‘Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.’ (Neale Donald Walsch)
An Action Learning round is like a scene in a movie, a chapter in a book. It’s part of a presenter’s story but not the whole story. Sometimes, it turns out to be pivotal in the plot. Sometimes it’s more like a bridge, building on what went before and creating a signpost or springboard for what follows next. The round itself has a starting place, yet not in a vacuum. The past is the beginning of the present and often acts as a filter of it. A round has an ending too, not a hard stop but a preparation for what will now unfold in the next part.
What takes place during a round is often a process of critical reflection and sense-making. It starts with exploration and moves towards consolidation. We could think of this as something like helping a presenter find their place on a map. For example, Where am I now? Perhaps, How did I get here? Where am I trying to get to? What obstacles can I see on route? Who or what can I draw on to help me overcome or navigate them? What can I do now to prepare myself for unforeseen challenges? How will I celebrate when I get there?
In this sense, Action Learning is often more than the simple (yet, sometimes, not easy) solving of an immediate problem. It’s concerned with building a presenter’s awareness, agency, agility, capacity, resourcefulness and resilience in the midst of their own real-life and complex scenarios. It can help a presenter to rediscover themselves and a way forward, where they may have lost or not-yet-found or created their own plot. We could think of it as moving a presenter beyond the transactional to the transformational.
