Team-based Learning
Making learning relevant

The story so far…
Once upon a time you did your learning in a classroom, whether at school, at university, or in organisations. Particularly in the latter, when you were identified as having a learning need in some area, you could be packed off to a training course which would help to stop the gap and, newly skilled, you would be released back into the workplace, afresh with knowledge and eager to apply it. The only problem was, this kind of organisational learning is expensive: it costs a great deal of money to hire offsite venues, to travel to and from the venues, and to hire external facilitators where the company cannot provide their own. In addition, there is opportunity cost to consider – all those hours or days spent out of the office means time away from making money and servicing clients. There is also a flavour of being ‘done to’ – of passive learning rather than active engagement with one’s own development.

Transfer of learning
When all is said and done, there is no guarantee that learning acquired on courses will be transferred back into the workplace. Anyone who has ever facilitated or attended a training course will be familiar with the lament that not very much at all might be remembered from the training material, or that the course manual went straight on to the shelf back at the office. The issue, it seems, is that learning needs to make sense – i.e. it must be directly relevant to the learner’s needs – if it is to be successfully absorbed and applied. The problem with training courses is that they can often be wrongly timed and don’t coincide with the participant’s need to do some learning in a specific area. So, learning on a course may come too early for participants to see how it can be relevantly applied. Worse, learning may come too late, after the participant really needed a particular piece of knowledge to resolve a task or situation, and he or she had to make do with a trial and error approach in the workplace instead. Therefore, it is a well-heralded fact that the most important learning occurs on the job and not in the classroom.

As a facilitator I have also heard participants say that the most useful learning on a course occurred during the breaks or at the bar before dinner, when they could informally discuss and share their thoughts on the day’s material. Similarly, in the workplace, coffee machine conversations serve the same purpose – well-timed snippets of conversation and exchange that are directly relevant to some aspect of a situation someone may be facing can be immediately applied when returning to the task at hand. This phenomenon supports another frequently upheld maxim of effective learning, namely that learning happens between people, through conversation, and is therefore social and active, not individual and passive.

An alternative – Team-based learning
An approach to learning which addresses these potential shortcomings has been designed and carried out in PricewaterhouseCoopers UK and forms a good basis for considering an alternative way of creating learning for employees. In my capacity as an organisational change consultant, I was tasked with designing and implementing a programme that took learning to the learner in the workplace. The result was a team-based learning approach combining individual learning with whole team interventions which enabled teams to function more effectively as they went about their daily work, as well as individuals to improve their own skills where they most needed to.

‘Live’ coaching
Team-based learning makes use of a great deal of what can be described as ‘live’ facilitation. This involves coaches joining in with the team, both individual members and the whole team, as it performs its natural functions and carries out its meetings. Coaches observe the team and its members in action as they go about their work, something which is not possible as a facilitator on a workshop. Coaches are therefore in an excellent position to supply specific and well-timed feedback and insights that highlight to team members the types of behaviours and practices that are getting in the way of their effectiveness. Team members can immediately try out different and more effective courses of action and quickly see the benefits of behaving differently. This approach addresses many of the abovementioned needs for effective learning: each team member receives learning tailored to his or her situation and style and can immediately apply the learning, all learning is work-relevant as it is carried out in the context of the day-to-day operations of the team, and learning takes place between people, through discussion and sharing of feedback.

An additional benefit of this type of approach is that it is highly flexible. Because the work is ‘live’ it is tailored to suit each team’s issues and needs, and the format can be adapted accordingly. Programmes of this nature are typically emergent since each introduction of new information by the coaches can result in a change within the team. The programme therefore tends to take shape and adapt over time. What follows is a description of a typical team-based learning approach.

Diagnostic
Any programme of this nature introduces learning at two levels, that of the individual and that of the team. However, before the coaches can take any targeted action, a period of ‘diagnosis’ needs to be undertaken to uncover the patterns and dynamics present in the team. This is typically approached by means of peer meetings. Unsurprisingly, we have found that true feelings about the team, and issues that are bothering members, emerge more easily in hierarchical bands, rather than across grades. Coaches therefore begin the process by facilitating short meetings of peers at different grades. These meetings are designed to uncover both what is working and what team members would like to change in the way the team operates. An additional, highly important factor is to win the trust of the peer group through commitment to confidentiality of individual comments, neutrality of the coaches’ agenda and so forth.

The diagnostic phase is by no means a static collection of information, as each meeting has the potential to introduce automatic change into the peer group through the coaches’ questions. For example, where team members may be complaining about the state of affairs, coaches can encourage and challenge them to think how they might themselves behave differently to achieve change. However, the primary purpose of the diagnosis is for the coaches to pull together the key themes emerging within this team and present these back at a brief whole-team meeting. Here, coaches are able to raise awareness of the main areas the team needs to change to improve its effectiveness and also to gain commitment from individuals about what new behaviours and actions they will attempt themselves.

The bulk of the programme is taken up by individual ‘live’ coaching sessions. Each team member chooses a slot of between 1.5 – 3 hours and is allocated a coach who will work with him or her during this slot. Team members are encouraged to book two or three typical meetings they would usually have to coincide with the timing of their slot, so that they can be observed ‘in action.’ The coach then follows a process of observation, and giving feedback and suggestions for improvement. The skill of the coach is critical here, as is thorough contracting with the team member upfront, as both need to come to agreement about acceptable levels of feeding back, what can be said publicly and what privately, and so forth. When learning works best, the coach is able to intervene directly at well-chosen moments during meetings to point out patterns of behaviour that are helping or hindering effectiveness and to suggest to the coachee different actions or ways of responding. For the duration of the coachee’s slot, an action-reflection cycle is followed i.e. team members get an opportunity to try out the behavioural changes they are aiming for in the actual meetings followed by a period of reflecting on the effectiveness of this with their coach.

Areas of effect
This phase of the programme addresses many of the individual’s skill areas. Typical areas tend to include delegation and management skills, time management, communication skills, giving feedback, giving good briefings and debriefings, and co-responsibility and taking initiative for successful outcomes for the team.

Once all team members have undergone their coaching sessions, the threads are pulled together for the team in the form of wrap-up peer group meetings and/or a whole team meeting. Here, team members have an opportunity to share their experiences and learning during the programme and to commit to actions going forward.

The benefits of this type of approach are numerous. At the individual level, team members feel they have received helpful and tailored feedback on their own styles. Collectively, the team has a greater understanding of how it operates and therefore openness is increased as submerged issues are lifted into awareness. With issues more openly talked about, the team is able to form decisions about how to interact and function differently in the future.

Ongoing flexibility
The programme need not end here and, indeed, a coach attending a few subsequent meetings is a useful way of reinforcing learning and reminding team members of the changes they’ve committed to. Over time, as behaviour patterns change the team often reaches a point of self-governance by reminding itself of the changes it is trying to achieve, and facilitation becomes obsolete. This is the mark of a successful intervention.

As mentioned, this is an adaptable programme which need not necessarily follow the abovementioned format. ‘Live’ work of this nature can be applied in a number of different guises and settings, and sometimes interventions at whole team meetings only can produce significant changes in the way a group operates. The overall aim of this kind of work is to make learning seamless while carrying out business as usual, and coaches will work with the team to find the best ways of achieving this.

Team-based learning is neither an elixir for learning nor a substitute for technical courses. There certainly are courses which are much more valuable when offered off-site and with those who are not one’s colleagues. However, team-based learning goes a long way towards making learning business-relevant and to growing within teams an awareness of how they operate so as to better achieve their business goals.