I love people watching. The combination of heavy snowfall in Devon and the Christmas period meant there were plenty of opportunities to watch folks being….themselves.
We went ‘en familie’ to a local hilly spot, it was covered with snow and the most glorious spot to try out our shiny new toboggans. Loads of others had exactly the same idea. But not everyone had a toboggan. (this in itself says so much more than I wish to admit about my own family but this is a blog post about people watching not a confessional!!)
On the hill was a mixture of the most fantastic human creativity. Including,
A high performance team, a group of lads with a top of the range toboggan taking it in turns to descend, taking photo’s and generally joshing and enjoying each others company.
The un-performing team with inexperienced managers. A family who’s daughter had never seen snow before, was not dresses for the weather and was letting her managers/parents know that she was not amused. No amount of cajoling or distraction would make that little girl go down that hill.
The maverick. A ‘Dad’ so enjoying his time with the kids flew down the hill head first on a boogie board with at least 1 child on his back. With a large dog flying behind barking. Utter chaos but uber fun.
The entrepreneurs. 5 guys. Initially they tried a door, a full sized front door. This didn’t work so it lay abandoned. They came back with a huge old wooden canoe. (I’m not asking too many questions where either of the aforementioned items came from ahem!)
After dragging the canoe up the top of the hill, all 5 jumped in and they had a hair raising decent that Amy Williams would be proud of. Laughing, screaming and yelping (that dog again!) all the way down , when they checked that they were all alive, (with much surprise the first time) they began the heavy ascent to pull the thing back up the hill. As we left the park the screams were still reverberating. I hope no one was too badly injured. There was little control and they had an audience.
So this got me thinking. When the mind is focused on a small task, ie going down a hill it can come up with some really creative ways to do this. All the above were ordinary people, who all focused their mind on the task at hand and came up with lots of creative ways to achieve theirs their friends and their families objectives.
In coaching this is exactly what happens. The coachee comes to a meeting with a challenge and through exploration and questioning a solution or clarity is achieved. But it doesn’t always have to be a coach doing the questioning. A bunch of colleagues all focused on the one issue at hand are more than qualified to help.
In action learning this is exactly what happens. One individual, call him the questioner comes to the group with an issue, gives the group background and the group one by one offer a question, not advice not solutions just a question in the hope that the questioner will gain a solution or clarity from it.
The next time you have an issue or a problem, there’s no need to wallow in it yourself, grab a bunch of colleagues, you never know what creative ways you may find out of it and what bonds you are bound to make.
For a list of printable instructions of how to conduct an action learning session please e mail me emma@emmaransonbellamy.co.uk
Emma Ranson Bellamy 