Outdoors Training: A New Way to Train New Organizations

OUTDOORS TRAINING: A NEW WAY TO TRAIN NEW ORGANIZATIONS

The aim of this work is the demonstration of the acknowledgment through experience that leads efficiently to the training development of an organization particular the purchasing and developing “transversal competences” defined by the Institute for Development of Vocational Training for Workers as a “wide whole of person’s skills, not linked to a particular process or job placement, but to the cognitive and thinking processes, in the procedures of behaviours in social and work environment, and consequently to the ability to reflect and use learning strategies and auto correction of conduct”.

ransversal competences include the ability of diagnose, relations, communication, problem solving and decision; in general they can include all the personal attitudes of an individual that when he meets the requirements of work environment, that with the technical skills are indispensable to reach an effic performance.

The difference between the personal attitudes and the technical ones are that the first cannot be acquired from the exter through academic and scholastic process, but they are an intrinsic characteristic of an individual, as an integral and durable part of his personality.

To develop ths soft skills, in particular the relational and behavioural ones, it is necessary to refer to a new type of training a new didactic approach that propose significant experiences that are going to carve on the emotional sphere, and their personal profile.
Between the different methodologies that use the practical experience of the learner as the principle learning factor, I chose to analyse the method of the outdoor training, recently arrived  the market of training and development for organizations, and adopted by the public and private companies, to develop and implement in human resources ome transversal competences very important for the organizations’ success, such as communication skills, problem solving, team working, faith and risk taking.

The outdoor training, with the respect of other experience training methods present strong innovating factors: it transforms not only the learning approach, based on physical activities and group exercitation, but also the learning environments.
The principle characteristic of this method is as suggested from the term outdoor, its practice in the open-air environment most of the time in contact with nature.  It is about unusual contexts, completely distant to the learners’ landmark, in fact they are request to make the maximum physical and mental effort to be involved in these activities.

The work presented is divided into two parts he first part is articulated in two chapters and it presents the theory of the research I have done.

In the first chapter I am going to explain the principal characteristic of outdoor training and the practical and theoretical fundament of the method’s origins:he contribution of John Dewe and his theories for a new way of experience learning,  Outward Bound Programme of Kurt Hahn, the methodology of T-Group of Kurt Lewin and the method of “Action Learning” of Reginald Revans.

he different aes in which the training is structured some examples of proposed activities from training and development companies such Global Management Consultants.

The chapter is closed with the model of experimental learning argued by David Kolb, that depicts the cycling process through which the learning is concretized, is the passage from the experience lived, participating  the exercises proposed in the course to an effective acquisition of competences advantageous for the professional life of an individual.

The second chapter revolves around the training and development in rganizations and the transversal competences.

In the last years  the principle of the lifelong learning  cross the scholastic and academic system and join in the professional life of an individual.

The context where  learn and where  work can’t be separated anymore. The times and places of the work environment have to leave space to the acquisition of the acknowledgments and competences that are necessary to maintain updated human resources and play an active role  the competitiveness of the own organization.

That is why in this climate I can insert the argument of the competences I have discussed before, the transversal competences, made known in 1973 by David McClelland  the publication of the article “Testing for Competence rather than Intelligence”.

He was the scientist that through a long series of empirical investigations, reach the demonstration that an excellent performance on the work place could lead not only to the technical and specialised competences, or to the IQ of the employee but also and most of all to a series of soft skills such as personality, motivation and the concept that individual has of himself, a sort of self-actualization, that all the intrinsic and durable values of the subject.

The chapter closes with the theories of Daniel Goleman on the Emotional Intelligence, defined by him the capacity of recognis  own and someone else’s sensations to motivate sel and to manage  own emotions and those that develop on the relations with other people.

motional intelligence appear through “personal competences”, like self-confidingness, command of the self, motivation and “social competences”
like emp communication, leadership, managing conflicts, collaboration and the to work in team.
 series of skills, analogous to the transversal competences individuated by McClelland, of crucial importance  for those high-level managers that have to own leadership skills to led and manage working teams, emphatic skills to influence the individuals and to support them consequently to reach the organizations’ goals.
The second part of the dissertation describes in concrete one of the project I was involved during the internship in Dubai at Global Management Consultants where I was taking part  the training delivered for one of the biggest Retail Compan of Middle East, called Sharaf DG.
The aim was to understand how all this work in concrete and wh the real benefits, once an organization look for soft-skills trainings for employees.
Sharaf DG is an Electrical Devices Retail Company that only in Dubai has thirteen stores, most of all in the biggest Malls of the city.