What our nervous system has to do with learning
Today, I experience similar structures in organizations as I did at school (and I didn’t like being there). “Lifelong learning” is part of every second corporate strategy, but permanent time pressure, which leaves no room, prevents precisely this. Learning culture is preached and yet all that is achieved is the prevention of learning.
Our nervous system decides whether we can learn, long before our head plays along.
The sweet spot: Not too light, not too heavy
We learn best in a narrow range between under- and overload:
Too easy? Boring. The brain switches off.
Too heavy? Overstraining. The nervous system switches to alarm.
Just right? Challenging, but feasible. With safety in the background.
This sweet spot is different for everyone and it shifts depending on the day, context and prior knowledge.
What this means for organizations
If we want people to learn and develop, we must stop just talking about it and start creating conditions.
Safety before speed
Permanent time pressure activates stress and nobody learns under constant stress. People just function or break down.
What to do instead: Plan buffer times. Create spaces for reflection. See deceleration as an advantage.
Psychological safety as a management task
Teams in which people feel safe learn faster and are more innovative.
This means:
- Treat mistakes as learning opportunities
- Asking questions instead of providing answers
- Exemplify vulnerability
- Actively demand different perspectives
Underchallenge is just as harmful
People who work below their capabilities switch off. Boredom is also a form of stress, only much more subtle. The real art is therefore to design tasks in such a way that they are challenging but not overwhelming.
Culture beats training
All the training in the world won’t help if the culture prevents learning. When ignorance is seen as a weakness, hierarchy is more important than competence and control is more important than trust.
Three exciting questions that organizations can ask themselves:
- How safe do people really feel in our country? (Not: What do our values say, but: What do people experience every day?)
- Where do we systematically create excessive or insufficient demands? (And: How different is it for different people?)
- What would happen if learning was more important than performance? (Even just for a week, as an experiment.)
