Leadership, Coaching and Mentoring Scrapbook Essay

Leadership, Coaching and Mentoring Scrapbook - Essay Example The benefit of experiential learning is to give learners active involvement and better problem solving skills through the effort (Merriam, Caffarella and Baumgartner 2007). This type of learning involves â€Å"a direct encounter with phenomenon being studied rather than just thinking about solutions to a problem† (Brookfield 1990, p.71). I felt privileged to understand how experiential learning can be beneficial by giving employees a purpose for learning. So, I thought about experiential learning and how it could be applied to a real-world organisation. This would be a critical learning process especially in an organisation where there is no real moral accountability and in a decentralised business that needs better human capital. Some organisations need positivist learners, those who understand moral accountability and its importance to business growth and reputation. Many organisations need employees and managers that consider ethics and morals. Much of this cannot always be learned through instruction and lecturing. For example, if many Wall Street firms had been more up front and ethical about their business practices in recent years it is likely the Occupy Wall Street situation would not have occurred. I think that experiential learning, such as role playing, would give employees more knowledge about ethical behaviours by exposing them to different situations where ethical responses are needed. I was able to review more research data on experiential learning and found through the analysis that it has more positive gains than negative outcomes. Businesses need to have a culture that is devoted to ethics and morality as described the lecture materials. According to Fairholm (2009), a leader must inspire vision and mission, be visionary and also teach others through inspiration. This is known as transformational leadership style. If more organisations such as Wall Street investment firms had moral accountability learned through role playing, they would be better off in representing the moral interests of shareholders and other stakeholders. Role playing as experiential learning actually creates more interest in learning than through just instruction (Poorman 2002). I really found this to be interesting in experiential