| Prior to the Copernican Revolution of 1543, most people in the West attempted to explain what they saw in the heavens by trying to figure out how the sun, moon, and planets moved. They assumed the Earth was fixed and did not affect what they saw in the sky. But Copernicus argued that Earth motion was the key to understanding these phenomena. By allowing for the possibility that motion of the Earth might be contributing to the appearance of the heavens, Copernicus found that he could produce a far simpler description of the observed phenomena. This was a total revolution, in which the sun was placed at the center of the system and the Earth was seen as a moving body, influencing everything in our experience of the heavens. Education, including corporate training, stands on the precipice of just this kind of revolution. So far we have focused on the movements of information and circumstances outside of ourselves. When we learn, the focus goes to the information, how it moves, connects, describes. But what about the Self who learns this information? Does the learner move internally? And do those movements affect the way the information looks, how it is processed, and how it is applied? Modern cognitive science has answered in the affirmative. And this should come as no surprise if we attend to our own experience. We have all heard from a parent, friend, or lover, “It’s not what you said to me–it’s how you said it!” That qualitative aspect of thought and action is what this revolution is all about, and modern educators and trainers need to begin to incorporate these insights into their teaching methods if we want to fulfill more of our potential. The movements of the learner, her thoughts, speech, and reactions, have an indelible impact on how concepts will be assimilated, and how lasting that assimilation will be. There is one constant factor in every learning situation you have ever encountered, one thing common to every training, every class, every seminar, every life situation you have ever experienced: YOU. You take your Self with you everywhere you go, all of your conditioning, all of your reactions, all of your ideas and images. If we pay attention to what you do with yourself, how you direct your attention and your energy, it will create a revolution. Such a revolution will affect every aspect of our lives. Consider the medical field. Western medicine has astonished us with virtually miraculous advances. But when a patient goes in with back problems, most physicians still go outside of the patient, to drugs, surgeries, physical therapies, rest cures. We might want to begin looking at the movements of the patient, asking what the patient does to create such a condition, how the patient uses his back in a way that ends up harming it. This applies not only to back problems, but to almost anything, since a condition of overall well being might make one more resistant to everything from cancer to the common cold. The principle here makes great medical sense: How the patient uses his system will affect how well his system functions. The same principle applies to business training. When teaching negotiation, the best trainer will divide his time between negotiation on the one hand, and the negotiator on the other. If he fails to address how the negotiator uses herself, how she directs her attention and energy in the context of a negotiation, the trainer fails to optimize the potential benefits of the training. In a negotiation, what you do can make a difference, but how you do it can be decisive. Rarely if ever will a negotiation trainer ask to see how a trainee intends to apply a particular tactic or strategy. Instead, all the allotted time goes to laying out more tactics and strategies than one could possibly remember. And what happens when the negotiator finds himself out in the real world trying to figure out how to apply the tactics and strategies? The negotiator will tend to go wrong in one of several ways. First, the negotiator may have failed to grasp the concept. Or, perhaps she thinks she has understood, but in reality she has not. Second, she may have understood a certain tactic very clearly in an intellectual way, but in the context of a real negotiation she simply cannot see where to use it. In other words, she doesn’t see an opening, and so she cannot affect the negotiation. Third, she may understand the concept intellectually, and she sees an opening, but her manner of delivery (or her failure to deliver because of fear or other factors) causes the tactic or strategy to fall flat. We also must allow for the possibility that the negotiator simply does not want to try the tactic, a situation that often arises in the same ways outlined above. For example, the negotiator doesn’t understand the tactic, and so she simply says, “I don’t like it. I’m not going to use it.” All of these problems relate to the movements of the negotiator: her ideas, her reactions, and her ways of thinking and perceiving. If we fail to address the way a person directs his energy and his attention, we fail to optimize learning. It is extremely important to note that the consciousness and the reactions of the learner have as much influence after training as they do during it. No intelligent teacher wants his students to simply mimic him. Training is not an information upload. This is painfully true in negotiation training, because every negotiation is new. Reality demands a negotiator who can continue to learn. Hard and fast rules will not work. There is no flow-chart. There is no algorithm. There is no Hong Kong Book of Negotiation Kung-fu that lets you pick out moves guaranteed to win the day. Instead, the training setting needs to provide principles. In and of itself, that can be quite revolutionary. But the real revolution comes in showing the negotiator how his own perceptions, thoughts, and reactions can interfere will his ability to understand and effectively apply those principles in the chaotic contexts of real world negotiation. Only when the negotiator learns how to notice and control his habits and reactions can he ever do anything truly creative and intelligent in any life situation. |
| The Copernican Revolution in Corporate Training |