Sometimes what we know gets in the way of others' learning
Transcript of this video:
I was having a coffee outside one of my favourite cafes with my friend Alan, here in Cambridge the other day, when a car pulls up and the owner asks us where the car park has gone because the car park he’s planning to go to is actually in the process of being demolished.
And Alan explains that to him and proceeds to offer him directions to the next alternative car park. And it goes, as you might expect: well you go left here right at the end when you get to the traffic lights, turn left, et cetera, et cetera.
And as these instructions unfolded, I sensed that the driver was beginning to disengage because he couldn’t keep up. He was actually overwhelmed by the information however well-intentioned was the delivery of it.
It’s a small example of what some people call the curse of knowledge: that when we have a piece of information that the other person appears to want from us, we tend to give them a bit more than they can actually cope with.
I think of this a lot in my work. So for example if I’m doing what you might call a team building exercise I think 10 or 20 years ago I would probably go into that with much more of a plan with an idea of some activities I could do to demonstrate some core principles and so on and so forth.
And these days I notice I’m really reluctant to do that and that I put myself in a position of going in not quite knowing what I’m going to do which generates a certain amount of anxiety for me but feels better than the alternative of thinking that I know.
Because these days I’m much more reluctant to be teaching them things and I want to be going in paying more attention to what’s going on between them and between them and me, and then responding to that.
Partly because I think some of the best team building happens when we are able to be surprised together to make discoveries together. And I think that’s much less likely to happen if anyone goes in thinking that they’re there to teach them or explain things to them.
Photo by Ed Robertson on Unsplash
