Relational Action Learning

In my experience, currently Action Learning groups or sets are made up of a number of individuals who are ‘strangers’ in that they come from different work sites, teams, communities or organisations. Each brings their own problem or issue with regard to which they receive support and challenge from the other set members. In so doing each member is helped to explore their role, perceptions, aims, intentions, feelings, and skills in relation to the particular problem on which they wish to work. Thus, in a typical Action Learning set there are say eight members, with between them a total of eight different problems being tackled – problems from ‘out there’, somewhere ‘back at work’. It seems to me that this approach might work well for what have been called ‘simple’ or ‘tame’ problems, but it is inappropriate for complex or ‘wicked’ problems. These involve many people – ‘stakeholders’ – each of whom too has their own legitimate role, perceptions, aims, intentions, feelings, and skills with relation to the ‘common’ problem. From this perspective, it is essential to involve and engage all these stakeholders in tackling the problem, rather than taking either a unilateral view or trying to see things from everybody’s different position. This means that instead of the problem solver getting help from ‘fellows in adversity’ who have no connection with each other, it is essential to involve all stakeholders – or representatives of all of them – in tackling the issue together. This requires what I and colleagues refer to as Relational Action Learning (Boydell and Blantern 2007). Thus in a Relational Action Learning set all the members are connected with a common issue, albeit in different ways and with different roles and tasks. As well as exploring what we might term ‘technical’ issues around their part of the overall task, the problem is also seen in terms of the effect that they and their work has on others in the group – for example the way they communicate, what helps or hinders each other, how what looks like a solution in one part of the overall system causes further problems or difficulties for others, and so on. Typical issues might then include