This paper explores how senior executives learn (not) to be different in Action Learning Set spaces (ALSS) as part of a business school Executive Education programme. We take a relational social constructionist approach in an empirical study and analyse senior executives’ narratives. This illuminates how executives co-construct action learning set spaces of openness, honesty, confidentiality and challenge and engage in relational processes of learning, vulnerability and identity work. In doing so executives learn to be different in relation to dominant discourses and norms of what it means to be a leader or manager which is personified through claims of vulnerability in the education context. Executives make sense of and work through learning to be comfortable with being uncomfortable, practising learning over time in a ‘safe enough’ space. We offer insights into identity work spaces, as leaders reconceptualise vulnerability as positive and as strength and how claiming vulnerability can defuse the power of fear and negative connotations often associated with vulnerability. With agency, executives express feeling better equipped to decide how and when to be different (vulnerability) or not be different (invulnerability) in their organisations. Practically we extend consciousness to the value of vulnerability for leader and manager identity and learning.

本文探讨了作为企业商学院高管培训计划一部分的高级管理人员如何在行动学习空间（ALSS）中学习（不）有所不同。我们在实证研究中采用关系社会建构主义的方法，并分析了高级管理人员的叙述。这说明了高管人员如何共同构建行动学习，设置开放性，诚实性，机密性和挑战性空间，并参与学习，脆弱性和身份工作的关系过程。通过这种方式，高管们学会了与众不同关于占主导地位的话语和领导或管理者的规范，这是通过教育背景下的脆弱性主张而人格化的。高管通过学习来适应和适应不适，并在“足够安全”的空间中练习随着时间的推移而进行学习，从而进行自我意识和工作。我们提供有关身份工作空间的见解，因为领导者将脆弱性重新概念化为积极和力量，以及声称脆弱性如何化解通常与脆弱性相关的恐惧和消极含义的力量。通过代理，高管表达出更好的能力来决定如何以及何时变得与众不同（脆弱性）与不与众不同（无懈可击）在他们的组织中。实际上，我们将意识扩展到脆弱性对于领导者和经理的身份和学习的价值。