Is that an elephant that I see?

Elephants are big people. In fact, you would not want one to sit on your sandwich.  You would think an elephant is too big to ignore. But there are zillions of elephants, everywhere you look, but we pretend they’re not there: it’s the elephant in the room phenomenon.

In families, elephants in the room range from the worst kind, such as family incest, to the more harmless (except to her) cupboard drinking of Aunt Mildred.  Everyone knows what is happening, in the case of incest it may even be the mother, but often no-one speaks up or takes action. Humans are even reluctant to say anything about relatively small matters such as offensive or antisocial behaviour, being let down by a friend or that what someone is doing might in fact be a poor choice: what I call the ‘zit on the nose’ phenomenon. We just don’t like to tell people bad things.

It takes courage to act. Largely, humans dislike conflict mainly because it creates a huge amount of anxiety, which is extremely uncomfortable and to be avoided at all costs. There is also the fall out that might involve fractured relationships, being disliked and rejection. We like to be liked or as Albert Ellis says, we are love slobs. Better to remain in the inner circle with a nasty secret that being a pariah and morally or ethically intact. After all, it is family.

Elephants love living in organisations too where they are ignored with an even greater intensity than in families. You’d think it was the other way around given the emotional factor in a family setting but it is likely that there are huge emotional investments in the organisations in which we work and play.

Again, there is a huge range when it comes to severity and impact. There are organisations in which there is institutionalised corruption and bullying, for example, that goes on unchecked. In some cases the organisations acknowledge that there is a problem, such as paedophilia in the Catholic Church and bullying in the Australian defence forces, but still nothing is done. Its as if the elephant has been let out in the garden for feeding time.

Poor behaviour is one of the more common elephants in the room. Here I am not referring to poor performance, which often gets picked up at performance review time but to what amounts to anti-social behaviour. Every organisation or organisational unit has at least one person who behaves in ways that causes reactions from mild irritation to motional catharsis.

This is an even bigger problem when the person is a manager. You might find, for example, a very senior person is a dreadful bully but he is allowed to get away with it. The result is a culture of bullying that runs right through the organisation. People are, understandably, reluctant to speak up and people who do in fact blow the whistle on high level abuse or corruption do not have a good time if it, as the research on whistle-blowers shows.

We might think that, well, if its not a big thing then let it go. So what if the boss or someone else in the team tells lies, doesn’t keep promises, doesn’t listen, fails to communicate information, gets a little irritated, ignores people, is not a team player or is just plain rude. It doesn’t matter.

Well, it does, Employee engagement is a critical factor in job satisfaction and, we know that both these effect performance. Employees can easily become disengaged by elephants in the room. They sap motivation, destroy loyalty, disintegrate faith and hope, distinguish innovation and create a culture of mistrust. Elephants in teams can completely undermine effectiveness.

When we let someone get away with poor behaviour we being a co-dependent. We are implicitly saying that all is fine, that we approve and the behaviour will continue. And we’ll complain: a co-dependent victim.

All it takes is courage.

Whisky Priests and Priestesses

Key Points   


1. Humans are essentially pragmatic-like most animals
2. Behaviour says more about people than what they say
3. Are our organisational values just weasel words?
4. Do we as leaders reinforce our organisational values or just reach for the whiskey bottle?

In an episode of Yes Minister, Sir Humphrey quips to the Minister, Jim Hacker, ‘Well, all government policy is wrong but frightfully well carried out’. Humphrey, as a career public servant is making the point that he would be a raving lunatic if he actually believed in government policy given that governments have such competing philosophies and interests. He agrees with Hacker that he is indeed a moral vacuum but insists he has to be in order to survive. Jim Hacker ends up compromising his values in the episode and manages his dissonance with a bottle of whisky: he too a moral vacuum.

Of course this is not entirely a true self-assessment because they are both pragmatists, which is a legitimate world-view. Their moral positions are able to shift with the wind and the tide where the end trumps the means as a matter of course. Whether moral pragmatism is good for the soul is another issue not for these pages.

Most people would probably get agitated if you suggested that they are probably pragmatic and that we do not always do what we think we believe or at least what we say we believe. Humans like to be thought well of. As the famous psychologist Albert Ellis said, we are basically love slobs. Appearing to have acceptable values helps to be liked or even admired and is essential to living in groups. It is part of the human experience to present a good picture of ourselves and it is a picture that we mostly believe in, even when evidence is brought to the contrary. But, sadly, I think homo sapiens is a pretty pragmatic species, as are most animals I suspect, even if they appear to have quite strong value positions. What we say is not necessarily what we do.

The indicator for this belief is found in watching people’s behaviour. Humans find it difficult to live with cognitive dissonance, where values and behaviours are not aligned. Our behaviour gives it all away because we act out our values. You are what you do. And sometimes what you don’t do, such as turning a blind eye or ignoring the evidence. It is rare for me to really believe what people say-I’d much rather watch what they do before making a judgement. People will tell me, for example, that they value their health but then drink excessively or not slip, slop, slap. They say they value their children above everything else but spend little time with them or behave negatively. We find people who say they value safety highly and may even be safety managers but they speed excessively in their cars, mow the lawn without shoes or shirt, and climb on the damp roof at home without a harness. This disparity between what we say we believe and what we do accounts for the general scepticism regarding attitude surveys about just about anything. It is much more important to watch people’s behaviours, if you want to know what they really believe.

It is organisations, though, that take the cake for not enacting what they espouse to be. I’m sure most of you can rattle off the weasel words that are found in many organisational strategic plans or on the back of the tea room door, nicely laminated. Integrity, honesty, valued employees, communication, respect, positive relationships, and so on-you can probably add many more to the list. But so often we find that the behaviours enacted, particularly by the so-called leaders in an organisation, bear no resemblance to the espoused values. I apologise to those organisations where this is not the case and where the values are appropriately lived. I love just spending time in organisations watching what happens, chatting to people about what they do and how things are. You have to spend time in an organisation to find out what it really believes. To this end the ethnographers are on the right track, I think, when it comes to understanding culture.

My watching has revealed all sorts of ways in which leaders and people in organisations will tolerate behaviour that is inconsistent with the espoused values. But of course! What leader is going to say that, ‘we value bullies’, ‘we do not value our people at all, they are nothing but canon fodder’, ‘don’t communicate an information of value’, ‘don’t allow people to participate in decision making’? Rather, we say the positive but then enact the negative, or at least turn a blind eye. Appropriate values, of course are important.. One of the best ways to open this issue in an organisation is to ask people to translate a value into behaviours. For example, the question might become, ‘How do you know respect when you see it?’ Tell me what people are doing in a safe workplace, is another favourite. It’s fun to ask managers/leaders this sort of question and see how it gets translated. It is this translation of values into behaviour that is essential because interpretation is no longer an issue. And, as we know, if you want to change people’s values then change their behaviours. This becomes more likely if we know what is expected of us. It also provides a focus for reflection and, hopefully reflexivity, as we seek to understand our true inner selves: as per Carl Jung.

The real proof of the pudding, of course, is the extent to which leaders in an organisation will act when their people are not behaving appropriately. Do they do something, perhaps make themselves unpopular with an individual or a group? Do they speak up? Or do they reach for the whisky bottle and bemoan their moral vacuum: their pragmatism?

In Search of the Bricoleur

Key Points

1. Another personality difference that creates conflict.
2. Bricoleurs see the word differently to non-bricoleurs
3. Bricoleurs are often side-lined.
4. Bricoleurs need to be invited into decision making situations not excluded.


I recently discovered that I am a bricoleur and it is a blessed relief to have outed at last. What this insight has done has explained how it is that I have managed to upset so many people in organisations, and perhaps other situations, over the years. It is a personality thing and, as I’ve mentioned before, it is personality differences where most conflicts begin, if not end.

Bricolage is a French word, as you’d probably guess, and originally referred to a worker who would make the best with what they had to complete a task. Thus they were people who tinkered with things, even playfully in an effort to solve a problem and used whatever resources they might have at hand. The term then became associated with art and craft. Later the usage has been broadened to include people who use their experience, their instinct, trial and error, and again, tinkering, to solve any sort of problem.

Thus, a manager or a researcher, for example, would bring whatever models are appropriate to a problem and would not be tied to a particular way of doing or thinking. They’d try something, perhaps even an amalgam of competing techniques or ideas, and see what worked rather than using a recipe driven approach. For the bricoleur, dogma and gurus who think they know the best way to approach a problem or issue are viewed with suspicion.

It is easy to see that to some people the bricoleur is nothing but a terrorist. They don’t work by the book, fiddle with process, flaunt policies and procedures, play with ideas, tinker and dislike high levels of control. This is the stuff of a nervous breakdown for the manager who is high on order, with crockery ducks flying along the wall in precise formation. The ISTJ will probably end up on high levels of psychotropic medication if a bricoleur is a member of their team. The archetypal Humphrey Applebee would be looking at Guantanamo Bay as a solution to the situation.

The truth is, of course, that we need both types in any organisation but it is easy to see where the conflict occurs. The bricoleur and the non-bricoleur are seeing the world through quite different lenses and will find it hard to understand each other’s language. Bricoleurs, in the original definition, were seen as being well-meaning amateurs by more traditional craft-persons or tradespersons who did things the ‘correct’ way. A bricoleur would see herself or himself as bringing expertise from many disciplines and experiences that enable them to see a task or problem in a different light. They’d see the other as narrow minded, limited in imagination and simply in the way.

My guess, and I don’t have any hard data to support this, is that bricoleurs would tend not to rise to the top of the corporate tree and f they did it would be an accident of sorts. Whether or not that is a good thing is open to debate and it may not matter because nature has probably spoken on the topic by making them unacceptable as leaders/managers and excluding them already.

I think organisations need bricoleurs, particularly in their decision-making and strategic processes. And it may be the case that they tend to be side-lined and ignored, infrequently being asked into the board room or places where the important decisions are made. We need people who are prepared to see things differently, ask difficult questions, be a bit different and tinker with ideas. They need to be heard and not just seen. My experience is that they tend to be seen as a bit too different, not a team player and just a bit too out there-a well meaning amateur perhaps.

Some years ago I was doing a consulting job with a great friend, Alan Davies. We were arranging a search conference to undertake a strategic planning exercise. The CEO was objecting to Alan wanting to invite union leaders and some other rebels who did not tend to toe the organisational party line. This list included customers who had not had a good experience with the organisation. Alan insisted they attend because you need to have your ‘enemies’ (not that they were really enemies but were perceived as such) in the room and not banging on the portcullis creating a stir. Best piece of management learning I every received and so too for the many CEOs who did eventually engage with the ‘enemy’, who is anyone unlike themselves.

Changing Behaviour is Trickier Than it Looks

Key points

1. Leaders often underestimate the difficulty of changing behaviour.
2. People are naturally resistant to change for sound biological reasons.
3. Teachers, trainers, coaches and managers are mistaken in thinking that well presented logic will win hearts and minds.
4. Most change efforts fail miserably.
5. Leadership behaviour can make the difference by changing habits over time.
6. Changing behaviour takes careful planning and good techniques.


Recently, I have been surprised (again) that leaders don’t understand the complexity of behaviour change. As a consequence they become frustrated when people don’t do what they have told or do what is expected.

While it is true that humans have a history of adaptation to their environment, the process is relatively slow: generational rather than situational. We are hard wired to resist rapid change.

The reason for this is simple and based on biological imperatives that are several thousand years old and belong to a world where primitive drives such as hunting, gathering, procreation and survival involved high risk activities. These activities require a lot of energy and, hence, we find ways to be energy conserving. In addition, we have a finite capacity in short and working memory that limits our attention and a significant task like change is not likely to be a natural priority.

It may be unpalatable to many but the same primitive and self-interested drives still preoccupy our species: it’s just that the behaviours associated with meeting these drives are more complex compared to pre-agrarian times. Despite having modified our environment and our control over our circumstances, we have yet to throw off this tendency to preserve energy.

Energy preserving behaviour is easily seen through the phenomenon of habits. These automatic behavioural scripts mean that we do not have expend effort to rewrite behavioural scripts for similar, and even not so similar, circumstances. Humans mostly like routine. We also tend to have quite durable values, attitudes and beliefs. I am sure you can think of many ways you demonstrate this capacity daily.

Nothing wrong with doing this, we are all just practicing an ingrained drive to survive. Recognising that this is the normal human condition is important and helps explain why we are so resistant to change. Recent research shows that changing a habit takes about three months before the new habit becomes, well…..a habit!

Changing attitudes, values and beliefs (collectively known as schema) is even more tricky and beyond the scope of this blog. In short, though, the best and quickest way to change schema is to change the person’s behaviour. The easiest way to increase resistance is to challenge someone’s schema because they will automatically find arguments to support these holy cows. We often talk about winning hearts and minds. We should, in my view, think about winning hearts by changing behaviour. But more about this in another article, even though the answer is still found in effective leadership.

I have been involved in clinical psychology work for around 30 years in one way or another. Countless people I have met have been in dreadful pain with depression, anxiety, addictions and other good reasons to change their behaviour to improve their lot. Nonetheless many have resisted change and, for various and often complex reasons, decided that they would rather stay in pain rather than ‘risk’ doing things differently. As might be expected others are very motivated to try something new even though it is hard work. Pretty well everyone needed intensive help to do this.

Sometimes people do change spontaneously but often in response to a traumatic or extremely enlightening experience that accelerates learning. Mostly motivation to change is enhanced and the required skills are obtained through the resulting expenditure of effort.

So, in the face of a natural human propensity to resist change why would anyone be motivated to change when: they are relatively healthy; their habits seem to be quite functional in the absence of any personally relevant evidence to the contrary; they are not experiencing any incongruence between their attitudes and their behaviour-in other words their behaviour makes sense to them and they feel comfortable about it; and they are being sufficiently rewarded in a variety of ways to keep on doing what they do?

I think most change agents, teachers, trainers, coaches, and managers overvalue the impact of what they do and attempt largely ineffective approaches in their attempts to change other people’s behaviour. Mostly we think that logical argument, well presented reasons attached to emotional messages, policies, procedures and simply telling people will win people over. We are often surprised and then frustrated to find that what we are doing does not work.

So, changing behaviour, whether it is our own or someone else’s, needs to be planned carefully. It requires good techniques and, we need to be motivated which is often emotionally mediated. If it is another person we need to get their attention.

Leaders can get attention by: having a good relationship with the person in the first place; being prepared to have difficult conversations; providing clear description of the desired behaviour; coaching where necessary; establishing an action plan with timelines; providing support; intervening when there are difficulties; providing resources; ensuring the desired behaviour becomes part of the KPIs (or whatever performance system is used) for that person or persons); and follow-up.

Remember too that people will find change easy and others will have reasons to be resistant. Whatever the case, we need to have a clear process that creates a reason for the person to spend energy on change.

You Are What You Are…Or are you?

Key points.

1. We often don’t understand the impact our personality has on others.
2. Personality drives much of our behaviour.
2. Personality is partly genetic but is modified by our experience.
3. What can be an attribute can also be irritating.
4. We can modify our personality, to a point.
5. A simple change technique.


My Uncle Jack was a man of few words and had a very down to earth view of life. I guess being raised in a single parent family with two other hungry brothers during the great depression determines how you see the world. Which bring us nicely to the topic of this blog, the shaping of personality.

On discovering that I had become a psychologist and being a bit bemused by it all, Uncle Jack, who was visiting us in Australia at the time, said, ‘Well, it seems to me that you are what you are and you can’t get any arer’.

Sage advice especially given the antipathy with which humans confront change and our lack of insight of self and others. It is probably true that personality traits are hard-wired, genetic and biological. However, more recent research has shown that it is not that cut and dried. It appears that personality is modified by life experience. Moreover, we can change our personality traits by consciously working on them.

Well, that’s all well and good but why would anyone want to change what appears to the owner to be a perfectly good personality? My personality traits enable me to have a unique perspective on the world that then drives what I think and how I behave in given circumstances. I can’t help it if the idiot over there doesn’t see the same world as me!

Certainly diversity makes the world go around and it would be boring if it didn’t. Families, tribes, and organisations thrive on the fact that people see the world differently. However, as someone once said, one person’s freedom fighter is another person’s terrorist. In other words, it is all a matter of perspective.

What is a great strength such as attention to detail can easily morph into nit picking and obsessiveness in the eyes of another person who, most likely, does not share these traits.

Similarly we have:

Big picture thinker becomes Vague and unfocussed
Likes facts and information becomes Autistic
Sticks to their guns becomes Autocratic
Sociable and good networker becomesTalks too much-over the top
Stoic, solid, decisive becomes Autocratic
Gets things done becomes Inflexible
Busy becomes Stressed
In touch with feelings becomes Emotional
Adventurous becomes Undisciplined
Focussed becomes Autistic
Fun loving becomes Irresponsible

An attribute that attracts us to another person can eventually become irritating. In clinical work I often used to see evidence of this phenomenon in couples. It especially seemed to have an impact when circumstances changed and there was additional stress in the household such as the arrival of children, extra work responsibilities, and a change in financial circumstances. Sometimes people’s needs shift as they mature and their perception on life changes.

Having a fun loving, carefree, adventurous spouse might be very exciting for the first couple of years of marriage. It might not work so well when children come along and routine, sharing of tasks and focus are required.

The same problem can apply in our other relationships and workplaces too. We might be attracted by the decisive nature of our entrepreneurial boss and an organisation that has a reputation for getting things done. Eventually, however, this same decisiveness can become ‘poor consultative process’ and ‘aggressiveness’.

Working with someone who is extraverted and thinks out loud, likes ideas and acts on intuition can be exciting and powerful. It becomes a challenge to someone who likes order and certainty, especially when they are under stress. That person when ‘under the gun’ becomes more controlled, serious and focussed, which then confuses the extraverted intuitive type. Failing to understand what is going on can lead to an increase in tension and sometimes the fracturing of relationships.

There might be good reason, then, to think about changing our behaviour, at least in certain circumstances. This is achieved by firstly being aware of self, which is no easy task, and then being concerned enough to change. If this is achieved a simple technique for change involves:

-catch yourself thinking about behaving in a particular way.
-saying STOP before doing it.
-talk to yourself about the change and the value of doing it.
-do the desired behaviour
-congratulate yourself afterwards
-monitor reactions and reflect on the experience

Repeat as necessary.

The interesting thing is that if we keep practicing this technique, the behaviour becomes more automatic (allow at least 3 months) and personality might change as a result. The change in our values, attitudes and beliefs happens as a result of changing behaviour: much too hard the other way around.

The Eight-Minute Rule for Presentations/Teaching/Speeches

People have suffered long enough from having to listen to incompetent presenters. I have come to believe that anyone who speaks in public must be licenced. To obtain a licence should require a rigorous theoretical and practical test. The licence would then be revoked if the speaker inflicts undue pain and suffering on the audience. During the last talk that I had to endure I even thought that transgressors should be subject to at least 30 minutes of waterboarding.

Speakers should be required, as a minimum, to adhere to the eight-minute rule and its various caveats, described below.

The Eight-Minute Rule

The eight-minute rule is defined as:

No speaker charged with the task of talking to an audience should speak for more than eight minutes before either leaving the ‘stage’ for good or engaging the audience in some meaningful and related activity between each eight-minute segment.

Talking to an audience means giving a speech at any social gathering such as an awards night, a wedding, a funeral, or a celebration of some event such as a graduation. Here the application of the rule is easy. Stand up, deliver and sit down within eight minutes and less if you can-subject to the caveats provided below.

Less obvious and ridden with more complexity (and angst for some) is that the rule also applies to any presentation to a group, perhaps a business breakfast, a five-day workshop or a lecture to university students. In this situation the speaker will need to organise the presentation into bite sized chunks interspersed with activities related to the concepts being delivered-subject to the caveats provided below.

Why the Eight-Minute Rule

The optimum attention span for an adult human being is around 20 minutes under the best of conditions and with many variables under control. Unfortunately controlling the enormous number of variables that affect attention, information processing and memory is impossible in real life and, mostly, speakers are not operating under optimal conditions.

Humans are prone to go into a trance very quickly. You may have even noticed this when you have been chatting to someone and their eyes glaze over: quite clearly they have drifted off somewhere. In this state they person is half aware of you and half listening, while the other half of their conscious is thinking of something else. This is a light hypnotic trance. As a psychotherapist I found that I could induce a trance in people simply by boring them and, indeed, this is how a lot of hypnotic induction works. If the mind is not fully occupied it will drift off somewhere else.

When you are talking to a group, or even an individual for that matter, and presenting your thoughts and ideas you, perhaps unwittingly, cause people to start thinking about what you are saying. So, even while you are rambling on some people in the audience will very quickly start to process what you are saying and disappear on tangents or simply chew over what has been said. They will think about their own experiences, contradictions and possibilities. So, these people are quickly into a trance.

There will be other members of the audience who have something else on their mind: an argument with the spouse that morning; a child who has been hiding a bong in their room; waiting for a phone call about a pressing problem at work; a hangover; that attractive person in the third row who helped with the hangover at the conference dinner last night; a runny nose. These people will drift into a trance.

All this assumes of course that you have not added to the problem by being confusing, telling awful or off-colour jokes, talking too quickly or too slowly, being overly complex, or wearing pink polka dot trousers. The room may be too cold or too hot, there is noise from elsewhere, the projection screen is too dark, and the seats are really uncomfortable or, perhaps worse, too comfy.

Then there are those who right from the start are thinking of their incredibly clever riposte to what you are saying and designing their own speech or perhaps article that they are going to write to shoot you down in flames. There will also be people who just don’t like you and turn off immediately.

All in all getting and maintaining people’s attention when speaking to a group is a very tricky task. Sadly, speaking in public is perceived in much the same way as teaching and counselling-that anyone can do it. This is a dreadful mistake because it requires great skill to speak well in public.

I have to be honest here and admit that eight-minutes is somewhat arbitrary. However, it seems about right especially if you, and I’m sure you have, suffered through a painful speech or talk for any length of time. At least eight-minutes is bearable and it is not too long out of the listener’s life, so we are being as ethical as possible in terms of inflicting cruel punishment on others. It seems about right for delivering a concept, telling a story, or making a point. And, it makes the presenter have to think about what they are doing: something sadly lacking, it seems to me, in most presentations-careful thought, that is. However, never believe that you should use the whole eight-minutes: less is good.

So, eight-minutes it is.

Applying the Eight-Minute Rule

Speeches

This is simple enough. Keep your talk down to eight-minutes or even less. Rehearse with a watch, use notes, don’t change it at the last minute because someone has just told you a good joke or given you some juicy gossip about the groom. When you have decided on what you are going to say practice in front of a critical friend or two.

Use the eight-minutes wisely:

• Look at the audience before you start and smile (if it is an appropriate occasion). Take your time and get settled.
• Talk clearly, relatively slowly and engage the audience often-mostly after each major point-with your eyes. Look AT the audience, not at a dirty mark on the back wall. Use pauses to emphasise and give the audience a moment to reflect. Raise your voice slightly when you restart to get their attention.
• Don’t tell jokes unless they are relevant to the point you are making. But use humour-check it out with your critical friend first.
• Use a story, metaphors and/or anecdotes. This is why movies keep people entranced for two-hours: they tell a story. Stories are very useful tools to get people to change.
• Make what you are saying personal to the experience of the audience. We have all experienced similar things in our lives so this should not be difficult. Do this right at the beginning of your talk.
• Find a relevant emotional hook.
• Tell them what you are going to say, say it and then tell them what you said. Then stop. Using an anecdote or story for one of these steps really works.
• Finish with an amusing anecdote or example: something that people can take away. It is most likely that this is the thing they will remember.
• STOP at eight-minutes.

Longer Presentations and Workshops

All of the above applies but with more complexity and thought.

Eight minutes is about the right amount of time to talk about one concept. Then it is important to get the group to do something. It need not be a complicated activity but should:

• Enable the participants to talk about their own experience or understanding.
• Provide an opportunity for the facilitator to see what learning has or has not taken place.
• Enable the facilitator to change course should the feedback from the group indicate the need. For example, the group may be lost or, as is most likely, have a number of questions that arise from their new learning that take the presentation beyond the ‘curriculum’.
• Involve at least application and preferably synthesis It might be appropriate to use synthesis level activities later in the workshop or presentation.
• Be at least as long as the presentation time but preferably longer. I try to have activity and feedback/discussion sessions that are at least 30 minutes or or more. It is surprising how feedback sessions can become the key presentation tool and the Powerpoint can be discarded for real interaction. The problem is that you’ll really need to know your stuff and not need to rely on props.

Once you’ve completed the activity allow yourself some time to think about a change of course given the feedback you have received. It is the kiss of death to continue talking about stuff that is either irrelevant to the group or that the group has already clearly grasped. It is vital to address the questions that new learning might have raised in the mind of the participants even if this takes you into new territory. If you don’t then the unanswered questions remain a distraction in the mind of the listener.

If you are interested in this technique for your workshops and want to see more detail have a look at the following article:

Hase, S. (2010), Learner defined curriculum: Heutagogy and action learning in vocational training, Southern Institute of Technology Journal of Applied Research, Special Edition on Action Research, available at http://sitjar.sit.ac.nz

From Knowing About to Knowing: An Example of Leadership and the Psychological Contract at Work

Unhappy with definitions of learning and rather traditional, if not ancient, teacher-centric educational practices a colleague, Chris Kenyon, and I have been thinking about an alternate view since around 2000. If you’d like to read more about this please search the word ‘Heutagogy’ and all will be revealed in detail.

However, one of the more challenging ideas we have posited is differentiating between having knowledge about something and actual learning. We find out about something in a training program or at school, and it is stored away in memory: we might even be able to recall it in an examination. In neurological terms the knowledge (or skill) has little impact on other neurons at this time. But later we have an experience that brings that knowledge or skill into play and in this ‘Ah, Ah’ moment lots of neural connections are made that result in us seeing the world in a different way, This may be a slight change in perspective or it might be dramatic: a continuum of impact perhaps. Some of you will no doubt be thinking of brain plasticity and, yes, this idea has been borrowed from neuroscience. I’ll deal with the educational and organisational implications of this idea later, after giving a personal example.

I once wrote a paper on what happens in organisations when psychological contracts are violated. As the name implies, these are unwritten contracts that occur in the minds of people but they are no less important or binding than those signed in blood. When we arrive in a workplace, we observe how people treat each other and how managers treat their staff. Very quickly we develop expectations about how we will be treated and those expectations are usually consistent with our observations. This is a psychological contract. A breach of this contract can be devastating for employees and can cause problems ranging from disengagement to very complex workers’ compensation claims. Sadly, managers and leaders are often unaware of this important aspect of organisational culture. In short, when people perceive they are being treated differently this is quickly translated into a sense of unfairness, resentment, anxiety, and a need for justice.

It is clear from reading my paper that I knew about psychological contracts at that time. I can assume that most people would assume that my knowing about the subject constituted learning. By most current definitions of learning this is probably the right assumption. In fact, I was able to include the concept in my corporate training programs and, as a psychotherapist, treated people who had experienced a violation of their psychological contract.

However, relatively recently I really learned about psychological contracts by being a victim. The result was startling. Clearly the addition of emotion to my understanding was important. This is akin to the different between bacon and eggs: the chicken is involved but the pig is committed. I also instantaneously made vast neuronal connections that completely changed the way I see the idea of psychological contracts. It was really interesting how I was able to relate the concept to other areas of psychology, particularly leadership and management behaviour, in ways that I had not done previously.

For me this was a great example of the difference between knowing about something and real learning. The implications of this idea are wide ranging but I’ll stick to a couple of major points here. We can never be sure when learning occurs in other people: it occurs when the learner is ready not when the teacher expects. It is probable that real learning will occur in a real life situation, not in a training room. Unfortunately, we still tend to think of education and training as an event rather than as context. We also don’t know, unless we check, what impact the educational experience is having on the learner. Thus, the concept of the fixed curricula or the fixed and carefully designed training program becomes inappropriate for the individual, if not the group. The same can be said for the way in which we assess knowledge and skills, and even performance: it needs to be contextual and individualised based on the learner’s (staff member’s) experience not the teacher’s (manager’s) expectations.

If you’d like to know more or discuss these issues further please contact me at stewart.hase@gmail.com.