Professor Damian Hughes combines his practical and academic background within sport and change psychology to work as an adviser to the business and sporting elite, specialising in the creation of high performing cultures. Here he highlights the importance of making people think, or what he calls Double Loop Learning.
Let’s start with a simple test. Check this out: below are some words. Read them in your usual way first.
Paris in the
You that read wrong.
You read that wrong too.
How did you go? If you spotted the errors immediately then ask a friend or colleague to read it. Tests show that most people get it wrong first time. Surprising, isn’t it?
The reason, as you may have guessed, is all down to one simple thing: our brain’s persistent and hard-wired preoccupation for taking short cuts.
When we look at a word, we tend to swallow it whole instead of taking each of its constituent components in turn. As a result, as long as the first and last letters remain the same, our refined cognitive palates are more than happy to swallow it down in one go as opposed to chewing it over.
This is the same when we hear someone talking. Most of the time, as long as we see the lips moving in synch and detect words coming out of their mouths, we are perfectly happy to let our brains flick over to autopilot and let whatever they happen to be saying go in one ear and out of the other.
Think about the last time you were genuinely surprised.
When I work with teams, I often put a picture of Susan Boyle on the screen and asked how many people recognised her. Nearly 80% acknowledge that they know of the Scottish singer who sprang to prominence on the stage of the TV talent show Britain’s Got Talent in 2009.
“Why,” I asked, “do you know who the person who came second on a show so many years ago is yet would struggle to recognise the numerous winners since?’
The most common answer to the question was Susan Boyle wasn’t what you expected. “She wasn’t as useless as I thought she’d be,” was the politest response.
Note the most important four words: Wasn’t what you expected.
Think of the great discoveries of our time – Columbus setting sail to the edge of a world some considered to be flat; Edison discovering light without heat; Wilbur and Orville Wright achieving the very first powered flight; Neil Armstrong setting foot on the Moon.
These were all achieved by people who refused to let their own horizons represent the limits of what can be achieved. In sporting terms, think how Dave Brailsford didn’t merely look at the world of cycling to recruit members of his support team, or how Clive Woodward utilised the best minds in business and education to help him create an elite culture in rugby.
Breakthroughs in sport have come from innovators. Think of Kevin Pietersen introducing the switch hit to international cricket, or Sonja Hennie winning the gold medal in figure skating at the 1928 Olympics by going out of the traditional skating ‘box’ and introducing ballet into her routine. Some have even given their game to an innovation: the Fosbury Flop in the high jump, the Cruyff Turn and the Panenka in football, and Federer’s SABR (Sneak Attack By Roger) in tennis. In other words, doing what wasn’t expected – not so much pushing the envelope as ignoring it.
Most people possess a model of the world, a script for how things should be. What stops innovation is the lack of willingness to double back and revisit our scripts and determine whether they are helpful or not. When I hear coaches respond to a defeat by declaring that they will work harder, I often wonder whether they are making the same mistake of thinking that simply shouting louder at someone who speaks a foreign language will make them understand the point any clearer. It’s not working harder but working smarter which is what double loop thinking requires us to do.
Radio 2 DJ Chris Evans recounts that he knew he was in professional trouble when his best friends were all on his payroll. “They were paid to laugh at my jokes,” he recalls. The best coaches resist the urge to run with the herd, recruiting people from outside their own areas of expertise and allowing them to challenge him. It is easy to run with the herd. Even on our most important issues of the day, we often adopt views of our friends, families and colleagues.
On some level, this makes sense: it is easier to fall in line with what your friends and family think than to find new family and friends. But running with the herd means we are quick to embrace the status quo, slow to change our minds and happy to delegate our thinking.
There is no obligation for you to agree with or do everything suggested in my work. While I wanted people to walk away having enjoyed the session and be able to apply the ideas directly to their life for immediate effect, I wanted to give more than just a set of prescriptions. I wanted to make people think.