Welcome to your action learning set. (A guide for facilitators is here.)
The essence of the learning set is communication and confidence.
In action learning you will work on your own (usually) work-based task, investigation or research. The University of Warwick has compiled a useful collection of Action Research Resources. We are adding more action learning resources here.
Action learning sets share some things in common with all group-work, though they have their own characteristics, as well. Resources on group work can be found here.
The aim of the set is to support you as you develop your own project. You bring your own objectives to the set. Action learning sets ar not usually collaborative project teams, though the set may produce collaborative reports as well as facilitating individual work. In this way action learning sets might be contrasted with teams.
These resources may help you to formulate ground rules.
You will need to agree ground rules and protocols from the start.
We suggest simple default ground rules to begin with:
The facilitator is a participant in the set and maintains the same rules, except that they may in general anonymised terms share progress with the other facilitators.
Your learning set also requires professional commitment, to contribute and give feedback as well as to listen and reflect. There is a schedule of meetings and times [link]. In some contexts, you may be able to negotiate this. Or, there may not be much flexibility. Each context and set is in some way unique.
In order to support one another, you need to know something about each other. Introducing yourselves is important. You need quickly to get to know your colleagues.
You should try to do some of this before the first meeting. Time may be tight and, with limited face time, a round of introductions by six participants can easily take an hour. Can you start to meet and get to know your learning set colleagues before scheduled sessions? Can you use an online profile (staff web page, course profile, social media, discussion forums, LinkedIn or other?). Your facilitator may set up a private web page where you can share details. Your action learning set may have an icebreaking activity using a discussion forum.
You cannot leave this entirely up to the facilitator Get to know your colleagues.