The article discusses the author's transformative journey, who transitioned from a traditional trainer to a passionate action learning coach through a series of personal and professional experiences. On top of that, the knowledge and experiences gained from action learning marked a pivotal moment, leading to a profound shift in the approach to…

Amid the backdrop of the global pandemic and other complex societal and organizational challenges, the demand for proficient people management skills among managers and leaders has become increasingly urgent. The ensuing narrative offers an account of a leadership development initiative tailored for line managers and delivered amid the pandemic.…

This paper explores the professional practice of the Action Learning (AL) facilitator through a process of critical inquiry, self-reflection and evaluation of action learning practice within a Higher Education Leadership Programme, commissioned by an English NHS Mental Health Trust. Action research was adopted as the overarching research approach…

Action learning has been used in healthcare settings to bring about changes to how services are delivered, to help individuals to develop their knowledge and skills, including leadership development, and to enable the development of collective abilities and communities of practice. It is evident that there are some positive elements in the…

This paper seeks to advance the understanding of the complementarity between action learning and lean. Today, this is an underexplored research area, despite the high degree of similarities and syngeneic possibilities between these two research streams. The paper describes an action learning intervention at VELUX, a Danish rooftop manufacturer…

This account of practice offers reflections and insights on facilitating Action Learning (AL) in Leadership Programmes within the Higher Education context. The account shares our reflections and key observations as practitioner academics, facilitating AL Sets within three higher education leadership programmes. We draw on our knowledge and…

Action learning is seen under many guises, being adapted into different contexts (Marsick and O'Neil [1999. "The Many Faces of Action Learning." "Management Learning" 30 (2): 159-176.]). This is especially true in higher education, due to the divergent requirements and challenges of multiple action learning programmes and…

Action learning is one of the most effective leadership development interventions [Day, Fleenor, Atwater, Sturm, and McKee. 2014. "Advances in Leader and Leadership Development: A Review of 25 Years of Research and Theory." The Leadership Quarterly 25 (1): 63-82; Pauleen. 2003. "Leadership in a Global Virtual Team: An Action…

This paper introduces a facilitated co-constructed action learning approach with a narrative account of the author's own learning on designing and delivering an executive education programme. Action learning has double inference in this context as the author developed and improved teaching design and delivery through action learning. He also…

This account of practice gives an overview and insight into the learning from a co-designed leadership development programme for Allied Health Professionals (AHPs) across two NHS Integrated Care Systems. The AHP community that completed the courses consisted of acute and community trust, mental health, local authority, and SCAS (paramedics)…

This case study measures the impact on elements of schools' professional environment after school leaders participated in eight action learning (AL) sessions over one summer. The guiding research question asks, What, if any, impact on a building level administrator's leadership practices result after their participation in an Action Learning…

This paper outlines the outcomes from three rounds of action learning sets with a charity that supports vulnerable adults and those with learning disabilities in supported living and residential care. The action learning sets focused on safeguarding cases and how they had been managed by 11 leaders at various levels of the charity (the team). The…

This account of practice focusses on insights from the 'early days' of an action learning set within a leadership development programme in the English NHS. The account describes experiences of forming as a set as an important foundation for trust. Developing trust between set members enabled members to take more risks, sharing current and complex…

This paper presents a case study based on the evaluation of the two VAL (virtual action learning) sets. We report participants learning both leadership and the VAL process based on the basis of telephone interviews. We conclude that what is learned about leadership is connected with how learning takes place and suggest that the content and process…

The paper examines whether, if leadership is defined by the willingness to tackle wicked issues, and if action learning is employed for leadership development purposes, do the action learning participants on leadership development programmes address such wicked issues? It adopts a version of dialogical sense-making to consider this and describes…