Problem 4: It’s too relaxed

As part of the launch of The Impactful Executive, Dr Ali Monadjem and I have launched a newsletter focused on the topics of organizational health and performance. Over eight weeks on this site, I will post the previous eight articles from that newsletter, an 8-part series on the problems and solutions with corporate training and professional development in 2024.

The introduction to the series can be found here

If you'd like to read the whole thing now, please go to https://newsletter.impactfulexec.com/

Corporate training is a $300 billion global industry, but much of the training offered is ineffective. Over six weeks, I am detailing six reasons I’ve seen for that ineffectiveness, and how they can be addressed.

Today’s focus…

Problem 4: It’s too relaxed

It is 1 hour before Game 7 of the 1962 NBA Finals, between the Boston Celtics and the Los Angeles Lakers, and things are tense. Facing elimination, the defending champion Celtics had gone to Los Angeles and pulled out Game 6 to even the series at 3 games apiece, setting up a winner-take-all grudge match back in Boston.

And now Bill Russell, the Celtics’ best player, is in the bathroom, throwing up.

You would expect his teammates and coaches to be terrified. It is the biggest game of the season! How can they win with their best player so ill that he is vomiting ahead of the game?! What will they do?!

Except, no one is concerned at all. If anything, they are relieved. After all, this is not at all unusual for Russell, who becomes so nervous and stressed that he does this before every big game. So when they hear him vomiting, no one is concerned—they know he is ready to go.

Russell goes on to submit the greatest Game 7 performance in NBA Finals history: 30 points and an NBA Finals record 40 rebounds. He wins a do-or-die game once again—over the course of his basketball career he will go on to go 22-0 in such games, a record no one has approached since.

So I guess the nerves and stress didn’t hold him back too much.

In fact, for all the ink spilled over the years about the negative health impacts of stress, there exists in parallel a body of research showing that some stress—short, acute, intense feelings of stress and anxiety–can lead to increased performance and personal growth.

As this article from the Harvard Business Review puts it, “Think about a time when you experienced substantial personal or professional growth, or a time when you performed at your highest level…we are willing to bet that those times invariably involved some stress or struggle.”

Recall the feeling you have before a big presentation, or a meeting with a demanding client or boss, or a high-stakes sales call. We feel nervous, but also locked in, in a way that allows us to perform at our best. This type of stress is called “eustress,” and is quite different from the “distress” that causes long-term negative health outcomes. But in the short term, it can often feel similar.

Now, think about your last professional development session at work. Did you feel any eustress? If you’re like most people, the answer is no. We normally view PD as the lowest of low stakes. It is like a pass-fail class in school that everyone passes, taught by nothing but a series of substitute teachers. If the session is remote, we frequently multitask. If in person, our minds wander. We are rarely, if ever, required to step out of our comfort zone. We leave feeling positive about ourselves and about the session, without having to go through any pain or struggle.

Sadly, this is not how learning and adaptation works. When we want our muscles to grow stronger, we have to put them under stress (through lifting weights, for example), then give them a break to recover and adapt. Perhaps some companies reason that the real learning takes place during our daily work, and the PD sessions are a chance for employees to relax and allow the adaptation to take place. If that is the case, though, companies might be better suited providing regular mandatory vacation time, which would surely be more effective if the goal is relaxation.

If the goal is learning, however, our professional development cannot be so relaxed. Effective learning only happens when we step out of our comfort zone, into what is called our “zone of proximal development,” and diligently attempt things that we are unable to do on our own.

In the 1980s, cognitive researchers Michael Shayer and Philip Adey developed the “Cognitive Acceleration” learning methodology, which proved to improve the cognitive functioning and abstract reasoning of British children, leading to improved performance across content areas. The key to this method? “Cognitive conflict,” a term Shayer developed to refer to the state in which our current understanding of the world is inadequate to address the challenge we’re presented, forcing us to adapt. (Note that this is not the same as “cognitive dissonance,” which refers to holding two contradictory beliefs at the same time—though the terms are sometimes confused)

This, too, is not easy. As learning scientist Robert Coe succinctly put it, “Learning happens when people think hard.”

And how hard is your professional development session requiring you to think? What are the stakes? Where is the accountability? Where is the stress?

For those thinking about developing people, these are important questions. If your sessions are as relaxed as most, figure out a way to ramp up the intensity.

I’m not saying your employees should be so nervous they’re vomiting before PD sessions…but I’m not not saying that, either. (Just kidding. I am, in fact, not saying that.)