Experiential Learning and Change Leadership Training

Full disclosure… I have been doing OD and Training for over 40 years. I try to blend “old school” and “au currant” strategies in my work. My work consists of 1) planning and leading organization change interventions, 2) designing and facilitating experiential learning activities that transfer essential change leadership skills to clients, and 3) teaching internal and external change agents how to better lead change.

It’s this last element of my work that is consuming me, now. Liron Marks, Ph.D. and I have partnered with the Peter Drucker Graduate School to design and deliver a global Certificate Program in OD and Change Leadership. We are teaching OD, IO, Org. Psych. HR, training professionals, and other professionals how to plan and lead change within organizations.

Designing for Effectiveness: We quickly realized that for the program to be effective on a global level, it had to be a blended program. That meant it must incorporate self-paced online elements (eLearning, simulations, and assessments) with highly interactive in-person components that encourage informal social learning, insights gained from the instructors’ 50+ years of experience, and facilitated experiential learning activities which, foster personal insights, social competency, and the development of reflective meaning-making skills.

All three program elements (online, instructor experience, and experiential learning) are vital to the program’s success, but perhaps the most important is experiential learning.

Experiential Learning (ExL): Experiential learning activities stimulate sense-making within the participant’s brain. ExL activities combine observation, problem-solving, decision-making, flexible thinking, and creativity. This is the natural process by which humans learn.

Research has shown that people learn best when:

• They are given opportunities to supplement the knowledge they already possess
• The focus is on acquiring skills through repetition without concern about failures while learning
• The environment is safe, supporting, and stress-less
• Activities are novel, interesting, engaging, and fun
• Learning is social, fosters peer collaboration, and capitalizes on group strengths

A well-designed experiential learning activity incorporates these elements, but that’s not enough.

Facilitation: There are several process models for facilitating experiential learning. Most are based on the work of David Kolb. Basically, there are five steps to facilitating ExL.

1.    Step One - Doing: engaging in an experience related to a learning objective

2.    Step Two – Publishing: surfacing and sharing participant reactions and observations

3.    Step Three – Processing: Discussing dynamics and pattern-seeking (sense-making)

4.    Step Four – Conceptualizing: Developing practical principles that apply to on-the-job situations

5.    Step Five – Applying: Determining how to apply the principles learned in practice back at work

The Facilitation Problem: Most facilitators of ExL have not been trained in how to process experiential learning in a way that participants learn from their own insights and applications. Instead, most facilitators “tell” participants what they “should have” learned. The process goes like this: 1) the “game” is played. 2) they discuss what happened. 3) the facilitators ask something like: “What did you learn from this activity?” When there are no or few answers, the facilitator tells them what they learned and how it applies to work. That IS NOT experiential learning! Experiential learning is an emergent process.

Building Change Leadership Skills: The list of essential OD and Change Leadership competencies is long. Practitioners need to know many things, possess a myriad of skills, and have a highly developed mindset about how people and organizations thrive.

Imparting knowledge is not difficult and can be accomplished in many ways and through multiple media. Instructional designers and skilled trainers are good at this.

Affecting attitudes, changing mindsets, influencing behavior, and other interpersonal and group skills OD and change leaders must have cannot be gained without significant practice in safe environments, discussion, questioning, sense-making, and observation of a seasoned practitioner. That’s where the facilitation of experiential learning is well suited to succeed.

Conclusion: There are many certificate programs. When you contemplate which one is best for you, think about how much time is devoted to structured experiential learning where the facilitators are skilled in all phases of the ExL process. Ask how much time allotted for face-to-face interactions with peers, what are the opportunities to share and reflect on your thoughts with senior practitioners through coaching, mentoring, and more.