After our last Anything Can Happen course we asked Mark, one of the participants, to write about his experience on the course. Anything Could Happen is such an unusual course with such a different methodology that it can be difficult for people to see what it’s all about. We hoped that by getting one of the participants to tell their story, it might help others to see what they might get out of it.
He did a fantastic job of describing his experiences, which we’ve presented below. There is also a PDF available for download if you want to print it out and give it to someone who would be interested.
ANYTHING COULD HAPPEN
PARTICIPANT PROFILE :
MARK MORLEY-FLETCHER
About Me:
I’m 30 years old and work for the Civil Service as an analyst; my background is originally in Theoretical Physics. I live in London and I‘m a keen musician in my spare time, but I also spend a reasonable amount of time playing sport and other general outdoor activities.
My Experience of Anything Could Happen:
I didn’t come on the on the Anything Could Happen course with a clearly defined goal in mind – rather, I was keen to see what new things I could learn about myself in an unfamiliar learning environment; I was sure the course would throw up some interesting development opportunities that I was previously unaware of. I also thought that a weekend of outdoor activities in Snowdonia would be enjoyable in its own right.
As such, I didn’t have any firm expectations of the course. I guessed it would probably involve various team building activities along with some more ‘challenging’ outdoor activities along the lines of abseiling, but I wasn’t sure how it would all be tied together or how learning points would be drawn out of it. This was another reason I was interested in the course as I was keen to find this out.
The course packed an awful lot into two days, but some of the main activities included: guiding blindfolded partners; hunting foam animals scattered throughout the town; creating art out of slate; abseiling and climbing; round table debates; creating codes on a chessboard; and building a bridge across a lake.
Each of these activities threw up interesting points, with some of the most revealing being the ones which I had initially expected to be less interesting. For example, I didn’t feel particularly enthused by the idea of slate art, but after being left to get on with it on my own for a while I found myself really getting into it – it ended up being one of the most enjoyable activities for me.
There was definitely a consistent theme to this and it helped me realise how much I can get out of things I wouldn’t usually consider doing once I actually start to engage with them. I also found it very interesting to compare how I approached those less familiar things with how I approached more familiar activities – I think I learned a lot about myself from the similarities and differences in approach.
Overall though, the biggest learning experience for me was the time devoted to group review after all the activities. In the past, I’ve not been particularly inspired by discussions after various development courses; they’ve tended to identify one or two “key” points (usually identified by the leader before the exercise even started) and then moved on. In this case the discussions were longer and I realised that the first few ‘obvious’ learning points which came up were not always the most revealing. Reflecting within the group rather than just individually led to a lot more ideas coming through. Also, there was no “right answer“ for us to take away and in some cases, people got different insights from the same activity. Overall, one of the few regrets I have about the weekend is that there weren’t more hours available in the day so that we could have spent longer on these sessions.
These in-depth reflection sessions were the biggest thing I took away from the course as I determined to think about what I can learn from different situations and experiences more frequently, and to spend longer doing it as well. On top of this I’ve come away with some more specific insights into team work – both on how I go about it myself, and how other people’s approaches can affect things too.
Overall, it was a very enjoyable weekend, packed full of all sorts of different activities (to the point where it felt much longer than just two days) which has provided me with some very deep learning experiences. I’d recommend it to anyone who’s keen to challenge and find out more about themselves – compared to many other development courses it really has the potential to give you some very individual and personal insights. Be prepared to throw yourself into it though; since the outcomes and learning points aren’t fixed, what you get out of it will depend on what you put in.
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