WHERE
C3 is a pro-active partnership of 11 organisations spread across the West of England sub-region, partly funded by the European Union through the Equal programme. The partnership, formed in September 2004, is made up of statutory, voluntary, community, social enterprise and co-operative sector organisations.
The partnership is piloting a range of new business support services and providing expert advice in improving the performance of social economy organisations. C3 aims to influence the range of support services delivered and how they are delivered in the future.
Decision-makers often feel isolated. Action learning sets offer opportunity to discuss management issues
Voscur (a C3 partner) is one of the Council for Voluntary Services (CVS) for Bristol. It is an infrastructure organisation and a development agency for the voluntary, community and social economy sector in Bristol. Voscur is a member-led organisation.
WHY
Throughout the course of the C3 performance improvement work with Voscur’s membership of voluntary, community based organisations in Bristol, it emerged that many of the managers felt isolated and unsupported in their working roles. Whilst the managers had to supervise and support the staff they were line managing, they felt as if they lacked access to good, regular support themselves.
HOW
In an attempt to support managers who were experiencing this isolation and lack of support, Voscur, as part of it’s C3 work, decided to host and facilitate ‘Action Learning Sets’ for key decision makers of organisations.
Action Learning involves working on real problems, focusing on learning and actually implementing solutions. It is a form of learning by doing.
By using the knowledge and skills of a small group of people combined with skilled questioning, individuals are enabled to re-interpret old and familiar concepts to produce fresh ideas - often without needing new knowledge.
Action Learning:
- Is an energetic, action-focused way of learning and development that is based in real-life work and challenges rather than abstract theory.
- Is a disciplined way of learning that helps you make sense of current issues that are affecting you at work
- Encourages you to experiment with new behaviours and solutions whilst being pragmatic
- Helps you work with your peers in a collaborative and shared spirit - The sum of an action learning set is greater than its parts
How does Action Learning work?
Action learning occurs in a group called a ‘set’ – a space where peers work in a supportive and collaborative way around real issues that each are facing in their work and implementing solutions. The learning comes from both arriving at our own action plans and through hearing others’ challenges and solutions. As a learning process, action learning is flexible yet focused, dynamic and rigorous, and supportive yet challenging.
A set runs like this:
- There are between six and eight people in a set
- The set meets every four weeks – at your first meeting participants agree the frequency, timings and location of meetings.
- A set lasts all day – each set member has a slot of time, usually 30 – 45 minutes, which is focused on them
- Each set has a facilitator – this person guides and monitors the set
- Each set member brings challenges (mostly people work on what is current for them, which may be a theme which runs through several sessions) to the set and is helped to generate solutions and learning about that issue through questions, discussion and review with other set members
What happens in an Action Learning Set meeting?
Presenter (the person whose turn it is) - 5 minutes approximately
Presents or talks through an issue, problem or opportunity expressing feeling as well as stating facts. During this time, the presenter should only be interrupted to enable them to clarify their issue or to help them move forward.
Supporters (the rest of the group) - 20 minutes approximately
Help the presenter to learn by asking questions. Questions should aim to offer insight and to challenge the presenter. Questions can also be used to help the presenter to explain their issue.
Presenter - 5 minutes approximately
Develops action points to work on before the next meeting. The action points should be realistic and focus on the issue, problems or opportunity presented.
Learning Review - 10 minutes approximately
The whole group discuss what they have learned during this session. Often newcomers to Action Learning are surprised at how the supporters learn as well as the presenters in the process.
Facilitator
Helps it all to happen
Maintains timetable and ground rules
Models the skills of Action Learning
Enables the group to focus on learning
Assists the set members to develop skills for self-facilitation
Timing
There are several ways to divide time during a set meeting. Giving every set member an equal opportunity to be the presenter ensures no one person dominates or retreats from taking part. There may be some occasions when a presenter is experiencing a crisis at work and the set agrees to allow them more time. Sets usually meet during the day and requires a significant time commitment of For example: (10:00am – 3:00pm) or (4:00pm – 9:00pm)
What are the benefits for participants?
Being a decision maker for a voluntary organisation can be both challenging and rewarding. Depending on the size of the organisation, being a decision maker may also feel isolating and even daunting. Being part of a peer learning set gives participants the opportunity to share challenges and issues with other peers, confidentially, and learn from each other. In particular, it helps develop leadership skills around decision-making, relationship building and creative problem solving. Some of the benefits to their personal effectiveness that you may include:
Asking powerful and focused questions
Bringing different perspectives to challenges and decision making
Offering creative, open-minded solutions
Exercising incisive, independent judgement
Managing complexity
Exercising leadership responsibly and with integrity
What are the benefits for organisations?
Organisations whose managers and key decision makers have participated in action learning sets, can expect them to develop capability in the following areas:
Showing enhanced strategic and operational vision
Identifying opportunities for partnership working
Improved networking
A more self aware, confident decision maker, working with greater impact
More able to communicate effectively, work together and make decisions in an objective and co-operative way.
Experiences of The Application Process – How we set it up
Some of the C3 Advisors went on Action Learning Set facilitator training which enable them to set up and facilitate action learning sets for the organisations they support. Voscur contacted the key decision makers of the organisations who make up Voscur’s membership and invited them to apply to be part of an Action Learning Set. The application pack contained comprehensive information on what an Action Learning is and outlined the expectation of Action Learning Set participants and the organisations they come from. For example there was a clear outline of a minimum level of commitment from participants.
It was made clear to potential participants that they would be committing themselves to:
Attending six monthly action learning sets .
Actively participating by bringing issues that are relevant to their group
Taking an active part in the full 6-month programme.
Working for an extended period on their own personal development.
Taking practical action for change between Action Learning Set meetings.
Sharing their learning with the project’s evaluators in order to evaluate the project’s outcomes.
Similarly, It was made clear to potential participants that it would be important that they have the overall support of their organisation. For example:
From the Board or Management Committee
From the Chief Officer
This commitment would involve:
Supporting them to attend all parts of the programme
Supporting them on the issues they are working on (e.g. making time at meetings for learning to be shared with and passed onto board members and staff)
Taking responsibility for enabling the learning and change to be implemented in their organisation
Furthermore, it was made clear that participants would be expected to set time aside over the course of the six months to complete evaluation activities (for example, questionnaires and telephone interviews).
Experiences of the Action Learning Set during ‘Set Time’
One of the early challenges for Action Leearning Set participants is learning to question effectively. When faced with a problem, our impulse can often be to attempt to provide a solution. Furthermore, when we are attempting to provide solutions, we often draw upon our own experiences in order to demonstrate what ‘worked for us’.
The participants are encouraged not to offer solutions, but to question the presenter. The facilitator role models effective questioning in order to train the participants to question effectively. If a participant starts to offer solutions, it is the role of the facilitator to intervene and ask them to reframe what they are saying in a question.
Another challenge which the set participants can experience is to challenge and be challenged. As the group bonds, this becomes less intimidating for participants. Again, the facilitator is expected to role model effective challenging and always be half a step ahead of the group in this activity.
An example of how an issue was dealt with
One participant presented an issue which involved the under performance of a member of staff. The presenter was asking the group how should this be dealt with and had already began the formal underperformance process as outlined in their disciplinary policy.
However, after rigourous questioning, it emerged that whilst there was undoubtedly an issue with the performance of the employee, the problem was more complex in that the recruitment processes and procedures of the organisation lacked clarity and robustness. The staff member should never have been employed in the first place.
The outcome of the presentation was that the actions were made for the presenter to go back to work and review and implement changes to their recruitment policy and procedures. Part of this process involved finding examples of good practice around this – effectively embarking upon a benchmarking exercise.
This significant action would not have emerged had the set not challenged and questioned effectively.
Six managers from voluntary, community organisations in Bristol were accepted onto the Action Learning programme and the feedback thus far, (after three sessions) has been very positive indeed.
All of the Action Learning Set participants have implemented actions which have resolved issues within their organisations and which have assisted in their personal and professional development.
It has been interesting to note that, when set alongside the PERform workbook template, most of the actions which have been implemented have been in relation to the ‘Leadership’ and ‘People Sections’.
Lessons Learnt
The application process was time consuming. However, this seems to have been necessary in order to ensure that the optimum combination of participants were selected.
Transferability
Action Learning Sets are undoubtedly transferable to other organisations. However, this transferability would depend upon staff within host organisations being trained in Action Learning Set Facilitation.
For more information:
Please contact David MacKenzie on david-at-voscur.org