Today’s Vital Need for Corporate Experiential Learning

A small team of mixed-aged employees gather around a 13-foot wall at Marriott’s Hickory Ridge Conference Hotel outside Chicago.”I can’t climb this wall alone!” one offers, “I have a bad knee”, another one comments. Finally, a woman steps up after surveying the wall. “I think I see a way to do this!”, she exclaims. The group is from a large, well-known energy company, and are participating on a one-day team building session designed to combine discussion with active experiences on what is called a “ropes course. “As the discussion evolves, the group develops a plan, considers individual roles and forms an approach to hoisting each person over the wall. “This is not different than an actual project at work”, Tim Buividas, partner of the Corporate Learning Institute stated. “What we are doing is allowing time for the group to develop a blueprint before they take action on a project, and then execute on that project”, he commented.

Experiential learning is not new. Its earliest beginnings are rooted in programs like Project Adventure and Outward Bound. Corporations around the world adopted outdoor experiential learning as evidenced by a famous segment in the 1990′s sitcom Murphy Brown. Its use began to diminish, as other popular concepts replaced them, from the emotional intelligence movement to strengths-based leadership. But like the timeless needs that corporations have for personal commitment, team collaboration and innovative risk-taking, experiential learning continues to thrive.

“Let me give you a definition of experiential learning”, Buividas offers. “Experiential learning activities include any active learning experience that offers a chance to learn from failure, success and everything in between. It has to include the possibility of transferring learning back to the workplace. Examples of active learning or experiential learning activities include ropes courses, problem solving games, and many indoor events.  Any indoor active learning session includes a learning cycle. For an experiential session to be effective, participants have to experience, review, discuss, and apply their experiences”, Buividas concluded.

Can experiential activities help your individual contributors, teams and leaders develop collaboration and problem solving skills? According to CLI partner Dr. Susan Cain, that depends. “We use experiential learning as a select tool to help build performance in very specific areas, like increasing trust, what we call risk support, and active collaboration”, she commented. “CLI is in the business of helping clients develop and sustain performance. We enter most client organizations on a long-term basis, and use ropes courses or indoor activities prescriptively to build specific capabilities. So for example, one client may need to create a culture shift, and we will employ assessment tools, classroom discussion with outdoor experiential activities”, Cain noted.

 Readers and listeners can view CLI’s new video on Youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqhavF5-jSE.

 For more information about how your organization can benefit from experiential activities, contact CLI at scain@corplearning.com.