01.10.2014 Views

Leading with Emotional Intelligence: Hands-On ... - always yours

Leading with Emotional Intelligence: Hands-On ... - always yours

Leading with Emotional Intelligence: Hands-On ... - always yours

SHOW MORE
SHOW LESS

Create successful ePaper yourself

Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.

168 LEADING WITH EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE<br />

all the information you need to set up, conduct, and process the<br />

activities successfully.<br />

What follows is a brief rationale for experiential training. When<br />

you enter into an organization, you may be asked to explain why you<br />

believe experiential exercises have value and impact.<br />

Whether you are a manager, coach, or trainer talking to an HR<br />

Director or giving your boss an overview of some of the exercises<br />

you will do <strong>with</strong> the team, your ability to understand and explain<br />

the power and value of these exercises will help to get buy-in.<br />

WHY EXPERIENTIAL TRAINING?<br />

“The premise is simple: that we have all been brainwashed by<br />

the cultural myth that learning occurs ‘in our heads,’ not in all of us,<br />

and that, until we challenge that belief, our capacities for any sort of<br />

deep learning are severely limited . . . Our learning is ‘in our heads’<br />

but we don’t seem to get it out, and apply it.” 4<br />

Experiential training is quite different from traditional training.<br />

It involves whole-body learning and engages the physical, mental,<br />

behavioral, and even spiritual dimensions of a person, rather than<br />

focusing solely on the person’s mind. Because the activities are generally<br />

unknown and unfamiliar, they can lead to unexpected outcomes<br />

and surprises, creating situations of crisis and chaos. In this<br />

way, experiential activities are a metaphor for work itself, mirroring<br />

the ups, downs, and unexpected twists and turns that take place on<br />

a daily basis.<br />

Experiential training is a “practice field” that allows learning to<br />

happen in a setting where cause and effect are closely linked in time,<br />

and knowledge is generated to improve teamwork, communication,<br />

and collaborative problem-solving. Experiential training helps a<br />

team project their decision-making process and group intelligence<br />

onto the experience to be successful. The team has to organize itself<br />

to deal <strong>with</strong> time constraints, ambiguity of the directions, changing

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!