EXPERIENCE EXPLORER
From Yesterday’s Lessons to Tomorrow’s Success
About the Center for Creative Leadership
The Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) is a top-ranked global provider of leadership development. By leveraging the power of leadership to drive results that matter most to clients, CCL transforms individual leaders, teams, organizations, and society. Our array of cutting-edge solutions is steeped in extensive research and experience gained from working with hundreds of thousands of leaders at all levels. Ranked among the world’s Top 5 providers of executive education by the Financial Times and in the Top 10 by Bloomberg BusinessWeek, CCL has offices in Greensboro, NC; Colorado Springs, CO; San Diego, CA; Brussels, Belgium; Moscow, Russia; Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; Johannesburg, South Africa; Singapore; Gurgaon, India; and Shanghai, China.
EXPERIENCE EXPLORER
From Yesterday’s Lessons to Tomorrow’s Success
Facilitator’s Guide
Meena S. Wilson and N. Anand Chandrasekar
CENTER FOR CREATIVE LEADERSHIP
CCL Stock No. PM012B
ISBN 978-1-60491-535-8
© 2014 Center for Creative Leadership
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Printed in the United States of America.
Published by CCL Press
Sylvester Taylor, Director of Assessments, Tools, and Publications
Peter Scisco, Manager, Publication Development
Stephen Rush, Editor
Shaun Martin, Associate Editor
Design and Layout by Joanne Ferguson
With Special Thanks
to our unflagging supporters for their zest, guidance, and diligence: David Altman, Kathryn Brendon, Michael Campbell, Corey Criswell, Amit Desai, Karen Dyer, George Hallenbeck, Emily Hoole, David Horth, Renee Hultin, V. Kartikeyan, Jennifer Martineau, Cindy McCauley, Chuck Palus, Peter Scisco, Anupam Sirbhaiya, Pankaj Sethi, Clemson Turregano, Ellen Van Velsor, and Marie Van Vuren;
to our prototype makers: Oliver Bermoy and Michelle Crouch;
to our early adopters: Vered Asif, Al Calarco, Steadman Harrison, Paula Nielsen-Lazo, Nicholas Petrie, Tzipi Radonsky, Lyndon Rego, Philomena Rego, and Lim Peng Soon;
and to our many research partners, including Tata Management Training Centre in India, Civil Service College in Singapore, and China Europe International Business School in India.
Without the efforts of these people and organizations, making Experience Explorer would not have been possible.
Quick Guide
Experience Explorer enhances the lessons of experience by giving leaders a simple, energizing way to share stories that advance their development. A typical Experience Explorer session lasts one to three hours and follows four steps.
Contents
Conducting an Experience Explorer Session
Pre-Session Checklist and Preparations
Sort Option 1: Sorting the Categories of Experience
Sort Option 2: Sorting the Worlds of Lessons
Application 2: Career Planning
Application 3: Resilience and Learning Agility
Research Background: The Lessons of Experience
Introduction
Leadership development is driven by experience; in other words, leaders learn not just through training and developmental relationships but through job and leadership experiences. In training-and-development circles and among human-resources staff, the catchphrase “70-20-10” is a general guideline for combining challenging assignments (70%), developmental relationships (20%), and coursework & training (10%). This guideline suggests that a combination of those learning opportunities, at about that ratio, is optimal for preparing managers for leadership roles. The 70-20-10 ratio should not be taken as a one-size-fits-all solution to developing leaders. However, the pattern that 70-20-10 suggests is clear: On-the-job experiences are a significant driver of leadership development, particularly experiences that challenge leaders to lead in novel and diverse environments.
Beyond 70-20-10
Research by the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) has identified two other categories of developmental experiences important for leaders: hardships and personal life experiences. Hardships are not included in the 70-20-10 guideline because these are not experiences that organizations intentionally give individuals for development; personal life experiences are not included because they are outside of an organization’s control.
Experience Explorer gives leaders a powerful and efficient tool for discovering what they have learned about effective leadership and what they still need to learn. When leaders explore and talk about their past experiences, they can better plan future learning experiences.
Leaders and managers at all organizational levels and in all types of organizations are typically responsible for developing themselves and others. Whether they work in human resources, serve as training-and-development consultants, or lead a business unit, managers and leaders can use Experience Explorer in a number of situations.
Leading an Experience Explorer session does not require high-level facilitation skills. The 99 cards in the package are divided into 52 blue Experience cards, 42 orange Lesson cards, and 5 white Instruction