It Isn’t About Training—It’s About Transformation
Experience plays such a significant role in leadership development. It’s in real life scenarios that we grow and develop. But how do you compress that learning cycle to develop leaders for your organization? Experiential learning.
This practical article details how to design high impact learning experiences for effective leadership development using experiential learning. As it maps out the basic elements for a transformative program, it describes exactly what we provide for you at fullCIRCLE:
Active, immersive experiences
Cognitive and emotional engagement
Reflection and sense-making
We work with you to create impactful learning experiences that allows your future leaders to practice their skills in a live action setting with immediate feedback.
Various ground-based, human-with-horse activities are structured to allow participants to step into discomfort in a controlled environment, practice skill sets and take time to reflect and discuss their experience. During the follow-up coaching sessions participants take what they practiced and apply it to their own work environment.
As a courageous leader, are you willing to re-imagine your leadership development program by incorporating the transformative, proven strategy of experiential learning?
Let’s have a conversation about life-changing, off-site, ground-based, guided leadership experiences with horses.
Beyond Training: How to Design Transformative Learning Experiences
Sean Acklin Grant | The Ivey Academy | March 10, 2025
Most corporate training solutions don’t live up to their promise because they transfer knowledge instead of transforming thinking. Deep learning happens when leaders are pushed to wrestle with tough decisions, challenge their own assumptions, and apply knowledge in real-world contexts. It’s uncomfortable. It forces reflection. And it’s exactly what’s missing from most L&D programs.
This article breaks down what makes learning transformative and provides practical strategies to design experiences that actually change behavior. From mapping learning goals to choosing the right methods and facilitators, here’s a primer on how to deliver leadership development that sticks.
The Problem with Traditional Training
Most leadership training is built on a flawed assumption: that knowledge leads to action. Organizations spend millions designing programs that are content-heavy, overly structured, and focused on information transfer — expecting that leaders will take what they’ve learned and somehow apply it to create value. If information alone created better leaders, we’d all be flawless after reading a few HBR articles.