We live in a world where one of the undeniable laws of nature is growth. Traditionally, we think ... more We live in a world where one of the undeniable laws of nature is growth. Traditionally, we think that "growing as a person" means adding new insights to what we have already learned. Most people would imagine a ‘steep learning curve’ as a curve leading to the top right-hand corner of a graph. However, in some situations, successful learning curves point rather to the bottom-left corner or zigzag or resemble a circular image much like Kolb’s learning circle of conceptualization, action and reflection. Information and knowledge, whether generated externally or internally within a person, are subjected to perceptual filters made up of a person’s norms, beliefs, expectations and worldview and manifest themselves as deeply ingrained and unique, individual routines ('ways of doing’). These influence what information and knowledge the individual ultimately attends to and ultimately accepts ('ways of being’). The Australian psychologist and coach Alan Sieler calls this way of being ‘ontology’: the combination of our emotions, our body, and our language. In this article we want to examine how ‘unlearning’ eventually leads to growth. In some contexts one is better off focusing on reconditioning old patterns before adding new learning. Take a computer as an analogy where in some situations, an old program has to be removed first, before a newly installed program can work efficiently. In the case of a virus scan, the old scan will slow down the new one. A field which we will draw most analogies from in this article is the field of criminology, particularly restorative justice within that field. A criminologist works with victims or crime perpetrators and helps them to unlearn destructive beliefs, destructive emotions and destructive behaviours before proceeding to embed new ways of ‘doing’ and ‘being’. We will examine what organisations can learn from this field.
We live in a world where one of the undeniable laws of nature is growth. Traditionally, we think ... more We live in a world where one of the undeniable laws of nature is growth. Traditionally, we think that "growing as a person" means adding new insights to what we have already learned. Most people would imagine a ‘steep learning curve’ as a curve leading to the top right-hand corner of a graph. However, in some situations, successful learning curves point rather to the bottom-left corner or zigzag or resemble a circular image much like Kolb’s learning circle of conceptualization, action and reflection. Information and knowledge, whether generated externally or internally within a person, are subjected to perceptual filters made up of a person’s norms, beliefs, expectations and worldview and manifest themselves as deeply ingrained and unique, individual routines ('ways of doing’). These influence what information and knowledge the individual ultimately attends to and ultimately accepts ('ways of being’). The Australian psychologist and coach Alan Sieler calls this way of being ‘ontology’: the combination of our emotions, our body, and our language. In this article we want to examine how ‘unlearning’ eventually leads to growth. In some contexts one is better off focusing on reconditioning old patterns before adding new learning. Take a computer as an analogy where in some situations, an old program has to be removed first, before a newly installed program can work efficiently. In the case of a virus scan, the old scan will slow down the new one. A field which we will draw most analogies from in this article is the field of criminology, particularly restorative justice within that field. A criminologist works with victims or crime perpetrators and helps them to unlearn destructive beliefs, destructive emotions and destructive behaviours before proceeding to embed new ways of ‘doing’ and ‘being’. We will examine what organisations can learn from this field.
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Papers by Heike Wabbels