Facilitator training for Action Learning Sets

As I reflect on the session, I thought how, by using this technique, people and organisations can move away from isolated, narrow and limited perspectives that restrict their performance toward a learning environment where there are strong relationships, personal growth that improves the thinking and decision making of the group for the benefit of the organisations


Simply, Action Learning Sets are group coaching sessions.  Feedback from the attendees at the session illustrated that having peers question using a coaching approach, the individuals were having to think, hard.  This resulted in new ideas, investigations into areas that had been assumed to be of little value or simply discounted.  For each issue raised, it was these new branches of investigation that the issue owner used to create their action plan.


The coaching approach. This sounds easy.  Observations from the training day made it evident that people

• struggle to ask open and high quality questions
• want to give advice and lead someone to their answer (often not the right one for the context)
• find it hard to separate the issue statement from engineering a solution
• are blind to the assumptions and beliefs that constrain their thinking
• may initially struggle to commit to a half / full day every 6 - 8 weeks
• can shy away from committing to taking action

An experienced facilitator can help the group overcome these difficulties by subtly making the group aware of their habits and giving them opportunity to reflect and change.  Ultimately, a group will be able to run their action learning sets without a facilitator, although this could take a while to get to that level of unconscious competence.


What are your experiences of Action Learning Sets?
What benefits have you found from this technique? 
What tips have you found most useful in running a really effective Action Learning Set?
Let me know.