also, we have feedback here from past participants; well worth a look.