John, thank you for taking YOUR precious time to care about my
concern. Your comments are valuable!

Let me think out loud for a bit with you: the purpose of such an
exploration of various forms of leadership development is to
understand WHY people consider one form of development as superior or
more beneficial over another. It makes sense that many things will
come into play: personal learning style, comfort level with various
people, affinity toward a particular format, etc. All those things
are extremely worthy of understanding and, together, create a rich
story person-by-person. But what I might expect to see is that action
learning will be a favorite for most. And if I am wrong, why? What
is it about action learning that is distasteful? THAT is worthy of
understanding as well!

Now on the blurriness, I have some work to do to make sure people know
that when I say "one-on-one" or "coaching" they know exactly what I'm
talking about. I think it's important, too, if all interviewees
understand it the same way. Otherwise the results could be skewed,
right?

Now here is an interesting aspect to consider. You wrote, "As an
example the experience of coaching or mentoring would be highly
dependant on the quality of the coaching or mentoring and therfore
would be more or less favourably compared to the other methods
depending on
experience." No doubt about that. But wouldn't a proper interview
drive that out? I mean, if an interview is done right, wouldn't one
be able to say that this participant didn't care for coaching because
it was conducted in such-and-such a way? And wouldn't that be
instructive and informative?

Thanks again, John!

Dave



On Oct 21, 2008, at 2:57 PM, John wrote:

> Dear Dave,
>
> As I provided a response privately before your message was posted to
> the group I have been waiting to see if anyone in the group can
> provide information on their experience. It seems not so I'll attempt
> to provide some comment that might be helpful.
>
> First though it is of course necessary that individuals will need to
> have experience or knowledge about the methods in order for them to
> contrast and compare in any useful way.
>
> Secondly, it is very important that the purpose of the study be
> clear. For instance the purpose might be to test individuals'
> knowledge of the techniques to determine the effectiveness of a
> training intervention. Or it could be that you need some sort of
> subjective view about how it felt or how effective it was from the
> point of the participant or how effective it was from the point of
> view of the participant's supervisor. There are many scenarios that
> could be chosen depending on the purpose. There is more on the
> subject of Superordinate Purpose and the Purpose Statement at
> http://www.enquirewithin.co.nz/interview_purpose.htm.
>
> Thirdly, it is very important, especially for an inexperienced grid
> interviewer and if results from different interviews are to be
> compared or amalgamated, that the elements are concrete with no
> blurring at the boundaries. Also that they cover the whole field of
> interest (the etceteras need to be spelt out). As an example the
> experience of coaching or mentoring would be highly dependant on the
> quality of the coaching or mentoring and therfore would be more or
> less favourably compared to the other methods depending on
> experience. There is more information on this at
> http://www.enquirewithin.co.nz/HINTS/elements.htm and again it is
> important to get the purpose right in order to select a useful set of
> elements.
>
> The general idea appears to have potential. But the value of any
> results will depend on the quality of the groundwork done before the
> interviews start. Also it is not just the interviewer whose time is
> valuable, the most useful interviewees will be very busy people and
> will deserve the respect a well thought out project provides.
>
> I hope that helps
>
> John
>
>
>



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