Intersecting journeys in creating learning communities in executive education

Abstract

This article explores the findings from an action research project which tracked the evolution of The Executive Program (EP) (a pseudonym), a four-week open enrollment senior executive program at a major university in the United States. The decade-long journey grew from a program redesign initiative to a process of ongoing change through insider action research. Through the process the faculty director and collaborating faculty unexpectedly experienced an epistemological shift. The EP was transformed from a traditional ‘teacher as expert’ model with a focus on cognitive learning to a holistic learning community that emphasized broader participant involvement and a wider range of learning approaches. This article is the product of the authors' collaborative meaning-making through the lens of developmental action inquiry and adult learning theory.

Keywords

Action inquiry learning communities open enrollment senior executive education

Introduction

This article describes the learning outcomes derived from a decade-long process of transforming The Executive Program (EP) (a pseudonym), a four-week open enrollment senior executive program at a major university in the United States. This 10-year journey, led by the faculty director (and a co-author of this article), transformed the design of the program from a traditional ‘teacher as expert’ model imparting the latest theories, to one that was learner-centered and holistic, emphasizing not only the transmission of knowledge but also whole person (mind, body, emotions and spirit) engagement. Over the course of this journey the pedagogical design of the EP was transformed from a traditional lecture and case study discussion executive education format to one that was focused on creating a learning community. Unexpectedly, this change process led to an epistemological transformation on the part of the faculty director in terms of her mindset and how she led the EP, which in turn led to changes in how the participants, staff, and faculty saw and participated in the program. This article is organized around the faculty director’s learning journey, showing a gradual shift from an ‘expert’ or problem solving mindset to a more strategic and expansive one. The purpose of this article is to bring to the foreground the experience of living through the epistemological shift required for initiating the kind of cooperatively experienced change in an institutionally embedded system envisioned by contemporary practitioners of action research (Coghlan, 2011; Coghlan & Holian, 2007).

The challenges of transforming a traditional executive education program into a holistic learning experience

While a literature exists advocating the need for more holistic learning pedagogies and describing the characteristics of effective learning environments for executive development programs (Conger, 1998; Conger & Xin, 2000; Gosling & Mintzberg, 2006; Harrison, Leitch, & Chia, 2007; Neilsen, Winter, & Saatcioglu, 2005), there is a dearth of discussion about the journeys taken to develop this kind of pedagogy in the executive education classroom or the lessons learned from the dilemmas and conundrums encountered in developing such environments (for an exception, see Kets de Vries & Korotov, 2007). The literature also highlights some of the challenging mindset shifts faculty need to make when introducing learner-centered pedagogies into traditional management classrooms. Faculty must be open to taking risks (DeMulder & Eby, 1999) and be willing to let go of control as they pursue a more collaborative learning model. Faculty, socialized as experts, must also learn to confront challenging ideas and comments in a respectful rather than defensive way (Neilsen et al., 2005). They must continually navigate the balance between providing sufficient structure (Bezzina, 2006; Neilsen et al., 2005) while allowing for new insights to emerge and impact the way faculty and participants collaboratively engage as a learning community. This article describes an emergent process of action research leading to a holistic and transformative pedagogical design in a four-week open enrollment senior executive education program with a highly diverse participant population and faculty. Our aim is to contribute to a deeper understanding of the relationship of faculty mindsets on program design by sharing the results of an insider action research project.

Action inquiry as a catalyst for pedagogical change in executive education

To be clear, this change process did not begin as a formal action inquiry/action learning project. Precipitated by the globalization of business and a participant body in each of two four-week residential programs that had grown more and more similar over time, the EP was created through the merger of two existing programs; one aimed at US-based executives and the other targeting international executives. The merger involved nearly eight weeks of largely non-overlapping content that was condensed into four weeks based on the track records of the teaching faculty and a relatively nonsystematic assessment of topic relevance and participants’ interests. The teaching methodologies and the general underlying assumptions of the program remained relatively constant during this transition. What emerged was an evolving change initiative driven by the faculty director’s curiosity and informal learning through experience, which gradually evolved into a process of more systematic research and action inquiry.

Half-way through the director’s 10-year learning journey she partnered with a group of faculty and doctoral students in initiating what became an on-going five-year research project on the program (the authors of this article were the principal investigators in this research). The project initially involved in-depth interviews with program participants, supplemented with analysis of pre- and post-program 360 leadership behavior assessment data. Our research initially focused on documenting the impact of the program, particularly in terms of learning transfer. As the research progressed it became part of a process of making ongoing changes and innovations to the EP, and constructing theoretical implications for an inquiry-driven integrated model of transfer and assessment for practice (Yorks, Beechler, & Ciporen, 2007). We conducted face-to-face and telephone interviews with faculty co-directors of the program, university administrators, program faculty, staff, and 76 alumni from two EP classes. Our experience demonstrates the potential of engaging in insider action research (Coghlan, 2001, 2011) as a way of fostering these kinds of communities in executive education programs.

Ongoing retrospective reflection enabled the faculty director to realize four distinct cycles that marked the evolution of the process: (1) integrating two existing programs; (2) creating an integrated experience; (3) creating a total environment; and (4) continuous experimentation.

In the section below, we begin with a first-person narrative by the faculty director of her journey through the four cycles. These cycles characterize the transition from managing the initial integration of the two programs to an ongoing process of action inquiry. Each cycle is presented in terms of the goal at the beginning of the cycle, the process that evolved in striving to achieve the goal, the faculty director’s mindset as the cycle was initiated and unfolded, and the outcomes. Following the narrative we provide an analysis of the process with the goal of sharing insights.

The faculty director’s journey of learning

This section is presented in the first-person voice of the faculty director so that the reader can understand the relationship between her evolving intentions and learning, the broader context of the program, and outcomes.

Cycle 1: Integrating two existing programs – October 1996–May 1998

I was promoted from assistant faculty director of the previous four-week international executive program to the co-faculty director of the EP when the two existing four-week executive programs were merged into one.

Goal at the beginning of the cycle

The goal of the Associate Dean of Executive Education, my co-director, and I at the time was not to ‘not mess up a good thing’. Both programs were high profile and generated the largest percentage of the revenues for the executive education division of the business school. The domestically focused four-week program was the oldest program in the portfolio and considered to be emblematic of the high status university brand.

Process to achieve the goal

The process for integrating the two programs was relatively straightforward. We took the best-rated sessions from each program and created a new program that would appeal to both a domestic and an international audience. Similar to how we had organized the programs before the ‘merger’, we would sit down and map out a program flow and contact faculty a couple of months before the program to teach a session. If they weren’t available on the desired day, we would slot them into the program when they were available. The first EP programs were very similar to the legacy programs that had come before them with faculty coming in to teach having had minimal communication from us, and then leaving immediately afterwards.

The faculty director’s mindset

My personal goal was foremost not to fail. I was the youngest and least confident of the three of us and I was both excited and petrified by the opportunity before me. I was truly an academic, having spent nine years in graduate school and moving straight from graduate school to my tenure track job. Thirty-three years old, I had only recently started teaching and working with executives. I saw myself as primarily a content expert in the field of management and a neophyte at directing a program. Having an older, experienced faculty director working beside me gave me a model and a mentor. My primary motive was to ‘do no harm’ to the program.

Outcomes

The final program evaluation averages rose from a 4.2–4.4 before the merger of the two programs to a range of 4.4–4.5 after the merger and everyone was relieved. We had successfully made the transition to a new program without any loss of brand or reputation. My goal, to avoid failure, was also achieved. I began to feel excitement, without so much fear, as I looked ahead. In retrospect I can see that during this initial phase of the redesign process my cycles of post-action reflection were focused mainly on short-term instrumental goals.

Cycle 2: Creating an integrated experience – August 1998–May 1999

Probably because of my steep learning curve, intensified by my strong fear of failure, it took me a while to realize we were not maximizing our participants’ learning experience during our programs. I realized this through informal conversations with a number of participants during and immediately after programs, as well as my own insights from sitting through all of the program sessions and seeing that the connections across sessions were not being drawn out by faculty, my co-director, or myself.

This bothered me because I thought that if we could change executives’ mindsets and actions, they would, in turn, be able to have a tremendous impact in their own organizations and communities. Simply continuing to present them with lectures on business theories, no matter how good the lecturers and the content, would not have the same far-reaching impact. The motivation for change was very personal. I increasingly saw a gap in what I hoped I could achieve from my own career and what I was actually delivering. It was this personal quest that spurred me to think about how we could more effectively integrate topics and learning across the program to help participants translate their learning into organizational change and enhanced performance following the program.

Goal at the beginning of the cycle

Encouraged by the success of the merged programs, and driven by my own desire to create a more impactful experience for the participants, we set our sights on not just running the integrated program but designing one that went beyond what the previous programs had offered. My co-director and I began to talk about how we might achieve synergy across the program.

Process to achieve the goal

About this time two of my colleagues partnered with a faculty member from another college to deliver a pilot program on the learning organization. I met with them to understand how we might use the concept in the EP. Based on the input from these colleagues and publications, my co-director and I created a new opening session and introduced the idea of the EP as a learning community. We also explicitly stated our team’s goal: to create a peak learning experience for everyone in the room.

We introduced the idea of Kolb’s learning cycle and participants completed the Learning Style Inventory. Participants were then placed in groups according to their dominant learning style and asked to share with us their greatest contributions to a group, their potential liabilities and the way they liked to work. Using flip-charts the exercise created a fun and informative way to explore different approaches to learning, emphasizing the importance of all of the stages of the learning cycle.

I also worked with an OD consultant, Ken, with whom I had worked earlier on a custom program. Collaborating with Ken, we offered quiet reflection time at the end of every day. We also created diverse learning groups of five to seven participants that met weekly to discuss their key insights and ways that they could implement tools and ideas from the program back at work. Each Monday morning one learning group would share their insights with the rest of the class. My co-faculty director and I would then build off the key learnings to create a transition from the previous week to the current one. While participants were in a variety of group configurations throughout the program, their learning group was the one constant throughout the program and members often became quite close. Many years later, a number of them are still in regular communication with each other.

Following the run of the program with these changes, Ken suggested a visioning exercise. Participants were asked to recollect a peak learning experience from their past and jot down notes about their experience. Participants were placed into their learning groups to share their experiences and identify their common goals and commitments to values and behaviors that would guide our work together. We then tracked our progress on how well we were doing as a class on living our values and achieving our goals.

In addition, I slowly built a diverse administrative team of young people. Traditionally an independent contributor, like most academics, I slowly grew to see the power in having a strong team and experimented with a number of ways to leverage them before and after the program. After she came up to ‘observe’ one of our programs and to help out informally, we hired Reyna, a new coach, to join our team and to help onsite with coaching and team building. I also utilized her in a more informal capacity to get to know participants, and tell me when there were things that were undermining the learning environment. While I didn’t always appreciate Reyna’s feedback or her incessant questions, she increased my self-awareness dramatically and my ability to work with and lead my team.

The faculty director’s mindset

While I was still concerned about not messing up, our successes and having an OD consultant to work with gave me confidence to try new approaches to the process component of the program. We refined the design over a number of programs and it made a huge impact on the shared culture of the group. I became even more convinced that the keys to creating a peak learning experience and having a lasting impact on the participants lay not in getting better speakers or the latest hot topic, but through creating a shared culture and set of experiences that engaged the hearts of the participants, not just their minds. As the programs continued getting high marks I stopped feeling afraid. I was beginning to see myself as the author of something new and something of a renegade within the traditional business school setting.

During this cycle, I began to see and appreciate how it was not just the content sessions, but also the social events, that could contribute to creating a cohesive and powerful learning environment. Until this time, I had merely seen them as ‘fun’. I was beginning to shift my mindset from one focused on content to one focused on a holistic experience.

Outcomes

The impact on final program evaluations was notable, with the average final evaluations rising from 4.4–4.5 to 4.6–4.7, on average. The faculty and administration had the same goal: achieve high ratings on the course and continue to have The EP be perceived in the market as one of the premier such programs in the world. We were meeting and even beating those expectations and all of our major stakeholders were happy with the changes to the program. Over the program iterations in this cycle, the ‘feel’ of the program also changed and everyone on our team as well as participants recognized it. No other executive programs we were familiar with were exploring the terrain we were now traversing, and we were now consistently outperforming all of the other programs in the university’s portfolio in terms of final evaluation scores and positive word of mouth.

Reflection post-action in this second cycle began to go deeper. I was no longer looking at only short-term instrumental goals but started to reflect more broadly on the experience of the learner and the kind of lasting impact the program could have. Through reflection and exposure to colleagues outside of the business school I began to question how the various pieces of the program could be leveraged so that the whole would be greater than the sum of its parts.

Cycle 3: Creating a total environment – October 1999–May 2003

The first programs where we introduced the idea of a learning community were disappointing because, despite the espoused theory and program changes our practice hadn’t changed that much. I eventually realized that introducing the concept of the learning community wasn’t sufficient; we had to shift our pedagogies so they truly leveraged the diversity of the group. With careful attention to building a cohesive culture and spending significantly more class time developing and reflecting on the process, not just the program content, we began to truly build a learning community. The impact of these changes was felt by faculty who came in to teach at various points in the program. One faculty member who had taught in both legacy programs and in the EP stated:

I witness this every time I come up … because I always come on a Monday, … they’re always wrapping up collectively everything that went on the previous week, so they have these learning groups. … and there is so much commitment. … to learn from each other, to develop a sense of class engagement, class esprit de corps, a sense. … that they own the program. That has grown steadily in a really visible way. … it’s inspiring that they are so much into these learning groups and they feel such a sense of ownership of the program.

Goal at the beginning of the cycle

As our experience base grew, the goal for the program evolved. At the same time, I again became dissatisfied because I perceived that we could do more and achieve even better results in terms of creating a transformational learning experience for everyone in the program, including for my team and me. The goal became to create an executive program experience ‘as a whole community’ that could be much more powerful than the sum of its academic parts. The program had already evolved, to quote a senior colleague, from the old ‘cavalcade of stars’. Our changing vision led us to begin to be more mindful about the program as an entire community, a system that generated learning and new insights through engaging all members shaping the community.

Process to achieve the goal

In this cycle, my team and I deepened our partnership with our faculty. First, we actively partnered with them in planning, delivering, and improving their own sessions through one-on-one feedback and coaching. I also briefed the faculty on other sessions that were related in some way to theirs and encouraged them to talk with the other faculty so that they could better integrate their materials and highlight a number of common themes that could be woven throughout the program.

It was during this third cycle that we initiated the formal research project aimed at understanding the impact of the EP on participants over time. My boss saw the main value of the research as generating data that could be used for marketing purposes. My interest was in understanding what elements of the program design and content made the most difference to participants after they left the program. It was at this stage that I moved from a more informal learning process to a structured inquiry.

The cycles of action and reflection during this phase highlighted the importance of both the relational and administrative aspects of my role. I saw that in order to truly support a learning community all of the members of my team and I had to be present for the majority of sessions, meals, and recreational activities and this became part of all our jobs. I began to spend considerable time with each of the faculty who taught in the program providing feedback and making sure they were up to speed on the ‘pulse’ of the group. I also became involved in conversations that technically had nothing to do with the program itself. I met with the program manager to discuss our objectives, critical points in the program, key elements that would enhance or detract from our objectives and the environment we wanted to create, so that the program manager could then represent ‘the whole program’ in her conversations with the conference center.

The faculty director’s mindset

During this cycle my primary identity became synonymous with being the faculty director for the EP. My earlier fears were replaced with a sense of true excitement at what we were collectively creating. With coaching from Reyna, deep reflection on myself, and ongoing feedback from faculty, executive education administration, and conference center staff, I continuously expanded out my awareness of the personal and emotional under-currents and the broad repertoire of skills necessary for planning, shaping, ‘fixing problems’, and inspiring success.

Outcomes

Our overall satisfaction ratings with the program continued to increase and our programs consistently received ratings from 4.6 to 4.8. Formal and informal feedback showed that everyone associated with the program was engaged, excited, and grew as a result of their participation. One of my team members expressed the energy required to interact with the participants as a full community member in an interview for this project:

One of the things that’s really difficult is just getting yourself psychologically ready for what you know is going to be a really emotional bond. … and we put as much emotional sides of ourselves into it and didn’t kind of maybe create some of the boundaries that other schools did. … I mean other schools would maybe have one program director who would pop around and go hey, everyone ok?. … and then walk off to his room. [B]y setting the boundaries the way we did I think that’s almost one of the biggest challenges, putting yourself in that space where you can really give them [the participants] the energy. … I think some of the faculty that dropped off or couldn’t adapt. … really had a hard time letting go of their hierarchical position with relationship to the participants.

Cycle 4: Continuous experimentation – October 2003–October 2005

At this point the program had evolved into a continuous process of experimentation. We began to use findings from our formal research initiative to inform modifications in the program design. For example, an analysis of post-program interviews found that many participants were wrestling with how to disseminate and implement learning they had gained at the program once they returned to their organizations. Based on this finding, we developed a session on preparing for learning transfer and organized a panel of alumni from past programs who were invited to come speak at the end of every program to share strategies for supporting learning transfer.

Goal at the beginning of the cycle

The goals of the administration continued to be focused on offering a premier executive program that would enhance and build the reputation of executive education and the business school. My personal goal was experimenting with new content and processes to keep the program current and fresh. This involved trying new sessions and faculty but also more formally addressing the physical, emotional and spiritual lives of the participants.

Process to achieve the goal

Over the years that I had been involved in executive education, I witnessed a disturbing increase in the pressures and demands of participants’ work lives and became increasingly concerned about their mental and physical well-being. While physical exercise had long been a component of the EP, during this cycle we focused much more intentionally on its role in the program. I increasingly involved our director of physical well-being, Hal, in design discussions. Upon request, Hal created customized exercise programs for participants and worked with them on personal physical fitness goals. In terms of mental well-being I decided to take it upon myself to offer two regular meditation sessions at 7 am and 7 pm every day. Afraid that we would scare people away if we called the sessions ‘meditation’, I named them ‘Focusing the Mind’ sessions. After an initial session for everyone in the classroom, these were optional. I usually had a committed group of 5–10 participants meditating with me throughout the program.

The faculty director’s mindset

I continued to experiment and innovate during this cycle. With my team, I verbalized my intent to have 20 percent new process and/or content in every program. While I knew that this high level of innovation was not necessary, I felt like I needed to keep introducing novelty into the program to keep myself at a high level of engagement and to see how far I could actually go. We did have a few notable failures in our experimentation, but rather than become overly concerned as I would have earlier, I took the failures, as well as the successes, as data to build on in the future. While failure had previously been something to avoid, I now saw it as part of the learning process.

Outcomes

The overall evaluations for the programs continued their upward trend and for the last five programs, before I left the university, the program averaged an overall satisfaction rating of 4.95. I was told by colleagues in other major business schools that this was simply unprecedented in programs with more than a few participants (and we had from 40 to 68 participants each program from all over the world). The program helped to propel the business school into the top rankings of executive programs worldwide.

This last phase was when we most intentionally enacted cycles of action and reflection as a program team. After Action Review meetings became a regular part of our work as a team, not just after every program, but at the end of each week during the program. We established a team culture that allowed for sharing of both constructive (and sometimes difficult) feedback along with appreciations and support.

Summarizing the changes made

We realize that the above only partly captures a complex and holistic change process and the individual, group and systems levels. Table 1 provides a summary of how the various components of the program such as faculty lectures, participant-led sessions and reflective session shifted in terms of frequency of deployment over the course of the cycles as the program become more centered on collaborative and holistic learning within the community.

Table 1.

Summary of shifts in frequency of core pedagogical components in the EP by cycle (in hours).

Executive Program cycles/phases	Faculty- led lectures	Faculty-led workshops	Total faculty-led sessions (sum of previous two columns)	Small group coaching	One- on-one coaching	Experiential (simulations, team building, etc.)	Participant- led sessions	Reflective sessions	Meditation
Legacy program: August 1994	101	16	117	0	0	7	8	2	0
Phase 1: October 1996– May 1998	79.5	21.5	101	0	0	19.5	9	5.5	0
Phase 2: August 1998– May 1999	104	14	118.5	6	0	7	8	9.5	0
Phase 3: October 1999– May 2003	86	0	86	20	32	17.5	12.5	15.5	4 (2 optional)
Phase 4: October 2003– October 2005	83	0	83	19	32	17.5	23.5	19	19 (17 optional)

Along with changes in the design, the content of the program also changed over the course of the decade, partly as part of the shift toward a learning community design and also reflecting changes in the global environment and relevant, cutting edge topics. A detailed presentation of these changes is beyond the scope of this article, however Tables 2 and 3 provide a comparison of the curriculum in 1996 (Table 2) and 2005 (Table 3). The experience of these changes is further captured in the analysis that follows.

Table 2.

Curriculum topics and activities EP 1996.

Sun	Mon	Tues	Wed	Thurs	Fri	Sat
Week 1
	Breakfast	Breakfast	Breakfast	Breakfast	Breakfast	Breakfast
	Participant Introductions	Team Challenge	The Global Environment	Strategy Formulation	Macro Economic Environment	International Negotiations
	Lunch (12:30–1:30 pm)	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch
Welcome and Program Introduction	The Learning Organization Introduction to Team Building Program Introduction to Physical Fitness	Team Challenge	Strategic Alliances	Strategy Formulation: Participant Application Personal Planner	Macroeconomic Environment Integration – Week 1	Campus Tour (opt.)
Welcome Drinks & Hors D’oeuvres Welcome Dinner	Physical Fitness Dinner	Physical Fitness Dinner	Physical Fitness Dinner	Physical Fitness Dinner	Physical Fitness Historical Dinner (with actors)
Week 2
	Breakfast	Breakfast	Breakfast	Breakfast	Breakfast	Breakfast
	Achieving Financial Excellence	Global Human Resource Management	Strategy Implementation	Managing Innovation and Change	Strategy Application Workshop	Walking Tour (opt.)
	Lunch (12:30–1:30 pm)	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch
Achieving Financial Excellence	Global Human Resource Management Participant Panel: Reengineering Intro. To Personal Cases	Strategy Implementation	Strategy Application Workshop	Small Group Discussion Integration – Week 2
Dinner	Physical Fitness International Night & Dinner	Physical Fitness Dinner	Physical Fitness Dinner	Physical Fitness International Night & Dinner	Physical Fitness Dinner
Week 3
	Breakfast	Breakfast	Breakfast	Breakfast	Breakfast	Breakfast
	Managing Markets Strategically	Unleash the Power of Flexible Thinking	Cross-cultural Management	Managing Change Workshop	Panel on Information Technology	Guest Speaker
	Lunch (12:30–1:30 pm)	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch
Changing Management/Changing Managers	Unleash the Power of Flexible Thinking Turnaround Management Every Day	Managing Organizational Culture and Change	Managing Change Workshop	Integration – Week 3 Personal Planner
Dinner	Physical Fitness International Night & Dinner	Physical Fitness Dinner	Physical Fitness Dinner	Physical Fitness International Night & Dinner	Physical Fitness Dinner
Week 4
	Breakfast	Breakfast	Breakfast	Breakfast	Breakfast	Breakfast
	Leadership Styles	Team Feedback	Personal Cases	Managing Stress	Program Summary Program Evaluation Graduation Ceremony	Breakfast
	Lunch (12:30–1:30 PM)	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch
Leadership Styles	Personal Cases	Personal Action	Managing the Relationship between Professional and Private Lives	Depart
Dinner	Physical Fitness International Night & Dinner	Physical Fitness Dinner Personal Cases	Physical Fitness Dinner	Physical Fitness Final Celebration Dinner

Table 3.

Curriculum topics and activities EP 2005.

Sun	Mon	Tues	Wed	Thurs	Fri	Sat
Week 1
	Breakfast	Breakfast	Breakfast	Breakfast	Breakfast	Breakfast
	Globalization, Terrorism and the 21st Century	Team Challenge: Building the Learning Community	Perspectives on Globalization	Focusing the Mind (opt.) Unleash the Power of Flexible Thinking	Focusing the Mind (opt.) Creating Breakthrough Strategy	Introduction to Zen Meditation (opt.) Creativity and Innovation in the Organization
Lunch (12:30–1:30 pm)	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch
Welcome and Program Introduction Introduction to the EP Website Learning and Leadership Introduction to Executive Well-Being	Globalization, Terrorism and the 21st Century Introduction to the Learning Journal Reflection	Team Challenge: Building the Learning Community Focusing the Mind Reflection	Managing and Leading Introduction to Personal Case Project and Leadership Message Reflection	Furious Waters (Alumni Presentation) Creating our EP Vision Preparation for Values Coaching Reflection	Creating Breakthrough Strategy Reflection Managing Energy for Performance & Balance	One-on-One Values Coaching
Welcome Reception Welcome Dinner	Executive Well-Being Fireside Chat: Where’s the World Headed?	Executive Well-Being Country Western Dinner (w/entertainment)	Executive Well-Being Focusing the Mind (opt.) Dinner	Executive Well-Being Focusing the Mind (opt.) Dinner	Dinner Fireside Chat: Exploring the Challenges of Strategy & Leadership	Dinner Karaoke
Week 2
Values Coaching	Breakfast	Breakfast	Breakfast	Breakfast	Breakfast	Breakfast
	Focusing the Mind (opt.) The Week in Review & What’s Ahead The Job of Strategic Marketing	Focusing the Mind Entrepreneurship –What Does it Take? Entrepreneurial Strategy	Focusing the Mind (opt.) Managing the Tensions of Globalization	Focusing the Mind (opt.) The Power to Change Performance	Focusing the Mind (opt.) Presence of a Leader	Opt. Trip to Local Attractions
	Lunch (12:30–1:30 pm)	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch
Values Coaching Art & Insight: Experiences in Visual Thinking (opt.)	Positioning Strategy Reflection	Entrepreneurial Strategy Focusing the Mind Reflection	Managing the Tensions of Globalization Reflection	Presence of a Leader Reflection	Presence of a Leader Reflection
Focusing the Mind (opt.) Dinner Learning Group Reflection: Week 1	Executive Well- Being (International Night Presentations, cocktails and buffet)	Executive Well- Being Focusing the Mind (opt.) Dinner	Executive Well- Being Focusing the Mind (opt.) Dinner	Executive Well- Being (International Night Presentations, cocktails and buffet)	Executive Well- Being Focusing the Mind (opt.) Dinner	Dinner Karaoke
Week 3
The Dynamics of Dance	Breakfast	Breakfast	Breakfast	Breakfast	Breakfast	Breakfast
	Focusing the Mind (opt.) The Week in Review & What’s Ahead Cost of Capital & Financial Markets	Focusing the Mind (opt.) Leading Change	Focusing the Mind (opt.) Global Ethical Decision Making	Focusing the Mind (opt.) Leadership EQ	Focusing the Mind (opt.) The Art of Leadership Bus departs for Museum	Focusing the Mind (opt.) Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done
	Lunch (12:30–1:30 pm)	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch (on bus)	Lunch
Review of Financial Statements (opt.)	Financing Growth & Valuation Reflection	Interpreting Your 360 Feedback Report Reflection	Corporate Responsibility: The Paradox of Transparency Leadership Communications Reflection	Negotiation Reflection	Museum Tour Bus to Campus The Power of Visual Imagery: How Art Support Leadership Campus Tour	360 One-on-one Coaching One-on-one Leadership Communications Coaching Exploring the Pen & Page: Workshop in Creative Writing (opt.)
Focusing the Mind (opt.) Dinner Learning Group Reflection: Week 2	Executive Well- Being Dinner A Financing Game	Executive Well- Being Focusing the Mind (opt.) Dinner 360 Reflection in Learning Groups	Executive Well- Being International Night (Presentations, cocktails and buffet)	Executive Well- Being Focusing the Mind (opt.) Dinner	Dinner at Restaurant Depart for Conference Center	Dinner 360 One-on-one Coaching One-on-One Leadership Communications Coaching
Week 4
One-on-one 360 Coaching	Breakfast	Breakfast	Breakfast	Breakfast	Breakfast
	Focusing the Mind (opt.) The Week in Review & What’s Ahead Joining the Univ. Alumni Network Implementing Individual & Organizational Change: Life after EP (alumni panel)	Focusing the Mind (opt.) Levers of Leadership	Focusing the Mind (opt.) Personal Case Workshop	Focusing the Mind (opt.) Putting the EP to Work For Guests: House tour Music Paradigm (with guests)	Focusing the Mind (opt.) Final Thoughts Program Evaluation Graduation Ceremony (with guests)
	Lunch (12:30–1:30 pm)	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch (on bus)
One-on-one 360 Coaching Art & Insight: Experiences in Visual Thinking (opt.)	Leadership Message Practice/ Leadership Communication Coaching Reflection	Levers of Leadership Reflection	Personal Case Workshop For Guests: Program Overview For Guests: Opt. Activities Reflection	For Guests: Your Thinking Preferences (opt.) Learning Group Reflection & Leadership Message Nominations Leadership Message Presentations Reflection	Departure
Focusing the Mind (opt.) Dinner Learning Group Reflection: Week 3	Executive Well- Being Focusing the Mind (opt.) Dinner One-on-One Leadership Communication Coaching	Executive Well-Being Focusing the Mind (opt.) Dinner	Executive Well-Being (with guests) Guests’ Reception Dinner (with guests)	Executive Well-Being (with guests) Farewell Dinner & Party

Analysis: Making meaning of the experience

Nearly 30 years ago William Foote Whyte (1984) observed that writing is itself part of the research experience. This is particularly true of first-person narrative when it involves retrospective reflection, checking one’s emergent story against archival data in the form of reports, memos, and interviews. Our analysis centers around our key finding that: The evolution of the Executive Program required an epistemological shift on the part of faculty director, her team, and the larger learning community in terms of both content and who was viewed as ‘expert’. We use Bill Torbert’s and colleagues (Rooke & Torbert, 2005; Torbert & Taylor, 2008) research on action-logics as a way to make the rather amorphous term ‘epistemological shifts’ more explicit. Rooke and Torbert (2005) define action-logics as how a person interprets ‘their surroundings and react when their power or safety is challenged’ (p. 67). An action logic is the embedded mindset that shapes people's interpretation of their actions and the world around them (see Table 4 for a description of the characteristics of the four developmental action logics relevant to this article).

Table 4.

Managerial style characteristics associated with four action-logics.

Action logic	Description
Expert	Interested in problem-solving: seeks causes, critical of self/others based on own craft logic; wants to stand out, be unique; perfectionist; chooses efficiency over effectiveness; dogmatic; accepts feedback only from objective acknowledged craft masters; values decisions based on technical merit, humor = practical jokes; sees contingencies, exceptions; positive ethic = sense of obligation to internally consistent moral order; timely action = fast, efficient. (p. 86)
Achiever	Long-term goals; future is vivid, inspiring: welcomes behavioral feedback; timely action = juggling time demands to attain effective results; feels like initiator, not pawn; seeks generalizable reasons for action; seeks mutuality, not hierarchy in relationships; appreciates complexity, systems, feels guilt if does not meet own standards; blind to own shadow, to the subjectivity behind objectivity; positive ethic = practical day-to-day improvements based on self-chosen (not self-created) ethical system. (p. 86)
Individualist	Takes a relativistic perspective; focuses more on both present and historical context; often aware of conflicting emotions; experiences time itself as a fluid, changeable medium, with piercing, unique moments; interested in own and others’ unique self-expression; seeks independent, creative work; attracted by difference and change more than similarity and stability; less inclined to judge or evaluate; influences by listening and finding patterns more than by advocacy; may become something of a maverick; starts to notice own shadow (and own negative impact); possible decision paralysis. (p. 102)
Strategist	Recognizes importance of principle, contract, theory, and judgment – not just rules, customs, and exceptions – for making and maintaining good decisions; high value on timely action inquiry, mutuality, and autonomy; attentive to unique market niches, particular historical moments; interweaves short-term goal-orientedness with longer-term developmental process-orientedness; aware of paradox that what one sees depends on one’s action-logic; creative at conflict resolution; enjoys playing a variety of roles; witty, existential humor; aware of tempted by the dark side of power. (p. 108)

Adapted from Torbert (2004).

Looking at the faculty director’s epistemological evolution through the lens of action logics we can see evidence in her narrative of the expert mindset in cycle one: ‘My personal goal was foremost not to fail. … I saw myself as primarily a content expert in the field of management and a neophyte at directing a program’; to a more achiever mindset in the second and third cycles:

I became even more convinced that the keys to creating a peak learning experience and having a lasting impact on the participants lay not in getting better speakers or the latest hot topic, but through creating a shared culture and set of experiences that engaged the hearts of the participants, not just their minds. As the programs continued getting high marks I stopped feeling afraid.

and individualist toward strategist in late third and fourth cycle:

My earlier fears were replaced with a sense of true excitement at what we were collectively creating. With coaching from Reyna, deep reflection on myself, and ongoing feedback from faculty, executive education administration, and conference center staff, I continuously expanded out my awareness of the personal and emotional under-currents and the broad repertoire of skills necessary for planning, shaping, ‘fixing problems’, and inspiring success. I continued to experiment and innovate during this cycle. With my team, I verbalized my intent to have 20 percent new process and/or content in every program. While I knew that this high level of innovation was not necessary, I felt like I needed to keep introducing novelty into the program to keep myself at a high level of engagement and to see how far I could actually go. We did have a few notable failures in our experimentation, but rather than become overly concerned as I would have earlier, I took the failures, as well as the successes, as data to build on in the future. While failure had previously been something to avoid, I now saw it as part of the learning process.

To be clear, use of the action logic mindset lens is post-project; the language was not used during the cycles. The faculty director’s action-logic was not formally assessed at any stage during the change process, but Torbert’s and colleagues framework was used as a lens for interpreting the story that emerged. Based on the experience of two of the authors in working with the lens we see it as a useful framing of a critical aspect of the faculty director’s informal experiential learning. We speculate that without this evolution beyond what can be characterized as the faculty director’s achiever mindset, the program very likely would not have progressed past the initial two cycles.

From that perspective, the faculty director’s story describes a necessary, but unintentional, developmental journey. The faculty director’s story therefore has important lessons about how a leader’s changing mindset (or action-logic) impacted how she approached a strategic adaptive change process (two programs being merged in response to the changing market) over time. The final program took a genuinely holistic (attention to mind, body, heart and spirit) as well as complex (each iteration of the program evolved uniquely within the boundaries of the design and every program was viewed as a learning event) approach to learning. The work of Torbert, Kegan (1982, 1994) and others (e.g. Cook-Greuter, 2004; Drago-Severson, 2004) supports our belief that the mindset of the faculty director had an important impact on the way the program evolved. As Torbert (2004) notes:

Research has begun to confirm that people who hold later action-logics do indeed tend to be more effective managers and more transformational leaders. Our own research specifically points to a link between the post-Achiever frames and a manager’s tendency to redefine problems and to propose collaborative rather than unilateral action in responding to problems. (p. 109)

Our analysis has so far focused on the epistemological shifts and developmental journey of the faculty director, we will now look at the epistemological shifts required of her team and the larger learning community of participants. As noted earlier in this article, one major epistemological shift occurred as the faculty director moved the program towards a true learning community model which is based on mutuality and shared experience. This required both faculty and participants to move from a ‘faculty as expert’ mindset to a mindset of risk-taking, responsiveness, shared responsibility, and co-creation. Inherent in the learning community model is the notion of collaborative learning among all members of the community. This, of course, doesn’t devalue faculty expertise (indeed that is part of what participants are coming to gain access to). However, it does mean valuing the experience of participants, and using pedagogical methods that are aligned with this belief, especially in executive programs. The power of learning communities is the ability to integrate conceptual learning with the holistic experience necessary for practice (Neilsen et al., 2005); in executive education learning communities the ‘river can flow both ways’.

This challenge became evident in the EP when the faculty director describes, at the beginning of cycle 3, that ‘. … the first couple of programs where we introduced the idea of a learning community were disappointing because … . our practice hadn’t. … changed that much’. In an earlier interview (personal reflection conversation) the faculty director recalled the experience:

.…while we talked about the importance of creating an atmosphere of trust and respect, we (particularly me) didn’t go far enough in creating this culture and experienced some notable violations in terms of faculty, staff, and participant behaviors that were not addressed appropriately. In addition, we discussed the need for reflection on a regular basis and even gave participants a newly-revised learning journal in which to capture their insights from the day. However, I wasn’t willing to use precious formal ‘program time’ to give participants time to reflect and instead expected them to reflect on their own time, which simply did not work. … I didn’t see this at the time and I vividly remember wondering why participants consistently dismissed, rather than embraced, the concept of the learning community and the principles we were teaching. Through ongoing experience and reflection on those experiences I slowly came to realize that to truly create a learning community, every aspect of the program … had to change. This was a transformation for me and honestly, at first, it was a shock. It certainly wasn’t what I had been intending when we started.

Translating this realization into action involved enlisting the support of all faculty and staff participating in the program. The faculty director announced the redesign effort, the rationale, and its implications to all of the faculty and staff. Anticipating push back she then met with each faculty member individually to explain her vision of the program and to understand their own motivations for participating in the EP. A few faculty members eventually stopped teaching in the EP, unwilling to make the requested changes, but the majority made the requested changes and stayed the course. This shared goal of a more communal, expansive learning community became the basis for encouraging a more collaborative approach in material selection, teaching pedagogy, and other domains that had been the sacred havens of individual faculty members in the past.

The fact that changes were iterative and took place through cycles of taking action and engaging in After Action Reviews helped to facilitate building commitment among faculty. One of the faculty co-directors interviewed about his experience participating in the on-going action inquiry on the program recalled:

At first we started by making specific changes to program content, but we didn’t see a lot of shifts from that. When [the faculty director] introduced the learning community and we really pushed a sort of comprehensive experience we saw big changes and got a lot of informal feedback from the participants that, yeah, this was a really important experience. … We had to coordinate and focus on the whole program and all of us rather than on individual sessions. Some faculty pushed back on the extra time but it was worth it.

As noted earlier, existing literature on establishing learning communities in the professional school setting notes the need for faculty to be open to taking risks, and be willing to give up control (DeMulder & Eby, 1999). Our experience supports that finding. One faculty member stated in an interview:

There was hesitancy on the part of some faculty to want to threaten or confront or even trouble participants with material that maybe made them uncomfortable. So we were in an environment where we were professing that in a very short time we were going to leap-frog this older method that was so case-driven, we were going to do a lot of new things, but we also had kind of an institutional heaviness or resistance … but as we started to take those risks, that also brought to bear that issue we were talking about earlier about continuity and flow.

Our experience highlighted the need to both take risks (necessary for growth and transformation) and, at the same time, ensure that institutional objectives (i.e. program ratings) did not suffer.

Not all stakeholders needed to be equally committed to the leader’s vision. On the other hand, the faculty director needed to figure out which stakeholders did need to be committed. While they bought into the concept of a learning community the administration was less focused on the idea of a peak learning experience; their commitment was clearly on the program ratings and the resulting revenue and growing prestige of the ‘brand’. Similarly, the faculty director engaged conference center and program staff to help execute her vision recognizing that it was often the small details that impacted participants’ sense of being seen and cared for:

… we hired a bus to pick up participants and bring them to the conference center. After hearing some complaints about the quality of the bus ride, the brusqueness of some drivers, etc. we talked with the conference center to ensure that this first face-to-face contact with our program went exceptionally well … We also had one of our staff waiting at the bus, greeting each participant as they boarded and breaking the ice with them as they drove up to the conference center together for the first time.

And it wasn’t just the faculty and staff who were challenged to look at themselves and their roles differently, so were the participants. In post-program interviews participants described epistemological changes in how they engage with others at work as a result of their time at the EP. In response to the question ‘How, if at all, do you think your participation in the EP influenced the way you view yourself?’, one participant states:

I think a lot, it’s every day. I’ll do something and stop myself and realize that’s not changing the behavior you wanted to change, so to be able to catch yourself mid-course or before you do something I think [the EP] has created a pretty high level of awareness … [I realize] I’ve got to tell people what I’m feeling, I’ve got to show a little bit more sensitivity around some of the things we’re deciding and doing because I don’t want people to think it’s you know, a hard core, totally emotionless kind of guy doing that stuff.

Conclusions

In this article we presented a journey of transforming a traditional executive education program into a vibrant and generative learning community. What was originally conceptualized as a one-time limited change effort evolved into a redesign that required the faculty and staff, as well as participants, to engage with each other and the course content in new ways. As described in the faculty director’s narrative, she and her team learned first-hand that in order to truly transform the program, they had to transform themselves. This process of critical reflection and inquiry led to a more formal action research project that had both practical and theoretical outcomes. The transformation involved extensive experimentation and was not possible without intense collaboration and a commitment to ongoing learning.

Our hope is that this article will help those interested in designing authentic learning communities in executive education settings to create a platform for deep change and stimulates further dialogue and new insights

Footnotes

Acknowledgement

We would like to thank Victor Friedman, for leading the review process for the authors of this article. Should there be any comments/reactions you wish to share, please bring them to the interactive portion (Reader Responses column) of the website: .

Author biographies

Schon Beechler is Senior Affiliate Professor of Leadership and Organizational Behavior, INSEAD Business School, USA.

Rachel Ciporen teaches in the Columbia Coaching Certification Program at Teachers College, Columbia University, USA.

Lyle Yorks is Associate Professor of Adult & Continuing Education and AEGIS Program Director, Teachers College, Columbia University, USA.

References

Bezzina

(2006) Inclusive learning communities: The real challenges facing reform in Malta. International Journal of Educational Management 20: 453–465.

Coghlan

(2001) Insider action research projects: Implications for practicing managers. Management Learning 32: 49–60.

Coghlan

(2011) Action research: Exploring perspectives on a philosophy of practical knowing. The Academy of Management Annuals 5(1): 53–87.

Coghlan

Holian

(2007) Editorial: Insider action research. Action Research 5: 5–10.

Conger

(1998) Qualitative research as the cornerstone methodology for understanding leadership. Leadership Quarterly 9: 107–121.

Conger

Xin

(2000) Executive education in the 21st century. Journal of Management Education 24: 73–101.

Cook-Greuter

S. R.

(2004) Making the case for a developmental perspective. Industrial and Commercial Training 36: 275–281.

DeMulder

Eby

(1999) Bridging troubled waters: Learning communities for the 21st century. The American Behavioral Scientist 42: 892–901.

Drago-Severson

(2004) Becoming adult learners: Principles and practices for effective development, New York: Teachers College Press.

10.

Gosling

Mintzberg

(2006) Management education as if both matter. Management Learning 37: 419–429.

11.

Harrison

R. T.

Leitch

C. M.

Chia

(2007) Developing paradigmatic awareness in university business schools: The challenge for executive education. Academy of Management Learning & Education 6: 332–345.

12.

Kegan

(1982) The evolving self: Problem and process in human development, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

13.

Kegan

(1994) In over our heads: The mental demands of modern life, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

14.

Kets de Vries

Korotov

(2007) Creating transformational executive education programs. Academy of Management Learning and Education 6: 375–387.

15.

Neilsen

Winter

Saatcioglu

(2005) Building a learning community by aligning cognition and affect within and across members. Journal of Management Education 29(2): 301–318.

16.

Rooke

Torbert

W. R.

(2005) The seven transformations of leadership. Harvard Business Review 83(4): 66–77.

17.

Torbert

(2004) Action inquiry: The secret of timely and transforming leadership, San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler.

18.

Torbert

W. R.

Taylor

S. S.

(2008) Action inquiry: Interweaving multiple qualities of attention for timely action. In: Reason

Bradbury

(eds) The Sage handbook of action research: Participatory inquiry and practice, 2nd ed. Los Angeles, CA: SAGE, pp. 239–251.

19.

Whyte

W. F.

(1984) Learning from the field: A guide from experience, Beverly Hills, CA: SAGE.

20.

Yorks

Beechler

Ciporen

(2007) Enhancing the impact of an open enrollment executive program through assessment. Academy of Management Learning and Education 6: 310–320.