‘Wait time is making space for authentic learning.’ (Takayoshi & Van Ittersum)
A key stance and skill in action learning is a willingness and ability to wait. It calls for patience and a positive tolerance of periods of silence. Imagine the presenter who receives questions from peers yet answers them too quickly or too easily, without allowing them sufficient space and time to sink in. Such responses can sound and feel like surface-level learning, technical-practical learning (Gillian Ruch), or puzzle-solving rather than problem-solving (Thomas Kuhn), where a presenter knows, or is reasonably easily able to work out on reflection, a solution to resolve an immediate challenge.
A contrasting image that came to mind during an Action Learning Facilitators’ workshop this week was that of the UK innovator, Barnes Wallis who, during World War 2, designed a revolutionary bomb to break through dams and, thereby, undermine the Nazis’ industrial war capacity. ‘The bomb would spin backwards across the surface of the water before reaching the dam. Its residual spin would then drive the bomb down the wall of the dam before exploding at its base.’ It took time and patience from the moment it was released until the cracks began to show, but then… breakthrough.
So perhaps it’s not the best of metaphors for an Action Learning set, yet this core principle of allowing sufficient time for questions to sink deep often proves critical to a presenter, faced with complex problems, in achieving their own breakthroughs: those profound moments of deep insight, agency and shift that can transform everything. It calls for discipline for set peers, to ensure they wait and offer the presenter optimal silence before posing a next question. For those who find silence difficult, this may involve learning to sit comfortably with discomfort. It’s well worth the wait.
