Last week, the Discerning Leadership Core Team and three other members of its Board and faculty (Sr. Pat Murray ibvm, Fr. John Dardis SJ, and Fr. Mark Ravizza SJ), had the opportunity of being trained in a methodology called “Action Learning” by one of their founders, Ms. Ruth Cook.
Action Learning provides a positive, capable approach to exploring concerns, topics and challenges in a reflective, open, questioning manner within the supportive environment of a group of equals or peers. When it is well accompanied, it facilitates change, delivers action plans and cultivates a ‘can-do’ mindset.
The experience has allowed the members of the group to explore some challenges of each one’s roles with an absolute confidentiality, and with a deep sense of care and love, as well as understand the dynamics and benefits of doing it using the Action Learning Methodology. The structure with the different phases that it has, along with the openness in which it invites to be to each participant, really creates new spaces for more new and more creative solutions to emerge.
The group, as well as the trainer, found very interesting and rich how Action Learning and Peer Coaching based in a Spiritual Conversation methodology could be mutually enriched and have some overlaps. This conjuncture will be further explored by the Discerning Leadership Core Team in how to bring it in the Leadership development offerings that imply peer accompaniment and coaching.
For more information, you can access the Action Learning Associates webpage and/or the article from the experience and perspective of Ms. Ruth Cook about the formation.
Fr. Giacomo Costa SJ did studies in philosophy and theology, and he also obtained a master's degree in Political and Moral Sociology at the EHESS in Paris.
He is the responsible for Formation at the Society of Jesus.
Prof. Rafael Luciani received his licentiate and doctorate in theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome and a degree in educational sciences with a philosophical orientation from the Universidad Católica "Andrés Bello" in Caracas (Venezuela). He also studied philosophy at the Salesian Pontifical University in Rome and did post-doctoral work at the Julius Maximilians Universität in Würzburg (Germany).
Nathalie Becquart serves as Undersecretary of the Secretariat of the Synod of the Bishops since March 2021.
Robert J. Bies (Ph.D., Stanford University) is Professor of Management and Founder of the Executive Master’s in Leadership Program at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University. In addition, Dr. Bies is a co-author of the book, Getting Even: The Truth About Workplace Revenge—And How to Stop It.
Professor Bies’s current research focuses on leadership, the delivery of bad news, organizational justice, and revenge and forgiveness in the workplace.