INSIGHT
WHAT THE MAVERICKS
CAN TEACH BUSINESS
Professor Damian Hughes combines his practical and academic background within sport and change
psychology to work as an adviser to the business and sporting elite, specialising in the creation of
high performing cultures. Here he highlights the importance of making people think, or what he
calls Double Loop Learning…
❝
LISTENING
IS TO HEARING WHAT SEEING
IS TO LOOKING
L
et’s start with a simple test.
Check this out: below are
some words.
Read them in your usual way first.
❞
I
love
Paris in the
the springtime
You that read wrong.
You read that wrong too.
How did you go? If you spotted the
errors immediately then ask a friend
or colleague to read it. Tests show that
most people get it wrong first time.
Surprising, isn’t it?
The reason, as you may have
guessed, is all down to one simple
thing: our brain’s persistent and
hard-wired preoccupation for taking
short cuts.
When we look at a word, we tend
to swallow it whole instead of taking
each of its constituent components in
turn. As a result, as long as the first
and last letters remain the same, our
refined cognitive palates are more
than happy to swallow it down in one
Dick Fosbury does it his way in
1967 (AP/AP/Press Association Images)
go as opposed to chewing it over.
This is the same when we hear
someone talking. Most of the time, as
long as we see the lips moving in synch
and detect words coming out of their
mouths, we are perfectly happy to let
our brains flick over to autopilot and
let whatever they happen to be saying
go in one ear and out of the other.
Think about the last time you were
genuinely surprised.
When I work with teams, I often
put a picture of Susan Boyle on
the screen and asked how many
people recognised her. Nearly 80%
acknowledge that they know of
the Scottish singer who sprang to
prominence on the stage of the TV
talent show Britain’s Got Talent in 2009.
“Why,” I asked, “do you know who
the person who came second on a
show so many years ago is yet would
struggle to recognise the numerous
winners since?’
SME
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