If You Want to Learn Something, Forget What You Know

The title of this article sounds like something that Yogi Berra might have said but didn't. And I think the slanted Yogi-like logic captures a basic truth regarding what it takes to learn about improvisation - and leadership.

In my previous article, I described Gary Klein’s research into the way that people make seemingly intuitive decisions – not by means of magic or ESP but by rapid (and largely unconscious) processing of various signals that point the way to the best course of action.

The signals and the processing can be incorporated into training materials to instruct novice practitioners. But how does a person proceed from conscious (and often tentative) processing of these signals to the type of instant intuitive calculation we saw in Gary Klein’s fire chief?

Well, in the words of the New York City jazz musician who was asked by a tourist how to get to Carnegie Hall: “Practice, man, practice.”

As simple as that sounds, though, many recent leadership experts have broken down the “practice” advice into more specific strategies.

First, to be most effective, practice needs to be more than just general immersion in the domain in which the person wants to gain skills. As Matthew Syed points out in his book Bounce, championship athletes don’t merely play lots of rounds of golf or engage in lengthy shoot-around sessions on the basketball court in hopes of improving their overall game. Instead, they first pinpoint the specific skills requiring development and then relentlessly target their practice sessions toward repeating and honing those skills.

A person wanting to develop intuitive command of leadership skills can take a page from the championship athlete’s playbook. As Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, and Annie McKee write in their book Primal Leadership:

“It’s possible to improve if you do three things: Bring bad habits into awareness, consciously practice a better way, and rehearse new behavior at every opportunity until it becomes automatic – that is, until mastery has occurred at the level of implicit learning.”

Leaders thus need to focus on identifying specific behaviors that require enhancement, by such means as competency models and self-reflection. Once the few high-impact areas of development opportunities are identified, the person can then create strategies (e.g., special projects, mentoring, job enrichment) to get targeted practice and feedback on their progress.

But as the quote from Goleman et al. above makes clear, before they can start focusing on the new ways of acting, leaders must often first unlearn bad habits that may have become embedded in their natural behavior. Goleman et al. go on to say:

“This suggests a learning strategy that at first focuses a bit more on overcoming the impulsive leadership habits you are trying to undo – before giving full attention to the new habits with which you want to replace the old.”

There is a direct connection here to the development of performance-improvising skills, since much of the trick of learning improvisation involves overcoming inhibitions and internal constraints that get in the way of one’s natural improvisational abilities. As Keith Sawyer’s research so vividly demonstrates, children are natural improvisers – but as they get older, their native creativity and flexibility often become casualties of their socialization into the adult world. Improv workshop games can act as a spark to jar them out of their self-censoring habits.

In the context of leadership development, “unlearning” can start with 360 feedback that serves to jolt the leader into awareness of how he is being perceived – followed by reflection, training, and coaching that guide the leader to acknowledge the drawbacks of his bad habits. At that point, the stage is set for new habits to begin settling into place – through practice, man, practice!

(I'll wrap up next time with some further thoughts about strategies to help engrain new leadership behaviors "in the bones.")