How can we “unlearn” what doesn’t serve us in the leadership journey? Reflecting values, habits and conscious thinking
In the process of growing up, we learn gender roles and shape our personalities. As adults, we face the consequences of our upbringing and we may notice that some of our behaviours or thoughts do not serve us and hinder our adult functioning and development. I have used the metaphor “unlearning”, which stands for changing behaviour and automatic thoughts — in effect, learning the new ones that serve us better.
I start by describing how personal values influence the decisions that shape our lives. Then I describe the formation of habits that drive our behaviours. Finally, I suggest how automatic thoughts can be replaced with conscious thinking. I base this article mainly on the book “Routledge Handbook of Sustainable Design”, in which various authors describe design opportunities to shape the decisions and identities in the context of sustainability, by working with systems, strategies, behaviour change, ethics, values, and people’s interactions.
Values as drivers of our beliefs and actions
“One of the major distinguishing qualities of human beings is our ability to move beyond basic needs and drivers, and to organise our lives and workplaces around a complex set of higher principles, which we call values.”
(Egenhoefer, 2019, p. 296)
In today’s world, people expect not only salary but also satisfaction, meaning, challenge and self-fulfilment from their work. These high expectations can lead to frustration (Egenhoefer, 2019, p. 304). “Your relationship with your work is one of the deepest, most important relationships in your life. You give a large share of your entry, intelligence, creativity and your time to work (Egenhoefer, 2019, p. 296).” — Identifying and understanding the basic core set of values helps align career and work, finally leading to success, satisfaction and coherent life. However, it is not that simple.
People are complex creatures with multiple values, which have different degrees of importance, some values stay constant and others evolve over the years and what is important in your 20s may be different in your 50s. This complexity, emerging and declining values, leads to the tension between holding a set of values and being able to apply them to support our life decisions. Organising the individual values into a framework helps to deal with this tension and this is also an opportunity for design to support that process (Egenhoefer, 2019, p. 296–298).
In order to work with values, we need to understand what they actually are and what role they play in shaping our lives. The author of the book’s chapter presents the Values Diagram and explains: “Values are a set of beliefs, leading to actions that culminate in a set of behaviours or results. Careers are the outcomes of this chain of values, beliefs and actions. Values provide a starting point for understanding how to make career choices (Egenhoefer, 2019, p. 297).”
Our values are formed throughout our lives by interactions with family, workplace, religion, politics and other stakeholders and their individual set of values. As a consequence, we reflect on those values and what is important to us in our everyday actions. Values inspire us but don’t cause the outcome in a linear way. They help us in making a choice that we feel more coherent. Some people struggle to achieve that inner integration and they are fumbling. They can also achieve inner harmony through identifying and prioritising a set of values and clarifying the behaviours that reflect them and then everything is aligned — what they want, what they believe, and what they say (Egenhoefer, 2019, p. 297).
As a response to the question “what are your values?”, we often get a list of words, like trust or fairness. All those values present an ideal state and they are challenging us to live up to (Egenhoefer, 2019, p. 304). Unfortunately, there are many values on this list that are more aspirational — not based on the current state of our actions. Many people prefer not to confront their actual behaviour and values throughout a lifetime as it needs additional effort, confronting yourself with the truth and learning new tools (Egenhoefer, 2019, p. 298).
Habits as drivers of our behaviours
“Watch your thoughts, they become your words; watch your words, they become your actions; watch your actions, they become your habits; watch your habits, they become your character; watch your character, it becomes your destiny.”
(A Quote by Lao Tzu, n.d.).
To influence the habits, we need to understand the core of habitual behaviour and how habits are formed and how we can change them. As the social psychological concept says, habits are formed by repetition and reinforcement. To create a habit, people need to be pre-motivated.
Triandis’ Theory of Interpersonal Behaviour shows that habits and intentions play equally important roles and are both driving forces of behaviour. However, there is a gap, called the behavioural gap, between those drivers and changes of behaviour. Many of our daily behaviours are habits that we carry out with very little awareness. An empirical study in psychology estimates that 45% of respondents’ daily behaviours are repeated at the around same time in the same place. Another research in neuroscience estimates that 95% of our behaviours depend on automatic thinking. To overcome the gap, habits need to be approached with more awareness, in order to make a change in behaviour. With help of design, we can help people mindfully break the automatic engagement in their habits, by provoking them to observe them — why they do that, what barriers they meet and what effects that brings (Egenhoefer, 2019, p. 329–334).
Conscious thinking — noticing automatics
Noticing what you want to change is the first step to changing it. In Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy, in order to improve the well-being and functioning of their clients, therapists help to identify and change unhelpful thoughts and behaviours, that occur here and now, which are usually rooted in childhood. The influence between the situation, thoughts, feelings, behaviour and physical reaction is presented on a diagram. They are all connected — we can change our thoughts through our behaviours which will in the end influence our situation. To do so, we need to be conscious (Lawson, 2021).
Mindfulness is a perfect tool to practice presence in countless ways — e.g. through photography, walking or gardening. There are various approaches to that and having one definition is not possible: “Just like love, happiness or compassion as states of being-in-the-world are different according to the context and person”. How we practice is an individual preference. Mindfulness, shaped by cognitive psychology, Asian philosophy and Zen Buddhism, helps in the “unlearning” process by the practice of being and becoming — a way of self-realisation and a new way to relate to others. Thich Nhat Hanh said that there are two ways to wash the dishes: “The first is to wash the dishes in order to have clean dishes and the second is to wash the dishes in order to wash the dishes.” In this story, we can learn the difference between comeouts — one oriented on future effect and the second one focused on just being here and now. Switching off the future thinking, goals and judgments — we can see mindfulness as a practice of consciousness here and now (Egenhoefer, 2019, p. 223–224).
We often do not recognise our own behaviour, thoughts or self-limiting beliefs. With mindfulness, we can start the transformation process. Unlearning is more than learning — it is a different kind of effort than acquiring new knowledge. With mindfulness, we can abandon habits of mindlessness — clear a mind clogged with habits, thoughts, feelings and concepts that function in an automatic way. Mindfulness is an awakening process, showing “how disconnected humans normally are from their very experience”. It is a lifelong process to balance mindful and mindless (Egenhoefer, 2019, p. 225–228).
Conclusion
Working on values with leaders could support their careers and bring more satisfaction and inner harmony. Identifying the habits and recognising which ones do not serve them, could help to turn them into habits that foster possibilities. Finally, it all can be achieved with awareness and conscious thinking.
*** This article is the third theoretical chapter in my Strategic Design master thesis “Unlearning traditional roles — empowering the new generation of women in leadership”. The other two chapters can be found here: on gender and on leadership. You can find a preview of the project in my portfolio. I am very interested in your feedback — leave a comment or contact me at aga.laura.bartosz@gmail.com.
Resources:
*A quote by Lao Tzu*. (n.d.). Goodreads. Retrieved June 4, 2022, from [https://www. goodreads.com/quotes/8203490-watch-yourthoughts- they-become-your-words-watchyour- words]
Egenhoefer, R. B. (2019). *Routledge Handbook of Sustainable Design (Routledge Environment and Sustainability Handbooks)* (1st ed.). Routledge
Lawson, S. (2021, May 1). *Cognitive Behavioural Therapy*. CBT Edinburgh Sarah Lawson. Retrieved February 26, 2022, from [http://www.cbt-edinburgh.co.uk/cbt.html]
