Some good articles came across my desk this morning, dealing with some of the issues I’ve been writing about of late: cognitive errors or thinking fallacies, overestimating the power of government, and learning how to learn.

In the New York Times yesterday, David Brooks talks about overestimating one’s ability to solve complex, messy problems, and suggests focusing on discrete, rather than systemic good.

And another great article in the New York Times by Paul Tough whom I’ve  written about before. Tough wrote Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada’s Quest to Change Harlem and America, about  Canada and his work with the Harlem Children’s Zone. This article focuses on teaching children how to learn, not how to succeed, and the fine art of  learning from failure.

Enjoy.

I’ve written a lot here about cognitive errors – how our minds lead us astray. It’s human nature to filter out information that runs contrary to what we already know, to overestimate things that have emotional impact, and fall prey to emotional reasoning, believing that what we feel must be true.

Even being aware that it happens, it’s still sobering to see yourself do it. We were out hiking last weekend with friends and with our 14 year old Lab-Malamute mix, Ranger. Like many senior dogs, Ranger has some trouble with his back and legs. He had run up ahead, and when we came upon him, he was stumbling around, his back oddly twisted, and his left leg dragging under him. He clearly had hurt himself, but we didn’t see how he did it. We felt along his back and legs, to see where he was hurt, but we couldn’t find anything. So we thought we’d continue and see how he went. We walked along for another hour or so, and he seemed to walk more steadily, with less limping. So we went home, kept an eye on him, and after dinner, checked on him one more time. Suddenly we saw a spot of blood where he had been lying. We grabbed a flashlight and looked under his belly and to our horror, saw a gaping 8 inch gash in his groin and abdomen area. He had impaled himself on a salmonberry cane, and for 5 hours, had walked, gotten in and out of the car, ate dinner, and lay around with an open gaping wound. And because we already ‘knew’ that he had back and leg troubles, it never occurred to us to check for something else. Like the old joke of the man looking for his keys under streetlight because that’s where the light is. Only this wasn’t a joke.

He’s OK now. The worst part for Ranger was the anesthesia and for us, spending an all-nighter at the vet hospital in Lincoln City.  But now I’m left with thought, what else am I missing? What else don’t I know because of what I know?

Expertise, mastery and feeling comfortable in our knowledge of our field, of ourselves, or of others is a great thing. But the lesson for me in this story is to remember the shadow that my knowledge casts.

I recently heard an interview on my local public radio with a young woman on her struggle to learn the violin. She wrote a blog piece about it called The Virtue of Being Bad and concludes that being bad at something and persevering nonetheless is a virtue.

But here’s another reason why being bad is good. In looking at the corrupting influence of power, the culprit appears to the self-reinforcing nature of power. Power gives us the means to surround ourselves with people and places that reflect our rank back to us. And, as I write in The Expert Syndrome and the Problem of Transfer, it’s easy to transfer our sense of mastery in one domain to all domains, thinking we are truly invincible:

The sense of power we have gained is comfortable and fortifying; the energy we have invested in getting to this place of expertise is too much to just walk away from. This rank and expertise is reinforced daily, by every person who relates to us in that role. Every encounter adds to the identity. And it becomes a self-reinforcing mechanism; the more comfortable we are in that role, the more we surround ourselves with people who relate to us in that role.

Our rank allows us to surround ourselves with people, places, contexts, roles, that reinforce our rank. The more we stay within the context in which our rank is ratified, the greater the danger of identifying only with our rank, beginning to believe in our infallibility.

Is there a solution? No. But there are things we can do in leadership positions to mitigate this tendency. One of them: be a beginner at something. Be bad at something. Put yourself in positions of uncertainty. Remember your beginner’s mind. Above all, leave the “office,” literally step outside that context in which your rank is reinforced. For some people, having children is that humbling experience. For others, it might just be learning the violin. Every position of power is upheld by its context. And while it won’t solve all the problems of abuse of power, learning who we are outside that reinforcing context should be a requirement of ourselves and others in leadership.

Last March I posted The Reading Roundup. I got a lot of comments and suggestions from readers, and so I’d like to make this a regular feature, perhaps once a quarter, provided I’ve actually read enough.

So, here is a list of some books I’ve enjoyed since the last Roundup, though a few which I forgot to include in the last list. As I did with the first Round Up, I’m including here where and how I came across the book. And, still, all non-fiction. Not sure what that means. Except that there’s an awful lot of good non-fiction out there. (more…)

I spent the first week of January in Victoria, B.C., at a conference that brought together leaders from two very different sectors: social change agents and leaders in the personal development field. Our goal was to develop a framework for a personal development program to support social change agents and activists in their work. On that first evening there was a lot of goodwill, but just as much skepticism. I had my doubts that the personal development facilitators who represented very diverse models, could develop a common framework. Likewise, the social change agents had different social agendas and diverse political analyses. And between the two approaches to change, the personal and the political, was a lengthy, thorny relationship and strikingly different perspectives and worldviews.

And yet, in spite of these gaps in frameworks, language, and perspective, the conference was a great success. There was an astounding capacity to listen, learn, share ideas, and grapple with and find meaning in the differences that arose. Over the course of the four days, an appreciation of each othersâ?? knowledge and experience began to grow, and a sense of trust and teamwork organically emerged.

On the plane ride home, exhausted by happy, I began to wonder why it came together so well. And it dawned on me that this was not the first interdisciplinary and cross-modality project I’ve consulted on. In fact, the last four major projects I’ve worked on all involved extensive, interdisciplinary engagement. Was that a coincidence, I wondered, or is there something about interdisciplinary teamwork that appeals to me? This got me thinking more about interdisciplinary teamwork, and working with stakeholders across disciplines and industries. What kind of teamwork is needed? Is a different kind of teamwork required? What are the particular challenges and unique approaches needed to make interdisciplinary teamwork successful? (more…)

There’s a problem in learning theory called transfer. How does a student learn something and then transfer that knowledge or set of skills to the appropriate context? In common sense terms, how does book learning become a real world skill? I’m still waiting for algebra transfer to happen. My 9^th grade algebra teacher, Mr Eastman, really knew his algebra, but didn’t know much about transfer. I learned enough algebra to pass his Friday quizzes, but I still don’t have the foggiest idea what algebra is or the real life problems it’s meant to solve.

There’s also something called negative transfer. Negative transfer occurs when previous knowledge is incorrectly applied to new areas. In language, when one’s mother tongue interferes with the speaking of a second language, that’s a case of negative transfer. (more…)