finish the homework

Screen 1- Unit 5 Presentation

The power of the reflective question

Screen 2- Reflection Involves

• Recalling (salient details of) your experience.

• Thinking about it (ideally, deeply and at length).

• Evaluating it (in light of your existing knowledge and intensions) and integrating it (into your existing conceptual frameworks of understanding). (Boud, Keogh and Walker, 1985)

Patterns of Reflection

1. Surface reflection (single-loop learning)

2. Deep reflection (double-loop learning)

Screen 3- 1.Surface Reflection (AKA Single-Loop Learning)

Surface reflection focused on our action’s technical consequences and how we learn to make things better. Observing- Reflecting- Deciding- Doing- Back to Observing.

Single-loop learning is an analytic problem solving activity; the energy for change comes from attempting to get away from an undesirable aspect of current reality (that is, make the problem go away). (Senge, 1990, p. 9)

Surface Reflection Questions

• What happened?

• What actions were taken?

• How did people respond?

• What were the consequences?

• How can I apply what I learned? (Wei & Yip, 2008)

The Surface Reflection Model of Managing

• Surface reflection produces a problem-solution model where “we encounter problems, and as managers, we are expected to solve them as quickly as possible.”

• Adaptive “problems rarely remain solved, … [and our] solutions often feedback to create other problems, or even a repeat of the same problem.”

• There is often a feedback delay that “creates a series of problem-solution cycles” and traps organizations in an endless firefighting pattern. (Kim, 1993)

“We create the problems we see by the way we view reality, and how we articulate those problems can determine the future direction of our reality.

To break out of the ‘problem-solution’ model of reality, we need to go back one step further to re-examine the question, ’How did we distill out of this vast pool of life a particular problem which led us to act a certain way?’” (Kim, 1993)

Screen 4- 2.Deep Reflection (AKA Double-Loop Learning)

Deep reflection focuses on our action’s practical consequences and how to make decisions better.

Double-loop learning is a problem generating activity; we create energy for problem-solving by juxtaposing our vision with current reality (that is, we create a healthy dissatisfaction with the status quo). (Senge, 1990, p. 9)

Deep Reflection Questions

• What did I learn about myself?

• What beliefs or values impacted my interpretation of this situation?

• What seems to be the root cause of problem?

• What are the broader issues that need to be addressed to make things better?

• What might I think differently in future situations? (Wei & Yip, 2008)

Screen 5- Ladder of Inference Reflection Tool

Deep reflection skills involve slowing down our thinking processes and becoming more aware of the leaps of abstraction that we make. All of our thinking is an abstraction of our experience of the real world. We leap to (higher) abstractions when we move from the actual data of our experience of the real world to an attribution or generalization about what happened without testing. Our leaps of abstraction happen because we think so quickly, but this often impedes learning because we make generalizations too quickly.

Screen 6- Simplified Ladder of Inference

Life situations ↓

Select: Data

Make: Assumptions

Draw: Conclusions

↑Take: Actions

Becoming aware of the way our problems are a product of our own thinking can open our eyes to a whole new world of possibilities.

Screen 7- Why Should we Value Diversity?

• The reflexive loop suggests each person has a completely unique perspective on the world.

• The paradigm-creating loop is a world-creating loop.

• Each of us lives in an entirely unique world.

• Valuing diversity allows us to access what each unique world has to offer. Having a diverse set of such worlds can create new possibilities and innovations that would otherwise not emerge. (Kim, 1993)

Action learning is a simple yet powerful process that allows teams to leverage this value of diversity.

The Critical Elements of Collective Learning

• Tacit knowledge (K1) – much of what we know is “silent” knowledge embodied within the knower.

• Explicit knowledge (K2) – what we learn from others is the “expressed” knowledge shared by a knower.

• Tacit-explicit-tacit cycle – the knower’s embodied knowledge is externalized, then, internalized.

• Self-transcending knowledge (K3) – the knower’s source of knowing (not-yet-embodied knowledge)

Screen 8- Conversation is our primary vehicle for sharing our individual learning.

Two Dimensions of Learning Conversations

• Inquiry: Involves asking questions and “listening with the intention of genuinely understanding” (p. 4)

• Advocacy: Involves taking a position and “explaining one’s own point of view” (p. 4) (Ancona, Malone, Orlikowski, & Senge, 2007)

Advocacy

• Western education & leadership stresses:

• critical thinking - critiquing

• testing a viewpoint against others to find the strongest

• We tend to focus almost exclusively on advocacy:

• presenting our views and arguing strongly for them

• debating forcefully to influence others

• We train leaders and managers to be advocates

Inquiry

• Seeks to uncover why a view is held.

• Asks questions about underlying assumptions, beliefs, reasoning by exploring questions, such as:

• Why do you believe this?

• What logic leads to this conclusion?

• What facts and data do you have?

• What examples exists ?

• Motive is to understand, explore, learn, expand.

• Not about cross examining people or finding fault.

Screen 9- Shared Learning Requires Balancing Advocacy & Inquiry

Why? There are Limitations to the Exclusive use of Each Approach

• High Advocacy: When there is a high degree of advocacy and little inquiry, people are unable to learn about the nature of their differences.

• High Inquiry: When there is a high degree of inquiry, but low advocacy, it is difficult for people to know where the other person stands, and the lack of progress can lead to frustration and impatience.

Screen 10- Using the Ladder of Inference to Balance Advocacy and Inquiry

Opening Up Your Position to Testing by Others

• Advocacy is how we take a position; it involves you sharing how you have moved up the ladder.

4. Based on my conclusion, we should take this action

3. Based on my assumptions, I made this conclusion

2. I made these assumptions about the data

1. This is my data (my experience, what someone said, etc.)

Helping Others Surface Their Assumptions and Data

• Inquiry allows us to question; it involves taking the other person down the ladder under their position.

1. What actions did you take?

2. What conclusions lead you to take those actions?

3. What assumptions lead you to make those conclusions?

4. What data informed your conclusions?

Screen 11- Balancing Advocacy and Inquiry in Action Learning

The aim of the action learning rule: “statements only in response to questions” is to help bring inquiry into balance with advocacy.

Asking Questions Open vs Closed Questions

• Closed: Did you make your sales goal?

• Open: How have sales been going?

Open-ended Questions

• Invite people to expand on ideas and explore what’s important to them.

• Encourage self-reflection and problem solving.

Useful Phrases

• What do you think about…?

• Could you say more about…?

• What possibilities come to mind?

• What do you think about…?

• What have you tried before…?

• I invite you to consider…

Screen 12- Exploring Questions

• Can that be done in any other way?

• What other options can we think of?

• What resources have we never used?

• What do we expect to happen if we do that?

• What would happen if we do nothing at all?

• What is stopping us?