Action Learning for Teams

Paul Gorrell - 6/27/12

Instead of pulling a team off the job to build collaborative skills, leaders should use offsite meetings to work on strategic planning, problem-solving or address other needs that require in-depth thinking.

Action learning programs provide multiple beneficial outcomes, including:

• Team effectiveness.
• Analysis of the leadership capabilities of individual team members.
• Individual leadership development.
• Problem-solving and planning on a real-time business issue.

Offsite team building programs are increasingly unpopular with many business leaders who want to spend their team’s time on more immediate work matters. Employees seem to agree: A recent study by mobile phone company Vodafone UK and market research company YouGov found most employees believe that team-building exercises are a waste of time and involve embarrassing exercises that fail to build morale and engagement.

In the past, team building experiences were often scheduled activities using simulation, game play and immersion experiences to help a team develop awareness and better communication and partnering skills. Many learning leaders encouraged these activities believing they would jump-start success in the office. But the days of “trust falls” and multiple-day adventures in the wild are over.

Andrea Weinzimer, vice president of human resources at publishing company Hachette Book Group, said, “there is not enough long-term benefit to justify the financial spend. It’s hard to measure its success and correlate it to the business.”

“Today’s context requires that the business see more immediate and tangible value from an offsite [event],” said Judy Jackson, chief talent officer of Digitas, an integrated brand agency. “We need to remove all the clutter and show the ROI of the efforts.”

Further, only including a portion of the workforce can hurt engagement for employees not involved. It also sends a poor message when a few employees get to go on expensive retreats and the workforce is dealing with declining salary increases.

Instead of pulling a team out of work to build collaborative skills, leaders can use offsite meetings to do real work on strategic planning, problem-solving or other long-term needs that require in-depth thinking.