Experiential Learning
Owners and/or leaders contribute a considerable amount of time and money, in an effort to develop skills and techniques of the firm's workforce. The hope is that the efforts will be appreciated and applied. Usually the efforts produce less than the expected results. People need to be held accountable to an expected outcome. They must learn or discover a skill or talent about themselves or their colleagues. This is best accomplished through a teaching method referred to as "Experiential Learning".
Experiential learning, as we apply it, is not intended as an exercise in getting in touch with one’s inner self (although that maybe an interesting side effect) but rather it requires committed involvement by the participants. Lack of focus or failure to participate sends a strong message of their commitment to the success of the organization.
Experiential learning occurs when a person engages in an activity, looks back at the activity critically, abstracts some useful insight from the analysis, and puts the results to work. Learning can be defined as a relatively stable change in behavior and that is the usual purpose of training. A structured experience provides a framework for a behavioral change to occur.
The following is a list of structured teaching instruments from which a client will receive tangible benefits:
- Understanding Financial Management for Non-Financial Managers
- Getting Back in Control of Your Business
- Maximizing ROI and Profit
- Resolve “Why am I making a Profit yet I have nothing to show for it?”
- Productivity Enhancement
- Time Management
- Strategic Planning
- Attracting and Keeping the “Right” Employees
- Managing Growth
- Resolving Conflict
- Art of Persuasion (Sales and Marketing)
- Understanding and Applying Motivation
The Experiential Learning Cycle
Experiencing
The initial stage is the data-generating part of the structured experience. Almost any activity that involves either self-assessment or interpersonal interaction can be used as the “doing” part of experiential learning. The following are common individual and group activities:
- Problem solving
- Giving and receiving feedback
- Analyzing case material
- Negotiating or bargaining
- Competing or collaborating
- Confronting
- Choosing
- Planning
- Communicating verbally or nonverbally
These activities can be carried out by individuals, dyads, triads, small groups, group-on-group arrangements or large groups.
This means that whatever happens in the activity, whether expected or not, becomes the basis for critical analysis; participants may learn serendipitously.
Publishing
The second stage of the cycle is roughly analogous to inputting data, in data processing terms. People have experienced an activity and now they are ready to share what they saw and/or how they believed it affected their and the groups’ behavior. The intent here is to make available to the group the experience of each individual.
Processing
This stage can be thought of as the fulcrum, or the pivotal step, in experiential learning. This is the systematic examination of commonly shared experience by the people involved. This is the “group-dynamics” phase of the cycle, in which participants essentially reconstruct the patterns and interactions of the activity.
Participants should be led to look at what happened in terms of dynamics but not in terms of “meaning.” What occurred was real, of course, but it was somewhat artificially contrived by the structure of the activity. It is important to keep in mind that a coconsciousness of the dynamics of the activity is critical for learning outside the training setting.
Generalizing
An inferential leap has to be made at this point in the structured experience, from the reality inside the activity of everyday life to outside the training session. The key question here is, "So what?". Participants are led to focus their awareness on situations in their work lives that are similar to those in the activity that they experienced. Their task is to abstract from the processing some principles that could be applied “outside".This step is what makes the structured experiences practical and, if omitted or glossed over, the learning is likely superficial.
