3 Ways to Learn From Experience!
There’s something profoundly humbling about standing on the fields of Gettysburg, where pivotal moments of courage, failure, and resolve changed the trajectory of a nation. But more than a historic site, Gettysburg is a living classroom—an unparalleled stage for leader development that brings concepts to life through experience.
At Tom Van Dam Coaching & Consulting, we guide individuals and teams through immersive experiences at Gettysburg that draw on Kolb’s Experiential Learning Theory (ELT). This approach challenges participants to engage in a full-cycle learning journey—experience, reflection, thinking and action. What unfolds is not just education, but transformation.??
Here’s why the Gettysburg Battlefield is such a powerful setting for leadership development—organized into three dimensions of experiential learning:
1. Learning from Our Own Experience
Every leader brings a set of lived experiences and default tendencies—what Kolb’s model would call their primary learning style. Whether you’re an “Initiator,” “Thinker,” or “Experiencer,” Gettysburg forces you out of autopilot. When we walk the battlefield, reflect on a leadership moment, and connect it to a real-world challenge, participants come to grips with their blind spots and build muscle in underutilized areas of the learning cycle.
As one participant recently shared, “I realized I always jump to action—but rarely reflect. This program helped me pause, evaluate, and lead with more intention.”
2. Learning from the Experiences of Others
Gettysburg isn’t just about what you experience—it’s about what you learn from those beside you. Leadership here is a team sport. When participants with different learning styles engage in structured problem-solving together, they begin to see challenges from multiple perspectives.
Through guided dialogue and team-based case scenarios—like the decisions of Lee, Longstreet, or Chamberlain—we help leaders internalize how to adapt in uncertainty, align with others under pressure, and lean on the strengths of teammates with different approaches to learning.
This isn’t just history—it’s collaboration, vulnerability, and growth in real time.
3. Learning from the Past
There is power in story. Gettysburg presents us with extreme, often heartbreaking moments of leadership: the resilience of the 20th Maine, the boldness of the 1st Minnesota, the tension between mission and vision in Lee’s decisions on July 3. These vignettes anchor our learning and provide emotionally charged, reflective touchpoints to ask: What would I have done? What will I do now?
History becomes a mirror.
We invite participants to connect with the past not just to remember, but to act—to internalize values like courage, adaptability, and humility. To use what happened in 1863 to shape who they’ll become.
The Result: Personal Growth and Transformational Leadership
At Gettysburg, we help leaders move beyond conceptual ideas and into transformation. Through deliberate design—grounded in the Kolb Experiential Learning Profile (KELP)—our battlefield workshops personalize growth, develop underutilized learning styles, and cultivate deeper leadership capacity.
Experiential learning at Gettysburg isn’t about reenactment—it’s about reawakening.
It’s about discovering that how we learn is how we lead.
If you’re curious how this type of immersive, personalized development experience could benefit your team or organization, I’d be happy to connect.
Let’s walk the field together—and leave with a new perspective.
#LeadershipDevelopment #ExperientialLearning #Gettysburg #KolbLearningCycle #TeamDevelopment #TomVanDamCoaching #LeaderGrowth #HistoryAsTeacher #LearningStyles #LeadOn #TeamLearning
