How to Facilitate Deep Learning

We all know change is hard, especially real change, that shift your paradigms change, that learn to think/act/feel in different ways change. That kind of change is really, really hard - both for organizations and individuals. 

So how do we do it? How do we change in deep ways? How can we facilitate deep change in ourselves or others?

No one knows for sure; there’s no irrefutable, evidence-based method to facilitate deep change. In fact, Kegan and Lahey (2009) suggest that most organizations and people have a built in “Immunity to Change." However, in Jon Wergin’s brand new book, Deep Learning in a Disorienting World (2020), he lays out an evidenced-based theoretical model for deep change. It’s just a model at this point, but it jives with what I’ve been reading from other scholars like Edmondson (psychological safety), Heifetz (adaptive leadership), Schein (culture change), Senge (learning communities), and Bandura (social learning).

Here’s a super brief summary of Wergin’s model of deep learning. 

• First, we must experience constructive disorientation. The origin of this disequilibrium may be a disorienting dilemma, a moving aesthetic experience, or mindful critical reflection. However, the critical component is that the disorientation hits the sweet spot between overcoming inertia and being so threatening as to arouse intense defense mechanisms. It has to motivate us to change without making us want to run for the hills. 
• Second, we have a safe social space for dialog and reflection. Psychological safety is a fundamental prerequisite of learning, and social interaction seems to be a requirement for deep change. Put that together, we have to have some people we really trust who will help us reflect on our disorientation while balancing both challenge and support. 
• Third, we engage in critical reflection. In dialog with our support community, we move through repeated cycles of action and reflection. We engage new skills and ideas in a constantly shifting context, and we withdraw to reflect alone and in our safe social space. Wash, rinse, repeat. In the process, we confront new ideas of how the world works, how we work in the world, and how others work, and we are all transformed together. 

That’s it. Well, that’s an oversimplification of Wergin’s model for deep learning, but hopefully it sets the stage. I look forward to helping investigate this further. 

What do you think? How have you experienced disruptive orientation? Did you have a safe social space to help you engage in critical reflection? What kinds of deep learning did that empower for you?