‘To venture involves risks, but with the potential for great gain.’ (Fook & Askeland)
A critical success factor in Action Learning is a willingness for participants to disclose and present opportunities or challenges they are facing in order that they may learn through critical reflection and increase their sense of agency. At times, this process may involve surfacing personal and cultural assumptions to hold them up for self- and peer- examination. In doing so, it can draw on fields of learning and practice including Chris Argyris and Donald Schön’s ‘double and triple-loop learning’.
Reg Revans, the originator of Action Learning, urged, ‘Swap your difficulties, not your cleverness’. Yet, although this can sound simple in principle, in some contexts it may run against conventions of learning and behaviour. In some cultures, for instance, to disclose a difficulty – especially in a group – could feel politically risky or even shameful. If a person were to share openly in that context, peers from the same cultural group could also feel anxious for that person and desire to protect them.
This safeguarding instinct may be amplified in health and social sector contexts where participants may be used to working with vulnerable people and groups and-or have lived experience. If their professional training has evolved from or been influenced by counselling or therapy, they may find posing high-challenge questions deeply uncomfortable or threatening; especially if they associate asking searching questions with, for instance, investigations or judgements re. access to services.
In some cultures, to disclose personal rather than strictly situational challenges can be regarded as inappropriate and unprofessional. Fook & Askeland (2007) suggest that, in such contexts, it can be useful to distinguish between personal and private; where the former relates to the person’s abilities, characteristics and qualities – that is, within learning scope – and the latter to that which may be regarded culturally as appropriate to hide. ‘This helps us to define the limits for what to share.’
In some cultures, rationality and objectivity may be regarded as having higher value than intuition, subjectivity or emotion. Participants may find themselves preoccupied with problem analysis and formulating definitive answers and solutions, rather than enabling a person to sit with ambiguity, uncertainty and tension. A vital role for a facilitator is to build trust, curiosity and critical reflexivity; drawing on any subconscious filters, biases and experiences that emerge as tools for transformation.
