Experiential Learning

What does that mean?

It simply means learning by doing.

If only young Cuthbert could afford a season ticket to the municipal baths...

My abiding motto is “You can’t learn to swim in the library”. You can study brilliant books on buoyancy, get a first class degree in fluid dynamics, memorise the name and function of every muscle in the human body – but you won’t learn to swim until you jump in the water and start splashing!

Wherever possible, I base all my training around experiential exercises, which is just another way of saying “doing stuff”. If the topic is Customer Service, then by all means let’s study Customer Types, or Subjective Buying Needs, or Transactional Analysis, let’s look at charts of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs – but the learning really starts when we re-enact a typical customer exchange, and examine what works and what doesn’t.

Experiential intervention is useful in all training environments, but is particularly useful in anything that involves communication between two or more people, such as:

  • Customer Service
  • Meetings
  • Appraisals
  • Inbound and Outbound Telephone
  • Leadership
  • Negotiation
  • Conflict
  • Difficult Conversations

..and so on

Yes, of course I know that you and the people you work with all say they loathe “Role-Play” and won’t do it. I know you cringe at some of the exercises trainers try and impose. I do to.

But this is absolutely not “Role-play”, it’s learning by doing, and I promise you people will be having such an interesting and fun time, will be so busy learning and enjoying themselves while they do so, will feel so safe in the activities, that they will be bursting to take part. I haven’t had a single person refuse in 25 years!

Contact me to find out more.

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