0.1 Part 2: why mental models are difficult to change  (Page 5/5)

Lever 1: reason - Reason involves using logic, analogies, and other rational processes to persuade others to consider new ideas. Rational explanations create a foundation for persuasive communication because they answer the question “Why should I change my mind?”

Lever 2: research – The “Lever 1: reason” should always be backed up with data from research. Data offers proof of concept and they also answer the question “Why should I change my mind?”

Lever 3: resonance – Although reason and research create the foundation for persuasive communication, most people make their final decisions about changing their minds based on how they feel about a new idea. Resonance is about communicating with people at the “feeling” or intuitive level. While reason and research may be solid, that will be insufficient for changing people’s minds if they do not care about what you want them to consider. It is not enough to convince people that they should open their minds to new ideas—they must also be inspired to open their minds.

Structuring communication to resonate with people is not limited to the content of the message. The people delivering the message must also resonate with the audience. It is very important to engage the service of “messengers” who are likeable, credible, and who have a common bond with the audience.

Lever 4: representational re-descriptions – This is Gardner’s way of saying that you need to present information in a number of different ways using different media. Unknowingly, many advocates of transformational change structure their messages in ways that are best for them and they do not think about the communication needs of their audience. This is a serious communication error because people have different learning preferences and language competencies. Communication breaks down quickly when there is a mismatch between the content of a message and the audience’s information processing and language needs.

One of the significant obstacles to structuring a message in a variety of ways is what Heath and Heath (2007, p. 20) call the “curse of knowledge.” The curse of knowledge afflicts professionals with deep and broad knowledge of a subject (and I am also occasionally afflicted by this curse). When the curse of knowledge is in play experts cannot imagine what it is like not to have their specialized knowledge.

Given their sophisticated knowledge, experts afflicted by the curse of knowledge assume that others will understand what they know in the same way they do. They present their knowledge using their abstract concepts and specialized terms of art. For example, a presenter talking about the need to transform school systems to provide students with personalized learning experiences might say: “Instructional misalignment with the idiosyncratic learning needs of children creates academic failure.” Why not say, “Instruction that is not designed to meet the personal learning needs of children will cause some children to fail.”? The inability or unwillingness to describe ideas or beliefs in plain English using concrete and common terms is a significant communication error that results in a lack of support for new ideas.

Lever 5: resources and rewards – When trying to influence people’s mindsets about new ideas or mental models there may be incentives that can be offered to stimulate people’s interest in considering those new ways of doing things. The incentives, of course, must be ethical, legal, and appropriate.

Lever 6: real world events – Sometimes there are powerful events that can shift mindsets on a large scale. In the field of education, these kinds of powerful events are rare and often they produce the opposite effect; e.g., the federal legislation called No Child Left Behind was a powerful legislative event. But the mindset change it created resulted in increased resistance to implementing the legislation.

An example of a large-scale, real world event that transformed education in a positive way was the arrival of the Industrial Age. It transformed education from the Agrarian Age paradigm for educating children to the Industrial Age paradigm for schooling that provided American society with an excellent and extraordinarily successful way to educate the working class and millions of new immigrants.

Other smaller scale real world events that could influence educators’ mindsets about the required four paradigm shifts described earlier might be found in the success stories of educators, schools, and school systems that are implementing the mental models associated with the four paradigm shifts. Sharing these success stories can increase the malleability of educators’ mindsets about those paradigms and their related mental models.

Lever 7: resistances – Dynamic equilibrium, as noted earlier, is a systems theory concept that in simple terms means stability. Individuals, groups, and organizations like stability. Sometimes stability is called the status quo, or, more colloquially, it’s called “the way things are.” Individuals, groups, and organizations tend to like the way things are and they naturally resist change.

Lewin (1951) conceptualized a technique called force field analysis that can be helpful for understanding how to disrupt dynamic equilibrium. Disrupting equilibrium, which Lewin called “unfreezing,” is absolutely necessary for creating and sustaining transformational change.

Lewin’s theory is based on his belief that forces driving change and forces restraining change tend to balance each other out to create and sustain dynamic equilibrium. Ironically, the harder you push for change by increasing the strength of the driving forces, the harder people resist the proposed changes. The appropriate strategy, therefore, is to focus on maintaining (not increasing) the strength of the driving forces while simultaneously devising strategies for minimizing or lessening the restraining forces.