Action Learning Lab

Action Learning Lab

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Course description

Action Learning (AcL) is a continuous process of learning and reflection with a group of colleagues, working on real problems in real time. You get things done, adapting them to the communities or organisations you serve and move forward. AcL identifies issues that are relevant to your role and explore how you apply the learning to those issues successfully.

You practice and develop your cognitive skills. You’re most likely to use these skills in your own workplace and will see practical outcomes. You’ll practice to both support and challenge your team while maintaining mutually beneficial relationships. Rediscover and be challenged to take a wider view of situations and how you can manage them. You will observe yourselves how much more you will begin to ask questions instead of immediately sharing known solutions; how your quality of listening will increase, and also how your awareness of various assumptions is increasing. The workshop will help you to explore the philosophy and principles that underpin action learning. You will practice all roles of an Action Learning Set, so that you will be able to lead and instruct Action Learning Sets in your own organisations and contexts.

  • fractalityWhat is important for your organisation right now?
  • Which areas of potential opportunity are here and there?
  • Are there recurring business issues that demand a fresh thinking?
  • What tangible results does your organisation expect the teams to achieve?
Methodology

Action Learning offers a profound way to move individuals and teams forward, within the communities they naturally inhabit. Yet it is extremely simple to organise.

For an Action Learning Set to bring up fresh ideas and insights, the conversations follow  only one specific prionciple:

Questions are preceding answers. Insights and statements can be shared only in answering questions asked before.

Main elements of action learning are:

  1. Participants join voluntarily, open to learn and ready to take actions following their learning.
  2. The set – a group of 4/8 people meets for a good hour (90 minutes are long enough), accepts these common ground rules and ways of working.
  3. The issue or task holding – one person brings a specific issue for themselves or the team.
  4. The process sequence – presentation of issues, questions and answers, reflections
  5. A facilitator – helps the group as it works and learns. The facilitator can pause the conversations and invites the group to reflect on their learning, then gives the floor back to the group.
  6. A scribe – notes can be openly shared and reflect to the group which assumptions are being made, which questions hold power, and what the bigger picture around the issue holds.
Programme

This workshop is highly experiential and participative. It consists of short theoretical inputs, concrete exercises and group discussions. The programme below is indicative. It will be adapted in response to the needs and priorities of the actual participants.

Day 1

  • Day 1 ThursdayOpening and introduction
    • Setting up the Agenda
    • Introduction and Overview of Action Learning (A.I.)
    • Principles of Understanding and Practicing
    • Learning environment context and diversity
    • Roles and responsibilities
    • My self as a client (presenter) and issue
    • My self as a participant (contributor)
    • My self as a Facilitator and Host
    • My self as a harvester
    • Reflective Sharing Round
    • Closing of the day

    Welcome reception

Day 2

Day 2 Friday

    • Check in Opening Round
    • Boundaries and frameworks and agreements
    • Me as a member of a structured team and decision process
    • Me as a member of a self-managed team (authority to make their own decisions)
    • Me as a stakeholder for stakeholder conversations – working on topics of common interest
    • Plenary session – Sharing and processing round
    • Formulation of working groups and Journaling

Day 3

  • Day 3 Saturday
    • Morning Check in Opening Round
    • Practicing ‘Appreciative Conversations’
    • The power of not knowing position
    • Create a productive issue/question
    • Generate action points
    • Impact on the team culture:
Team members behavior
    • S.M.A.R.T. Action Learning
    • Action learning listening and questioning
    • Sharing and reflections

Day 4

  • Day 4 Sunday
    • Morning Check in Opening Round
    • Mindfulness Exercises
    • How do we deal with our difficult client?
    • How to engage a team to work together towards a shared goal?
    • Co-facilitate action learning sets
    • Fishbowl process

Day 5

  • Day 5 MondayExcursion
    • Outdoor activities
    • Reflections

Day 6

Day 6 Tuesday

  • Morning Check in Opening Round
  • Open Space Technology process / Pro-action Cafe
  • Feedback – working groups and Journaling
  • Evaluation / Integration
  • Closing

Duration:           6 days

Dates:                Upon Request

Location:           Athens & Crete Greece

Participation Fee

The fee for this course is 670 Euros. More information on these funding criteria can be found on our Erasmus+ Workshop pages.It includes tuition fee and educational material, certificates of participation, welcome cocktail, gala dinner, half day excursion (optional) to idyllic Neptune Temple at Sounion Cape (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sounion) in Attica seaside (or similar).

Accommodation and meals are not included in the above fee, but can be arranged by FRACTALITY at special price/low cost for half or full board, in three or four star hotels in the city center. We can always manage low prices for groups.

Ask us about it!

Benefits

Action Learning provides you the opportunity to:

  • Identify issues that are relevant to your role and explore through Action Learning how to deal with them intelligently. You will learn how you can support and developmentally challenge colleagues while maintaining mutually beneficial relationships.
  • Take a wider view of conditions and assumptions held in your world. You will acquire the specific skills of questioning ingrained views and beliefs in a constructive and accepted frame. You’ll learn how you can use those skills in your own workplace and intelligently review the outcomes of them.
  • Be directly involved in learning about an own current life situation.
  • Practice collective intelligence at work in a small group, a setting easily reproduced at your own workplace.
Designed for participants/groups

Designed for individuals and groups who are interested in working more effectively, more intelligently. Any modern team working within agile projects, in self-managed workspaces will want to increase their toolbox and awareness set. They participatory active learning style will make it an inspiring learning experience for staff members from any public or private organisation. Especially when active in the field of education or training you will find this training inspiring and different from academic routines. Managers, coaches, counsellors and Organisational Development professionals tend to love Action Learning and will benefit from this training.

Instructors

Dr. Markos Perrakis is a leadership development & process facilitator, psychologist, speaker, consultant and trainer of individuals and teams, founder and Managing Director of the EU Adult training & Counseling Provider Fractality. He designs and implements EU projects in the fields of leadership development and strategic planning, and uses eclectic appreciative approaches in the public and private sector in order to promote effective communication, individual and collective process development. He specializes in coaching, supervision, human capital development, training and assessments. He holds a Ph.D. in Leadership Styles and their efficiency in organisations with publications in the fields of organizational psychology and counseling and a M.A. in clinical Psychology. He is trained in Systemic Consultation, solution focused & cognitive behavioural approaches, methods of participatory design, Spiritual Intelligence, a certified provider of Vocational Guidance and Professional Orientation, utilizing psychometric assessments and coaching tools for teams and individuals in organizational, career and personality issues and ISO 9001 Lead Auditor.  He is representative of the Association of International Institution Supervision in Europe (ANSE), Member of International Intervision Groups, Scientific Assistant of SOL (Society of Organisational Learning), Scientific partner of the European Union of Small and Medium Enterprises (EUMU) in Greece, in the fields of Strategic Planning and Human Capital Development programmes.

Dr. Perrakis is one of the first persons in Greece who applied the methodology of Appreciative Inquiry, which is used in the UN Summit by UN leaders. In contrast to the traditional management approaches that focus on problems, the appreciative approach makes use of the potential of the human capital of organizations

Rainer von Leoprechting grew up in Trier/Mosel, Germany. Inspired by Jean Monnet’s leadershio practice he worked within the European Commission from 1994-2012.  After many different functions in management and strategy, he founded the in-house consulting service which he led until January 2012. Over his career in Brussels he introduced participatory and innovative methods like the Art of Hosting or Action Learning into the workings of the European institutions.
Then he started the pro action learning company developing and sharing practices to enliven any modern organization. Rainer has invented the Storymatcher (TM) approach and technology to match people with their desired future in life and work. Rainer is also one of the inventors of the pro action café that has become one of the core processes widely shared within the Art of Hosting community. Rainer’s interventions combine many methods, like the full palette of Art of Hosting practices, Action Learning, or process consultation. He is a searched for presenter, external board member, strategy advisor and gives workshops with enlivening practices all over Europe.

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