When working with someone whose behaviour you find disruptive or problematic, it is common practice to reflect on the matter in private and devise a solution, which you then put into practice. You thus develop new experiences based on what you have devised and if the devised solution does not work, you start again from the beginning.
Experiential learning
With experiential learning, you approach the matter differently right from the start. The disruptive behaviour is not seen as something to be eliminated. Instead, it is assumed that even the disruptive behaviour contains a positive impulse. This needs to be made meaningful. To do this, you look around you to see where this behaviour manifests itself positively. For example, by asking: “In which profession is this behaviour a virtue?” Somewhere, it is important to act in this way. You can also draw on your own experience and ask: “In which situation have I acted like this myself? What was I trying to achieve there?” It is advisable to consider situations outside your own field of work.
The following example can serve as a source of inspiration:
If someone is struggling with the idea of going away for two weeks, it makes sense to draw on your own experiences of travelling. However, once you have found a suitable experience, you should be careful not to think: “I now have the one solution for you.” Then you treat your own experience as a ready-made recipe that the other person simply needs to follow obediently.
In the window “Victoria and the Travel Diary”, I was inspired by Victoria’s impulse to act: ‘holding on while embracing’. That’s when I realised something new: “When buying a souvenir, I also tried ‘embracing while holding on’ to something at the same time’. The souvenir was meant to be a representation of my travel experience that I could take home with me.
I wondered: ‘What else is there along these lines that is “normal”?’ Then the idea of a diary occurred to me. But not just a diary for myself, but a diary that I would enjoy looking at together with others. By putting this suggestion to Victoria’s work support mentor, I am acting in a way that ‘embraces and holds on’, thereby creating an environment in which Victoria will be able to recognise herself and join in as a matter of course.
So the ideas are interpreted in the world by seeking out activities and actively thinking of the verbs associated with them. From this one develops new ideas oneself, which perhaps no one else has thought of in this way before.
