Experiential Learning: The New Winning Strategy

It has been a little over one year since the coronavirus pandemic hit the world. The impact of the pandemic has been extremely severe in different areas of our lives, and more so on the business economy. Nonetheless, this health crisis revealed the humanistic value of our organizations.

We have been able to assess the immense help that technological innovations have had on saving companies. New organizations, recalculations of budgets, onboarding, commitment and collaboration of high potential employees – nearly everything has had to be reinvented. The same is true for the world of professional coaching and training, which is curving its own path through this unprecedented period.

What is Experiential Learning?

The key goal of corporate training is to impart interpersonal and know-how skills to high potential individuals – these skills are crucial to an individual’s career mobility However, in our society that is highly fast-paced, the challenge is to share more than new professional skills. The object of internal coaching now is to teach professionals how to face unforeseen work circumstances.

Therefore, experiential training is ideally suited to the expectations of the learners. Based on the strength of collaboration and the reality of the field, this form of innovative training leverages collective intelligence to find solutions adapted in the reality of the professional situation. As such, each employee becomes an instrumental part of change via proactive types of experiential learning.

The concept of creating and carrying out (game) experiential training is highly relevant. In fact, puzzles, quizzes, and games based on real-life situations help a great deal in the experiential learning process. And for many good reasons, they provide an immersive and playful dimension to digital learning.

If we push the application of serious games further into innovative training in mobile learning, we can imagine the development of immersive 3D training for the learner. This digital practice would then be ideal for experiential training in a corporate university.

Why The Shift From Classroom to Experiential Training

We live in a competitive world where large corporations are striving to be the best, and “continuous professional development” is a practice that is still viable to date. Therefore, implementing a customized training program is normally linked to group training and in-person training, according to the lesson of the day.

“The classroom will have to be justified more than ever. The learning experience it creates will have to be distinctive. Training organizations have to totally rethink their pedagogical tools in order to enhance the value of face-to-face training compared to digital learning. Companies will not be returning to face-to-face training any time soon. And this is for three reasons: budgetary, logistical and health or security.” Says Marc Dennery of the training company C-Campus.

Based on this corporate training model, it is more than urgent to find a new strategy for training projects.

A Mature Technology

Video conferencing and digital interaction solutions come with numerous benefits, it brings together and allows collaboration in real time with people from across the globe. It is this form of solutions that ensures employee retention in the long run.

A Multi- Modal Approach

After talent acquisition, organizations must come up with new human resources strategies and formulas such as personal/team coaching, digital seminars, mentoring, assessment tools or co-development.

Blended training as one of the characteristics of experiential learning is thus at the center of the trends in the professional coaching arena. That is why it has been the most successful form of professional training in the corporate world.

Personalized and Sustainable Solutions

The main purpose of an experiential training is to train individuals on current contexts and issues, while allowing them sufficient autonomy and time to put it into practice. According to Richard Boyatzis, Greek American organizational theorist and Distinguished University Professor of Organizational Behavior, Psychology, and Cognitive Science at Case Western Reserve University, there are 5 key steps to sustainable change, they include:

Envisioning Your Perfect Self and Developing a Personal Vision

Prior to embracing change in our lives, we first of all need to discover who we need to be, what is called, “ideal-self”, an embodiment of our perfect person. Three components of creating an ideal self-image include, your desired image of the future, believe that you can achieve it, and your traits of key identity that help you build for the desired future.

Comparing Your Real Self with Your Ideal Self

Now that you have a vivid picture of your “ideal self”, the next step is to compare yourself with your future self. In other terms, the individual others see versus whom they interact with.

Creating a Plan and a Learning Agenda

The next step is to create a plan on how you will move forward. At this juncture, the goal is to create a learning plan that would specialize on development, and it is highly efficient combined with positive belief in your home of improvement and abilities.

Practicing Desired Changes

You will then need to act on your learning and practice the changes. This means you will have to experiment with your new behaviors as this is the best way of developing talent.

Relationships That Help You to Learn

How we relate with other people is important as it affects us in many ways. Core to our ability to transform are individuals that are important to us and the relationships we nurture. They are the KPIs (key metric performance indicators) through which we can measure progress on our desired self.

Again, the most important step is to execute the training plan once it is created to alter the coach’s behavior based on the results. Personalization and experimentation are hence the crucial words of experiential training and fuel to improve the discovery for the individual.

Digital Learning at The Service of The Human at CoachHub

Digital and Human

Alternative, unifying, and effective digital techniques are modernizing traditional classroom-based professional training. More HR managers that oversee professional development are trying to combine face-to-face and digital training. This form of training is known as blended learning.

“Many large accounts are currently looking to revisit their knowledge and skills development programs. The objective? To integrate new digital modalities such as individual coaching or co-development.” Nathalie Ducray, Chief Program & Coach Community Officer @CoachHub.

CoachHub Solutions

At CoachHub, we have been doing our best for over five years on the creation of digital learning for individuals. There are several ways through which we have been able to achieve this:

• Leadership development to become a manager and leader via creative programs, leveraging distance learning, coaching, and collective facilitation.
• Sharing on subjects by various groups, focused on personal and group problems, thanks to co-development tools and collective intelligence propositioned by Champagne & Payette model, which instill some top-notch practices in the group.
• Improving team performance, sharing best practices, brainstorming, instructive techniques for organizing efficient meetings due to collective intelligence workshops and the CoachHub Team Coaching and Team Project strategies.
• Transformation of organizations, managers and stakeholders with the help of tailored and blended learning programs.

To cite a concrete case, we recently designed a 100% remote coaching program with the PSA group. This support naturally includes a strong coaching and collective intelligence dimension, which enriches the training experience and makes it more engaging.

The results are incredible and the participants are content with this new teaching method. Improving the employer brand and unlocking the potential of the organization and those who form it, means offering the actors of the business world the best innovative and human educational tools to create this space of liberation where digital technology is put at the service of the human being and the company.

200 human resources departments and Internal Corporate University of established organizations have placed their trust in our educational team. You should too!