Where your g-spot is ... and why this matters....

Where your g-spot is ... and why this matters....

It all started with a simple enough question: how do you learn and remember? You know, actually learn – acquire knowledge and develop skill in a way that enables you to summon them on demand and utilize them impactfully – not just be entertained by an interesting subject and then have these moments of insight fade into never again. After all, what matters most is not so much what we learn but what we retain, and not so much what we know but what we can do with what we know.

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Which is why I was intrigued by a recent article entitled “Integrating the Science of How We Learn into Education Technology” by Stephen M. Kosslyn: as the author notes, there is more than a century-long trove of research to identify “how humans learn and remember.” The short answer?

The more intensively we process information, the more likely we are to remember it.

Technically known as “deep processing,” the author observes that…

The mere act of paying attention and deeply thinking something through leads you to remember it. Much of what we remember is simply a byproduct of having paid attention and having thought about something.

But we think about a lot of things, don’t we? In fact, for far too many of us, it doesn’t seem that we can ever stop thinking and can never quite quiet our minds to focus as much as we would like.

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(After all, in addition to getting this behind-schedule major project finished by week’s end, we have to stop by the store and get dinner for tomorrow night because our uncle-in-law is in town and the oldest kid has a recital this weekend while the youngest had her Tuesday practice switched to Thursday, or is it Wednesday, this week and we haven’t quite yet figured out who’s going to get the dog to the vet, right? Whose life and mind don’t really work like this? But I digress….)

But we must get beyond the reality of the near-constant miasma in our minds if we truly want to learn something, to develop our knowledge and skill so that we can be more impactful in our chosen commitments and contributions. As Dr. Kosslyn notes…

This general property of our brains implies that if we want people to learn something, we should induce them to focus on it and consider its nature and implications.

Fair enough, but how, exactly, does one do this? Well, it turns out that there are many potential methods, and one of the most effective is called the “Principle of Desirable Difficulty”…

which states that people learn best when challenged not so much so that they get frustrated, and not so little that they are bored – but rather at just the right level, the so-called “Goldilocks Spot.”

(Now you know the reason for the title of this piece, which, clearly, is not in any way prurient.…)

Where is your “Goldilocks (or G-)Spot”? At what pace and depth of information sharing are you induced “to pay attention as much as (you) can, thereby enhancing the amount of learning”? It turns out that if you want to develop yourself, knowing where your G-Spot is really matters.…

What’s the problem with this? Simply that “What counts as the ‘just right’ level of challenge differs for different people” and, even more confounding, that “What counts as the right level varies for the same person, depending on the subject matter.”

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Think about it: if you’ve always had a gift for math, but have found the subtleties of British literature challenging, don’t you need a different mix of pace and profundity to address these different domains? And what would your brother, who seems to have the contrasting capacities to yours, need in this respect? (Yes, even in middle age, he’s still annoying when he waxes rhapsodic about Austen or Bronte or, God forbid, Dickens vs. George Eliot! But I digress….)

In other words, your G-Spot is not my G-Spot, generally speaking, except for the few subjects in which we have comparable expertise and, for both of us, it moves depending on the area of exploration in which we’re engaged. No wonder it’s so hard to get great: the target (i.e., the G-Spot) keeps moving.…

So, how can we leverage this knowledge to help us learn better and retain more? The author suggests three tech-enabled strategies:

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First, what if you gave yourself a brief quiz after every time you encountered a new subject or delved more deeply into one with which you are familiar? Then you’d be able to measure your understanding and retention in real time and track this over time.

Second, consider engaging in active learning – “such as group problem-solving, role playing, and debate,” the author observes – as this “has been shown repeatedly to be a very effective way to learn, in part because it induces deep processing.” (Of course, if you address multiple topics, you should vary the composition of the small groups in these exercises both to leverage the advantages of diversity and to avoid the pitfall of potential groupthink.)

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Third, consider taking a “multilayered” approach that considers the subject from different/multiple perspectives (like, say, when analyzing social relations, examining the experiences of different groups from their own perspectives and/or examining the institutional structures and what these imply about the shared and/or unique values of the respective groups, etc.)

Wait a minute, where’s the tech in any of the above, you ask? Well, conceptually, technology could be used to record and analyze your performance on the brief quizzes that you give yourself, thereby enabling you to understand your learning pattern more acutely (as the data will make clear the parts that come easily to you and those that don’t, etc.). In this way, a trove of personal data can be developed that will enable you to fine-tune your learning strategy over time.

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Further, in an active or group learning situation, data collection and analysis can identify not only individual patterns but those for the group as a whole. For example, when we studied the three branches of the US federal government, which did Jorge grasp more clearly versus, say, Tatiana, and how would the group leader utilize this data to help both of them achieve mastery of the subject (though likely in different ways/via different, personalized approaches)? Etc.

So, with tech or without it, studying how we learn – finding our individual and, for teams, collective G-Spots – matters greatly in helping us to learn continually and effectively. How could this play out for an executive leader in the real world?

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Well, for starters, it should be clear that not everyone on her team is going to get enough benefit from a purely lecture-based approach. (And even during that lecture, invariably, some members of her team will be more visual learners, so what additional instructional tools should she incorporate to reach and empower them?) Also, what portion of the chosen topic should be studied in an active learning mode? (And, if there are multiple facets of this topic, should she switch up the small groups when examining different aspects of it?) Further, are there some quizzes or other assessment exercises that will enable her to analyze which members of her team are assimilating which components of the expertise that she’s leading them to build? (And, can she collect this information in a way that enables her to follow up group sessions with individual data-driven coaching sessions that can both reinforce and drive this learning and expertise development deeper?) Etc.

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By way of personal example (and as a bit of a disclaimer), let me share that I’ve always been one of those sit-in-the-front-row-of-the-class, lecture-receptive learners. (And, no, I didn’t sit up front just to be the teacher’s pet; I’m actually profoundly near-sighted.) But when I entered the professional realm and became a leader responsible for developing others (read = helping them to learn and then leverage this learning in organizationally beneficial ways) I realized that not everyone was as responsive to this approach, so I had to teach myself to learn to share and provide developmental guidance differently … and, actually, in a more diverse way.

I was greatly enabled in this by the wisdom of a former peer and leader of mine who observed that if you want to chop down a tree you can’t just swing the ax to land on the same spot and in the same way repeatedly, or it will get stuck there. By contrast, if you vary the angle of the ax and chop at the tree in the same general area but from slightly different planes, you’ll accomplish the job successfully in a far more efficient way.

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So, in fulfilling your responsibility to develop yourself and/or your team continually, what are the handful of different approaches – that is, the different angles of the ax – that you can take in doing so? If you don’t yet know, your first task is to figure this out and, in the end, to develop a diversity of information sharing and skill development capabilities in order to fulfill this cardinal responsibility.

(Note: It’s also important to acknowledge that you can’t teach what you haven’t mastered, so in some cases you’ll have to bring in other/outside experts to do so with your team. Although many consider this a defensive strategy because it helps cover for your knowledge and skill gaps, I’d like to propose an alternate and even opposite take: what if, as one of the multiple strategies that you use to develop your team, you choose proactively to bring in outside experts from time to time? In this way, not only can you be assured that your team is developed in all of the mission-critical ways for which you’re accountable, but it can also establish the correct perspective that you as a leader and your organization support your people fully and will provide them access to whatever tools they need to accomplish your shared mission. And this has the added benefit of having them hear a consistent message from multiple speakers and perspectives, which tends to reinforce their embrace of it while addressing the “prophet in a foreign land” reality successfully.)

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Among the ways that I’ve learned to approach the development of teams that I’ve led are:

  • To vary the types of learning modules during our gatherings, including having a mixture of large group, lecture-based segments along with small group, active learning exercises; having a mixture of strategic skill-focused activities and tactical skill development ones; and having meetings where developmental segments were interspersed within a broader agenda as well as meetings that were solely developmental in focus.
  • To vary the leaders of these learning modules, because even though it’s important for me to serve as the lead instructor in developmental efforts with my team (both to establish my personal expertise as well as to demonstrate my direct commitment to an engagement in my colleagues’ development), I also invited members of my team to lead modules on topics in which they had deep expertise (again, both to establish their bona fides with their peers as well as to provide them an opportunity to develop themselves in a leadership role with the larger group) as well as ‘outside’ speakers (that is, from outside our group, though they may have been internal or external to the organization itself) both to provide a diversity of perspective as well as to demonstrate alignment on our chosen areas of strategic focus.
  • To vary the format of learning exercises, so that in some instances this takes the form of lecture-based deep dives into various topics of strategic importance (often followed by a quiz to assess how much of the content has actually been retained in the moment) or of action learning, small group examinations of various topics followed by reporting to and debate within the larger group, or of actual games (and especially board games) that are specifically designed to develop and hone expertise in a particular domain.

This diverse set of approaches (i.e., different angles of the proverbial developmental ax) has been very beneficial to me as an executive leader in my efforts to develop those for whom I’m responsible. It also has proven quite effective: surveys – including those taken immediately after developmental sessions as well as those taken periodically in a broader organizational context – have shown that my team members have responded well – that is, they both developed the expertise that I sought to have imparted (as demonstrated in our superior organizational performance over time) as well as enjoyed the experience of doing so – and benefited from this diversity of approach.

So, what tools are you going to develop and utilize in the discharge of your personal and organizational developmental responsibilities? I can assure you that the greater clarity you have on this, the more impactful you will be….

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Now that we’ve studied how we learn as well as how we can structure the learning process to be more effective and impactful, how will you utilize this knowledge to develop yourself and/or those for whom you are responsible?

In the end, if you’ve learned something and enjoyed the experience of reading this piece, that’s a good thing but, truthfully, of little significance from a developmental perspective. In essence, if this is the case, this piece will be yet another experience of “infotainment” that certainly won’t hurt you but can’t help you much, either (because you won’t retain what you’ve learned).

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By contrast, if this piece has encouraged you to review your learning style thoughtfully as well as to identify several methods to enhance the yield of your developmental efforts, then you actually have learned and retained something in a way that’s truly valuable. Effectively, you’ve invested your time well in your own development and have enhanced knowledge and skill (i.e., expertise) to show for it. Bravo!

Now what can you do to leverage this expertise both for your benefit and that of those for whom you’re responsible? In sum, how are you going to pay forward this progress so that it continues to provide benefit to yourself and others? Therein lies both the secret of your future success as well as the key to it. Now that you’re clear on where your G-Spot is, commit to doing two things: visit and enjoy it as often as possible – continually, in fact – and help others find theirs and do the same.…

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(Photo credits: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/benjamin_franklin_383997; https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/john_f_kennedy_130752; https://bebrainfit.com/how-to-concentrate/; https://nickgrantham.com/goldilocks-penrose-steps-and-shouty-pts/; https://www.bottomlineperformance.com/will-corporate-learners-remember-training/; https://newyorkschooltalk.org/2017/02/teachers-decide-students-learn-day-can-better/; https://www.pinterest.com/pin/513551163740946911/visual-search/?cropSource=6&h=264&w=376&x=12&y=10; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeY59Q7AJPQ; https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TeachersPet; https://2rdrtx4bt29lo91s31mjhkji-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Advanced-ax-skills-chopping-felling-limbing-tree-wood-log-blade-tool-11.jpg; https://elearningart.com/blog/elearning-quotes/; https://elearningart.com/blog/elearning-quotes/; https://www.mcgill.ca/osd/channels/event/how-do-i-learn-best-webinar-284238; https://www.advantageperformance.com/insights-leadership/page/8/)

Amy Wallin

CEO at Linked VA

5 年

Great article Walter, you've outdone yourself!

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