Learning From Experience

As it turns out, experience isn't always the best teacher

I teach in Teachers College, Columbia University, which was the academic home of John Dewey, one of our country’s most influential thinkers about how students learn. Dewey was against what has been called, “The banking model of education.” That model is based on the premise that teachers are in possession of a vast quantity of essential knowledge that students need to learn – the cash in the bank, so to speak – and that the goal of education, therefore, is to transfer the cash from the teacher to the student. Usually, this takes the form of teachers lecturing; explaining math or reading or history, highlighting what’s essential for students to remember and then testing students on whether they retained that knowledge. Dewey believed, and was later proven correct through research, that students retained a very tiny percentage of what they learned via the banking model. Once the test was over, students’ brains dumped the information they had memorized to make room for the next subject. Dewey called for a more experiential form of education, in which students were active participants in exercises and discussions that helped them to grasp the practical importance of what they were learning. Dewey believed that students’ emotions needed to be aroused to prepare the brain to receive information and associate it with their experiences, making the information stickier. He was right, of course, and now there is a whole field of adult education built on his principles. If you have ever attended an executive education program, you can see for yourself how different the pedagogy is from what you experienced in first grade. Unfortunately, first grade in most school systems remains unchanged despite Dewey’s influence, with the exception of Montessori schools, but the reason for that is a topic for someone else to tackle in their Substack posts.

A bit later, Jan Piaget, a Swiss psychologist, began studying how children learn. His work was carried on by others and crystallized famously by David Kolb in his study of learning styles. The theory underlying Kolb and Piaget’s work held that learning occurs in an experiential cycle. Action is taken, that action is reflected upon, sense is made of it, and new experiments are tried to test whether what has learned from the experience is true. The outcomes of the experiments, especially if not what one expected, triggers another cycle of learning.

So what does all this have to do with you?

The Center for Creative Leadership has conducted research that indicates that executives learn 70% of what they know from experience. 20 % of learning occurs by observing role models or learning from others, including peers and coaches. 10% is learned through formal education. You may approach learning differently but the general weighting of the approaches is usually correct; learning from our own experiences, not necessarily guided by the inputs of others, predominates. In my observation, this weighting becomes even more skewed toward experience as one’s career advances. Once we enter the C-suite or become CEO, there is less time for formal learning and less perceived need to have someone looking over our shoulder. The training wheels are off, and we’re riding at full speed.

So, what could be wrong with learning from experience? Unfortunately, plenty.

Incorrect conclusions. When we first learn something from experience, we may stop at the first thing that seems to work for us rather than continuing to experiment. We conclude that, “We have the answer” and need not go farther, even though we may have drawn an incorrect conclusion. Example? A leader who learns that shouting at people usually results in their compliance may have taken away an incorrect conclusion; that the way to get what you want from people is to intimidate them. Because it seems to work most of the time, the behavior becomes engrained. Learning stops there and other ways of leading that could inspire greater loyalty and a desire to go above and beyond on the part of subordinates are never explored.

Risk avoidance. If we fail at something publicly, it can be quite embarrassing and perhaps in some cases even career-limiting. Our takeaway? Don’t ever let that happen again! However, avoiding risks is probably not a recipe for success in the long run, because playing it safe may not be possible or wise in every situation. There are times as a leader when you need to be bold. In the uncertain world we live in, we need to be constantly experimenting and changing, trying out new things to see if we can improve our performance. Failure is an expected part of innovation; risk free breakthroughs are rare.

Comfort over goodness. When we gain influence in an organization, we have a tendency to use it to make ourselves more comfortable. We are free from rules being imposed by others, even if those rules exist for a reason. Research shows that teams that work together for long periods of time perform less well on novel tasks than teams that are recently formed. The reason for this is that over time, team members take up comfortable roles within the team which are not challenged by someone pointing out that the roles are not appropriate given the problem at hand. Example? The team facing a new situation turns to the boss to understand what should be done and the boss willingly provides direction, even though the boss knows as little about the situation as everyone else.

Projection. Things you have experienced in the past can carry over into the present, clouding your judgment by introducing elements in your current relationships that may not exist. Past dealings with private equity partners may make you wary of having conversations with new partners who are not at all like those you previously met. You may have found a way of dealing comfortably with direct reports of the opposite sex which don’t work at all with the individual in front of you now. While much of what we learn from experience is invaluable, there are times when it would be helpful to erase all that from our memory and start fresh when approaching a strategic challenge, new relationship or creative opportunity. We would at least give ourselves a chance of taking in all the information in front of us without bias before applying the old rules.

It’s often been said that it’s lonely at the top. What should be added is that it’s dangerous to be alone at the top. Leaders need others who are willing to provide them with direct and honest feedback to prevent them from applying mistaken learning from past experiences to new opportunities. Direct reports are not likely to take the risk, and board members or others outside are not close enough to weigh in. Spouses are close by and know you well but may not be the best source of guidance on business matters. Some CEOs cultivate relationships with their chief of staff or COO to reach agreements on when and how they can pull the CEO aside to share their observations. However you choose to do it, it will be worth its weight in gold if it prevents you from learning the wrong thing from experience again.