What Is Experiential Leadership? (Its Powerful Role In Business)

“You only learn by doing.” Learning by doing is the essence of experiential leadership. Normally, this saying is directed toward learning a new skill, sport, or other activity. But have you ever heard this saying and applied it to leadership development? 

Experiential leadership is learning leadership skills through doing exercises and then reflecting on the experience. Training activities are specifically chosen to teach the person leadership skills, such as problem-solving and critical thinking.

Leadership skills can be learned through lectures and slides, but to really get into the meat of leadership, you need practical activities that let you get your hands dirty. Stick around to learn more about this type of learning and how you can apply this to your team. And don’t forget to schedule a free coaching call with me after reading this post.

Learning Leadership Through Experiential Training

You could take hundreds of leadership courses that require you to sit through countless boring lectures while mindlessly looking at mind-numbing slides, but would you learn anything? Sure, you could learn leadership theories and concepts, but until you get into the meat of training, you won’t learn anything actually changes the way you lead.

Honestly, the best way to learn leadership is through activities that allow you to practice what you’ve learned. This is known as “experiential training,” and it’s a very powerful method to increase your leadership skills in your organization. 

Many outdoor leadership programs are similar to experiential learning, but the training programs are held outdoors for hiking, camping, or other outdoor sports. Team sports held outdoors are also great activities to enhance your experiential leadership training.

What Happens To Your Leadership When You Don’t Use Experiential Training?

Consider, for a moment, that your organization is a large fan of those boring lectures and mind-numbing slides for leadership training. In fact, they swear by them, as it supposedly “helps” people to get the concepts faster.

Now consider another organization that uses experiential leadership training programs in conjunction with lectures. 

Which organization would see more success? Let’s talk about that for a few minutes. 

When you learn something by watching a Youtube video or reading a book about how to do something, you fumble around for a while when you try to put it into practice, right? But if you participate in a guided exercise, it tends to stick, and you repeat that action until it becomes second nature.

It’s the same with learning leadership skills. 

If your leaders learn leadership skills through lectures and slides, then try to lead a team, they’ll most likely make more mistakes than they would if they completed experiential leadership training. These mistakes could cost your company valuable clients or grants.

On the other hand, an organization that uses experiential leadership training has the potential to outperform the other company due to their leaders learning leadership skills from hands-on practice.

Here’s a quick summary of a comparison of what happens when companies don’t use experiential leadership training and when companies use experiential leadership training:

Without Experiential Leadership Training	With Experiential Leadership Training
Leaders don’t know their team.	Leaders learn how their team functions.
Leaders lead by words.	Leaders lead through actions.
The team fumbles around, not knowing what they need to do.	The team gets clear direction and accomplishes more.
There is a lack of trust between leaders and team members.	Team members trust their leaders more often because the training bonds them more.
Leadership is passive.	Leadership is active.

Why Experiential Leadership Can Improve Your Leadership Skills

Real-world experiences learned in a guided environment allow you to practice leadership theories and concepts quicker than if you sat through several lectures. 

Before moving on to the “why,” let’s discuss a quick example. 

Imagine that you own a small accounting firm, and you’re about ready to promote a few of your top employees to leadership roles. They already know their accounting job inside and out but are weak in the “people management” department. 

Let’s say that you decide to go the experiential leadership training route. So you set up the training room in three separate stations. You divide your new leadership recruits into small teams and give them accounting problems to solve. 

Instead of lecturing them on how to lead a team, you’re giving them valuable practical experience they can take into their new roles. 

This works because they’re not just sitting in chairs learning concepts and useless theories. 

They are, instead, learning by doing, which is why experiential leadership training works. If you’re unsure how to set up an experiential leadership program in your organization, schedule a free coaching call with me now. 

Experiential Leadership Activities To Improve Your Leadership Abilities

So you’re convinced that experiential leadership training is right for your organization. What type of activities should you use to improve your leadership abilities?

You can choose from outdoor activities and team sports or create simulations that emulate real-world problems and situations to give your leaders opportunities to practice leadership skills. 

Here are a few examples:

• Scavenger hunts
• Real-world work scenarios or problems that are made into a race against the clock to solve them.
• The old-style telephone game
• Use blocks or legos to build things faster than the other team
• Camping or mountain climbing
• Whitewater rafting

You can implement the above activities or other similar activities to train your existing and future leaders. But how do they transfer to creating great leaders for your organization?

Transferring Experiential Leadership Skills

You might think that scavenger hunts or the old telephone game are just games kids play. Have you ever wondered why kids play these games and what valuable skills they learn from them?

Scavenger hunts teach teamwork, communication, and problem-solving skills, while the telephone game teaches how to listen and communicate well. Kids think these games are fun, but they also learn valuable life skills while having fun.

These same games, and other games or activities, can teach your team and leaders the following skills that you can then transfer to your organization:

• Delegation
• Trust
• Creative problem-solving skills
• Communication and listening
• Flexibility and openness to changes
• How to give constructive feedback

Conclusion

Experiential leadership training gives your team an edge regarding working together to accomplish great things. Let me tell you how I can help you set up a great experiential leadership training program for your organization. Schedule a call today!