The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 268 - Action Learning

Transcript:

Pete: Hey, Jen.

Jen: Hi, Pete.

Pete: I learned a new phrase the other day. And it's one of those things where you learn a phrase for a thing that you've already done or been doing in the past, and you're like, "Oh, there's another word for that. Or there's other concepts that relate to that exact thing that I've been doing."

Jen: Uh-huh.

Pete: Okay, this is a called action learning.

Jen: Action learning. Okay, I'm learning this phrase right now, too.

Pete: Yeah. So action learning, it's essentially how I have talked about hot seats, peer coaching. You and I have actually done this, have been in the same room when this has happened. And I'm just, I've recently discovered that others call it action learning. And maybe there's some things we can learn from different approaches to identifying our problems, speaking them out loud, and having others reflect back to us questions.

Jen: Well, I am actively learning in this moment. This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Pete: Now, I feel like my disclaimer needs to be: If there are action learning practitioners out there, and I butcher this, and they're like, "No, that's not what this is," please feel free to email me, and I apologize in advance. But I was co-designing a workshop with a large corporate here in Australia, and the lady running it is also a facilitator. And she goes, "Oh, I think...have you thought about trying some action learning with this group?" And I was like, "Pardon my ignorance, but I don't know what action learning means. What do you mean by that?" And she goes, "Oh, it's this like framework for learning and discovery and sort of peer coaching, where you get into small groups and one person takes it in turns of sharing where they're stuck or the problem they have. Or maybe you give the group a problem to solve, and each person takes turns asking that one individual with the challenge a question. And you're not allowed to give advice and you're not allowed to make statements and you're not allowed to share your opinions, you just have to reflect back questions. And hopefully, by the end of the allotted time, that person has got an action in mind and has worked through that process to how they can move forward." And I was like, "Oh, I think I do that every day. But I've never called it action learning."

Jen: I know. As I'm listening to this, I'm like, "And so, she's describing your work. Okay. Great."

Pete: But not just mine. Like I've been involved in, I guess, action learning circles (to use that term) for years in organizations, in the work I did with the altMBA, in work I've done with you and work I'm doing with my own clients. That at the root of it, I guess, is this idea that when you're stuck, explaining your problem out loud can often present a solution. Just forcing yourself to articulate the problem can actually be a really useful part of the troubleshooting process. And not only that, but then getting people to ask you questions also enables you to hopefully see things that you haven't been able to see before. So yeah, I guess it's the same philosophy but with a different spin. And I thought you might like it.

Jen: I do like it. I like it a lot. I know I've told this story many times on this podcast, but for newer listeners, Pete, the reason you and I got together was because you asked me good questions. And those questions helped me to identify actions that I wanted to take.

Pete: Hmm.

Jen: And then like the addendum is, I wrote to Pete and I was like, "I can't live without you. What are we going to do about this? How do we keep working together?" And five years later, here we are.

Pete: Here we are. The love story that is Jen Waldman and Pete Shepherd, I love it.

Jen: A platonic love story. We're both married with children.

Pete: Platonic, sorry. Yeah, yeah, platonic. People are like, "What?" Oh dear. But this idea, I don't know, I find it...maybe it's just because it never ceases to amaze me, maybe it's because sometimes I feel like a bit of a fraud or an imposter when I put people into groups and go, "Coach one another. Ask each other questions," and invariably, you can't be involved in all those conversations, so you go, "Are you actually doing anything? Is this actually helping anyone?" And then every single time I do this, every single time I've experienced it or facilitated it and I think, you know, in an action learning context been part of a circle, someone comes out with something where they're like, "Huh. Wow. That was the most helpful thing I've done in the last, you know, six months or twelve months or whatever." There was a GM...I ran this session a few weeks ago, and there was a general manager who, by his own admission at the start, came up to me and shook my hand (lovely guy) and told me how skeptical he was of leadership development programs. And I was like, "Great. This is going to be a fun three hours."

Jen: "Can't wait for this one."

Pete: But he was lovely. And he was so open about it. And at the end of the session, he said, "That thing we did where I had to get other people to help me solve my problem," he's like, "I've got all these ideas of how I'm going to move forward. And I wouldn't have gotten them if it wasn't for that session. So, thank you so much." And I'm like, "Great. He did an action learning."

Jen: You know what's so wonderful about this, is just thinking about the way this person expressed his experience. "You got other people to help me solve my problem." But the truth is, if the rules of engagement are, "You may only ask questions. You may not offer advice. You may not speak in assertions," then they're not solving the problem. You are creatively solving your own problem by considering things that you might not have considered before, because the questions prompt something.

Pete: Totally.

Jen: But it's not like someone has said, "Do this."

Pete: I absolutely agree. And I wonder like, I feel like this is a phenomenon that you must experience in coaching, where you have finished a coaching session and they're like, "Wow, Jen. That thing you said was so helpful." And you're like, "I didn't say that. You said it. I asked you a question." Or like, "Thanks, Jen. You really helped me." And you're like, "Well, you kind of helped yourself. I just sort of reflected back what you said."

Jen: Yeah. Well, okay, so I took a couple notes while you were talking.

Pete: Ranting. Sorry, ranting.

Jen: I love your rants, keep them coming. For someone who does the kind of coaching I do, where part of it is technique coaching and part of it is not, I'm looking at, "Okay. So action learning is about asking questions, so that the person you're asking questions to might be able to solve their own problems, but with new perspectives or the answering of those questions has brought them new insights." I also do...I don't know what I would call it, so I don't know what the companion is to action learning. But in my acting classes, yes, I will ask questions. But more often than not, I'll assign a task and I won't explain the why behind it. I'll just offer a task or an exercise. And then after the task or exercise is complete, the client will say, "Oh my gosh, this is what just happened. You know, it brought up all these questions and all of these new answers and all these new ideas." So, it's almost like the reverse. Because I give the prompt, they suddenly have all these new questions.

Pete: Oh, interesting. I love that, the inverse. Yeah.

Jen: Yeah. So, learning action? I don't know.

Pete: Learning action. Am I right in saying you also were part of a session, once upon a time, where instead of, "You're only allowed to ask questions," it was actually, "You're only allowed to make statements." Is that right?

Jen: That is absolutely true. I attended a session, which had a highly esteemed group of people sitting on what in any other context would have been called a panel. But we weren't allowed to ask questions. Instead, you would raise your hand and you would make a statement. And then, the people on the panel would respond to your statement with their statements. So the rule of the night was, "No questions allowed," which was wild.

Pete: Wild. Yeah, I feel so much tension in my body about that. I'm like, "No. Questions only." But I hear it could be just as valuable to do the inverse.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: Learning action. One of the other things I love about this exercise...and you actually touched on this in the episode we did called Humility in Action, when you went to an evening with a bunch of laryngologists, from memory.

Jen: That is correct. Good for you.

Pete: Did I say that right? Oh my god, look at me.

Jen: That's not an easy word to just pull out.

Pete: I'm just patting myself on the back here guys, don't you worry about that. And you were talking about how one of the laryngologists would stand in front of everyone and go, "Here's this tricky situation I have. What am I missing," and kind of open themselves up.

Jen: Yep.

Pete: And how...we were talking about in that episode and I think this is true with action learning that we're talking about now, is, it's super helpful, obviously, for the person who shares where they're stuck to get all these questions and these ideas. But inevitably, what happens is the other people who are asking them questions start to learn things themselves and go, "Oh, wait. This is really reminding me of a situation I have, and now I need to think about that question as well." And it's almost like it taps into that idea that we're really good at helping others but not so good at helping ourselves. And in helping someone else, we kind of do help ourselves. Like I see people all the time, when they're doing this as the question asker, start to write notes.

Jen: Yep.

Pete: And I'm like, "Oh, interesting. You're writing. You're actually getting the learning out of this, and the other person's in the hot seat."

Jen: Yes. I witness that in my classes all the time, all the time. This isn't about asking questions, but one of my clients today made this observation in class. We were doing a pretty challenging acting exercise, and we were working in rotation. So there were seven actors, and each one would get up, do the exercise, sit. The next one would get up, do the exercise. So they're able to observe six of their peers, and then they're doing the exercise as well. And so after everyone had had a chance to go, I said, you know, "How was that?" And one person said, "I was mesmerized and enthralled by everyone else's work, except my own."

Pete: Oh, interesting.

Jen: "That, I was able to watch people struggle with the exercise and appreciate how they were overcoming these challenges and what they were able to find, but I would not have been able to see that in myself." So that also feels like, I don't know, tangentially related to this, in, watching someone else work is such an incredible learning experience.

Pete: I really wonder if that is helpful for them, gaining the perspective of like, that's how others feel about you when they're watching you.

Jen: Oh, yes. Yes. That came up as well.

Pete: Right. Because I feel like that, in my mind, this is why sharing where we're stuck or sharing things that are hard is so important in the context of leadership that I talk about. Because in doing so, what you hopefully unlock for everyone else is, "Oh, all of these stories I tell myself about how I don't know how to lead are not unique to me." That, we're all having some version of this. But I would never look at the person on the other side of the circle and go, "That person has no idea what they're talking about," even though that's what they just told me they think. And so it's like a mirror to yourself, to go, "Huh. Maybe others think that about me too, that I am actually quite a good leader and I don't have a bunch of impostor syndrome, even though I do." So I just feel like, it's like a mirror to everyone else in the circle at the same time.

Jen: Yeah. This idea of group learning experiences, you just can't beat it. You know, from time to time, I will have someone reach out to me and say, "I really want acting training. Will you work with me one on one?" And I'm like, "No. I can coach you for your auditions one on one. But I can't teach you how to act by yourself."

Pete: Right. Right.

Jen: "You've got to watch other people do it. You've got to get in there with people. You have to watch other people struggle, to see how they overcome certain challenges, so that you can learn yourself."

Pete: And then I do wonder, how do we take some of these learnings and apply it to ourselves? And I was thinking about...less about the reflection back process, which I think is hard to replicate because you kind of need other people for that...but more just about the problem identification, the problem articulation process. And I was reminded of a blog that Derek Sivers once wrote (I'll put it in the Box O' Goodies) where he talks about his mentors and his process for asking his mentors for advice. And one of his mentors, he talks about, is Seth Godin. And he said, what he does is he opens up an email and he starts typing an email to Seth, and articulating the challenge that he's having and the advice that he's seeking. And he says, in doing so, through that process, he doesn't need to send that email, because he knows what Seth's going to say back.

Jen: Right.

Pete: So it's not that it's not worth doing that email, the draft. It's actually, that's the point. I mean, I do this all the time, of like, "What would Jen say if I was to send her this thing or do this thing?"

Jen: Yep.

Pete: And I can hear you in my head, going, "Do this. Try that. And have you thought about this?" And I'm like, "Alright, Jen. Yeah, shut up." And I haven't even sent it to you yet. So I think that there's a way to do this in a way that's, how do you just write the problem down or explain it as if you're about to send it to someone? And in doing so, I think you'll go a long way to try to identify solutions to said problem.

Jen: Oh, yes, yes, yes. And, you know, I have this practice of talking to myself into a voice memo app.

Pete: Oh, yes.

Jen: I use Otter, so it gets transcribed. So I talk the problem out loud, and then I listen back to it. And suddenly, I have new insights when I hear myself describing the problem to myself.

Pete: Right. Now, interesting that you say that because I'm starting to wonder, is this podcast an action learning circle with you and I, where we share something we're stuck on or something we've learned and we reflect back questions? Now, you and I probably do a bit less of the, "You're only allowed to ask questions," because we share stories and ideas.

Jen: Correct.

Pete: But we do reflect back to one another questions. We reflect back what we've heard. And so often, we get to a place of, "Oh, here's an action that we need to take."

Jen: Right. Oh my gosh, yes. How very meta of you to point that out.

Pete: You know I love meta. (Not the company. The phenomenon.)

Jen: Thank you very much for clarifying that. Okay, so, Pete, I have one other idea for how one might put themself through action learning if they don't have access to a group.

Pete: Alright.

Jen: And I'm thinking it's ChatGPT.

Pete: Oh, right. Right. Right. I was so curious where you were going, because you were making this funny expression.

Jen: Yeah, well, I just think that that would be a good use case for ChatGPT.

Pete: 100%.

Jen: To say, "Here is the thing that I'm stuck on. Ask me questions. Do not make assertions."

Pete: Right. Oh, I love that prompt. That is such a good use of ChatGPT. The reason I love this so much is I feel like when we're stuck (the collective we), we create these stories of binary. That, "There's either this way or that way. There's the perfect way or there's the crap way. There's Path A or Path B. Or there's like, you know, only two possible options for how I can move forward. Or maybe there's only one option and that's actually why I'm stuck, because I don't want to take that option." And whether it's a group of people reflecting back to you or ChatGPT, the one thing you can generate really quickly is a bunch of other alternatives, or questions to help you see alternatives. So that you realize, "Take your blinders off. Oh, there's actually Options C, D, E, F, G, H." There's so many more options than the one or the two that we can see with our blinders on, our stuck blinders.

Jen: Yes, I love this. And I think I'm probably, as soon as we hang up this call, heading over to ChatGPT to test this out.

Pete: Likewise. Likewise, yeah.

Jen: Wow, Pete. So who knew, for all these years, we've been participating in action learning? Now, we know. Get a group of people together, put one person in the hot seat, have them explain their problem, ask them questions, they will help themself come up with the next action to take.

Pete: And in doing so, you will benefit as the person asking the questions, by hearing someone share their struggle, their challenge, and identifying a question that you could ask them, which so often, as evidenced by this podcast, is actually just a question that you need to ask yourself.

Jen: Oh, yes. And that is The Long and The Short Of It.