Mastering the Hidden Curriculum
We believe that for leaders to expand their range and unlock new opportunities for their organizations they must be willing to confront their hidden curriculum.
As someone who has spent most of his career in the corporate learning world, I am always asking myself and participants, are the programs we create helping to support your growth and development? The assumption is that if yes, then somehow our employees experience greater levels of satisfaction and therefore, will perform better. In particular, I am referring to the programs we create to support the development of capabilities necessary to execute against the company’s strategic initiatives. And more specifically, the capabilities required to make sense of an increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) world.
I am convinced that a great strategy is not enough to inspire employees and deliver long term growth. A leader and her leadership team must be open and willing to see how the way they make sense of the world is just as important to supporting their employees’ and the company’s success.
Over the last few years I have been paying close attention to the research of Robert Kegan. Kegan has written a number of books, one of which addresses the idea that we are all “In Over Our Heads“ He essentially makes the case that due to the nature of increasing demands in all aspects of our adult lives (he refers to these demands as a hidden curriculum), we often lack the mental complexity to meet these demands.
While this sounds ominous, Kegan would actually say that being challenged by our circumstances, work, relationships, and civic responsibilities is not a bad thing. He also emphasizes the importance of the institutional culture in providing the necessary support to help us meet the challenges of this hidden curriculum. Leaders are often asked to do just that.
And yet, leaders are often challenged by the same hidden curriculum their teams are struggling to navigate. They are expected to map out the strategy for the future and then ensure that their team has the necessary capabilities to execute and, if necessary, evolve that strategy. But so often they fall short of actualizing these strategies. The shortfall certainly isn’t due to the lack of creative and thoughtful strategies leaders come up with but rather, their ability to translate strategies into action. A leader’s failure to learn and adapt to their own hidden curriculum prevents them from creatively responding to the people and circumstances impacting their business.
In her book, Changing On The Job, Jennifer Garvey Berger provides strategies for how to help leaders master this hidden curriculum. Using the lens of Kegan’s theory of adult development, she illustrates how the nature of our sense making defines how and why we approach challenges and opportunities the way we do. Berger helps us, with a few very straightforward sets of methods, understand how to unlock our ability to master the hidden curriculum. The three methods that Berger suggests are asking different questions, taking multiple perspectives and seeing the system.
Asking different questions invites the leader to view and experience a set of circumstances
differently from the way they may have previously done.
This typically helps them expose a pattern of thinking which has limited how the leader thinks about a person or set of circumstances.
Taking multiple perspectives allows the leader to see and experience several different points of view on the same issue. Guiding the leader through this experience highlights their opportunity to make a choice and therefore not be confined by just one or two courses of action.
Finally, seeing the system rather than an assorted set of parts, gives the leader an appreciation for the inherent complexity in the situation they are tasked to address. The leader is able to detach themselves from the momentum of the situation. Where once there appeared to be a number of isolated events, the leader is now able to see a pattern, which allows for a different set of approaches.
Bob Anderson and The Full Circle Group have developed a 360 assessment called the Leadership Circle Profile (LCP). This assessment, among other attributes, measures stages of adult development. It links patterns of action with habits of thought, or sense making as Berger suggests. Anderson has demonstrated, through his research with the LCP, that businesses who collectively demonstrate higher forms of development have more effective leaders and produce better business results.
We therefore see a clear connection between Kegan’s theory, Berger’s methods and Anderson’s tool. Their work represents an incredibly powerful set of ideas and tools to support adult growth, development and improved performance. We have experience with leaders who leverage these methods who have become more adept at executing on strategic ideas by dealing constructively with patterns that inhibit their effectiveness, allow them to embrace diversity, see patterns that lead to new solutions, and can work across silos to influence their team’s and organization’s success. We believe that for leaders to expand their range and unlock new opportunities for their organizations they must be willing to confront their hidden curriculum.
