The Power in a Pause.
My obsession with Action Learning, Part 2…
It can be so hard to pause. I know I’m not alone in my addiction to productivity, and the frantic energy of constant forward motion.
However, I know that creating space for reflection is something that is essential for effective leadership and for dealing with complex problems. I am hearing and reading about this more often these days and I couldn’t agree more. The importance of structured reflection is a huge piece of what I learned when I was first introduced Action Learning as a young engineer working at an oil company.
At 23, I was just finding my place in the world. I had finished my five-year co-op engineering degree and I had taken my first real job as a junior engineer in a specialist technical group at a large oil company in Calgary. We managed pipeline integrity and I had the illustrious title “Corrosion Engineer.”
It was 1999, and oil was $12 a barrel. As soon as I arrived, fresh out of university, we were told to figure out how to do more with less. Urgently. Our team had to provide technical support to literally hundreds of locations from Manitoba to Northern BC. And we had to do it with fewer people and a smaller budget.
Instead of doing the obvious things, my boss at the time was convinced that the best way forward was to get the operations teams at each location involved in our work. He thought that if they could help us solve the technical problems we would have to travel less, and operations could adapt and make changes more quickly if they understood why the change was needed. Having met a few operators by this point in my career, I was skeptical. They didn’t seem to want to learn about corrosion. And they definitely didn’t like change.
But I underestimated people’s desire to be part of the solution, when there was a genuine invitation.
Six months later, we hosted a conference for operators from all the locations we supported. We had written a corrosion manual but instead of being full of pictures of steel pipes eaten away by bacteria and step-wise stress corrosion cracking, it was the Action Learning process. And we practiced it with them, right then and there.
We believed that they were the experts in the problems at their operations, and we created a structure for them to reflect and understand the challenges and problems they faced, so that they could ask the right questions of us, the technical experts. When they knew the right questions to ask us, they were empowered to implement long-term solutions which were much more effective than the quick fixes they had relied on previously. As we stood and watched these operators sitting together in groups of six in a hotel conference room, pausing to reflect and answer questions about their most pressing pipeline integrity problems, I realized how important it is to acknowledge and invite our own wisdom.
I also realized how often we look outside ourselves for the answers when reflection would lead us to the real answers inside of ourselves so much more quickly.
Action Learning brings people together in small groups. Through a carefully designed structure and inquiry process we dive deeply into each other’s intentions for change, one at a time, and challenge each other’s perspectives and assumptions. We approach what we don’t know together with curiousity and the structure helps create safety as we admit where we are stuck, and invite new perspectives on what we don’t know. The other people in the group act as witnesses, but also as a mirror, helping us to find the wisdom inside ourselves that will direct our next small experiment and help us to move forward with confidence.
The structure creates a bias for action, based on the premise that learning happens when we can reflect on action. The process creates space for reflection and stillness, and the structure creates safety and accountability. Action confidence is developed through seeing new perspectives on the choices available. The entire Action Learning process is focused on the learning as the outcome, so there is no pressure to achieve and complete, but rather an openness to learning and a detachment from the result.
Action Learning acknowledges that all change starts with a pause. A pause for reflection allows us to build the energy and access the wisdom we need to overcome the inertia that is keeping us stuck.
Want to try it for yourself? Download these reflection questions and set aside 15 minutes to answer them, ideally with a pen and paper.