{"id":29668,"date":"2022-11-27T19:36:37","date_gmt":"2022-11-28T03:36:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=29668"},"modified":"2022-11-27T19:42:26","modified_gmt":"2022-11-28T03:42:26","slug":"serendipity-strikes-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/serendipity-strikes-again\/","title":{"rendered":"“Serendipity” Strikes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Imagine my dismay when I sat down to write this blog post and realized I read the wrong book for the week\u2019s assignment. I was prepared to write about <\/span>Tempered Resilience <\/span><\/i>by Tod Boslinger\u00a0<\/span>only to discover I actually needed to read Leadersmithing<\/em><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/i>by Eve Poole<\/span>. After a few choice words and a very late night, I sat in wonder as I realized that BOTH of these books were pivotal resources for my doctoral portfolio project about developing resilience in early adolescent girls alongside their primary female influencers. It wasn\u2019t an accident that I read Tempered Resilience<\/em> first. In fact, had I not been reflecting on the importance of learning through experience–the primary focus of Tempered Resilience<\/em>, I would not have been quite as attuned to the problem that Leadersmithing<\/em> ended up answering for me. [1]<\/span><\/p>\n

In Leadersmithing<\/em>, Poole shares the research she conducted in 2003 by asking board level leaders two questions: 1) What do you know now as a leader that you had known ten years ago and 2) How did you learn this valuable lesson? [2] The answers to these questions were developed into 17 critical incidents that a leader must master in order to feel confident their position. In addition to describing each of these incidents, Poole explains the unique method the Ashridge team uses to teach leaders these very skills. It is this incredible learning technique that has begun to answer the following question I uncovered in my NPO research about teaching resilience skills to early adolescent girls.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

How does one actually teach resilience?<\/b><\/p>\n

Reslience, or the ability to \u201cbounce back\u201d from stressful situations is a learned skill that must be experientially developed. In essence, it is the\u00a0<\/span>ability to experience the stress response (fight, flight, freeze or fawn) and consciously choose another, more helpful path. But how do you proactively teach a skill that must be experienced rather than acquired through intellect? This is the dilemma I’ve been weighing in my mind.\u00a0<\/span>You can imagine my surprise (and delight) when Poole describes how she and her team came up with the idea of using simulation to teach leaders. She writes,\u00a0<\/span>\u201cThe core learning objective of the simulation is about templating. It is designed to give leaders \u2018muscle memory’ about these archetypal leadership activities, such that their bodies instinctively know how to do them. This means that when they have to perform any of these activities in their real work they feel resourced to do so.” [3]<\/span><\/p>\n

Poole was already doing for leaders exactly what I hope to do for early-adolescent girls and their primary female caregivers!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Prior to reading Leadersmithing<\/em>, I had tacit knowledge that experiential learning was going to be a key part of equipping early adolescent girls to thrive, but Poole explained it in a way that has given me explicit knowledge. In chapter 2, she answers the question \u201chow do leaders learn?\u201dAnd guess what? It\u2019s the very same way early adolescent girls (and all people) learn. She explains that when we are in a situation that is stressful, our amygdala (the reptilian, survival instinct) part of our brain takes over the rational, deep thinking part of the brain. Kahneman would describe it as System 1 defaulting over System 2. [4] System 1 relies on related experiences from the past to generate a seemingly automatic response. And if System 1 doesn\u2019t have positive, helpful experiences to draw upon, it will stay stuck in one of the default stress responses –exactly what we want to avoid. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What does this mean in practical terms when it comes to learning?<\/strong> <\/span><\/p>\n

It simply means we need to provide system 1 with positive experiences of dealing with this stress, so it knows how to respond when the stress is experienced. Poole implements this as part of training leaders by simulating experiences, having leaders react to them in real time and then debriefing their response. A bonus to this method of instruction is that when people are\u00a0placed in a stress-filled situation (as measured by an increase in heart rate), the learning that they \u00a0experience in that state actually makes a bigger impact on retention and recall than when there is no stress experienced.<\/span><\/p>\n

Unfortunately for me, Poole and the Ashridge team require the participants in their leadership simulations to be sworn to secrecy about their experiences. In visiting the site to learn more (and hopefully see an example of a simulation), there were plenty of positive reviews, but little to no insight into how the simulations are created or conducted. [5] From the testimonies and website copy, I deduced that actors present a scenario on video and the learner has to respond to the situation, but I would love to learn more about the specifics of the simulation training. <\/span><\/p>\n

To dig deeper and explore how this approach could influence the solution to my NPO, I plan to do the following:<\/strong><\/p>\n