According to Peter Senge, it is the capacity for a team performing any task to become and sustain itself as a Learning Organisation that is - above all else - what determines its long term success.

Unfortunately many organisations act in ways that Peter Senge describes rather challengingly as "Learning disabled" because they fail to learn from their experiences, or from other available evidence. Although Senge is talking mainly about commercial organisations/companies, these principles apply equally to therapeutic teams.

The allocation of a Team Learning Support Worker for Team Meetings recognises how vulnerable all teams working in fields that provoke anxiety are to acting in ways that are "learning disabled".

Who does this?

The primary Team Learning Support Worker is the AMBIT Lead, but the role can be explicitly appointed for a meeting, or rotated between team members of the team, rather than lying with only one team member permanently.

Role:

The Role of the Team Learning Support Worker is to:

• Maintain a "meta-perspective" on their team's live case discussions or other business;
• They can take part in those discussions, but they are particularly tasked with keeping in mind one specific question:
• "What are the learning points about practice that might be generalisable from this discussion?".

• Summarise their observations to the team
• This may be at a specific point towards the end of a team meeting
• Or a team may agree they can raise these as they come up.

Why have a specific role?

Of course it is fine for other team members to make observations and suggestions about possible practice learning points that could be developed from the content under discussion:

• The point of specifically allocating a Team Learning Support Worker role is at least in part its value as an illustration...

• The role represents to the wider team an explicit 'keeping-in-mind' of the need for team learning
• Learning about the work they they are doing
• Alongside doing the work that they are doing.