Knowing when to use schemas helps us be effective leaders
When we make sense of a new situation, our starting point is memories of situations we’ve faced before. Stored in our long-term memory are these schemas. Packaged pieces of information that we pull out of the filing cabinet in our mind to guide our perspectives and actions. We often use the insights drawn from our schemas to help us seek opportunity and overcome challenges in a new situation.
In teaching practice, we are often advised to reactivate schemas at the start of learning experiences; link back and remind students of knowledge they’ve studied before. These become the roots from which new knowledge can grow.
Schemas are activated automatically. Being built for survival, our minds respond quickly to our environment. Minds are not keen to take up much time and energy making sense of new situations, they serve up schemas instead.
One of the risks schemas create in our modern world is that we instinctively bring these to complex problems when we need a fresh perspective. Knowing when, and how, to bring prior knowledge to a challenge, or look afresh, is difficult. Maybe the first step is to create a pause, a brief breathing space, between the challenge ahead and the next steps.
This pause might have wider implications for personal leadership. In Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, he notes
“…there is a gap or space between stimulus and response, and that the key to both growth and happiness is how we use that space.”
We instinctively draw on previous experiences, but maybe there are other paths to solving a challenge ahead. Choosing how to best use our previous experiences sometimes takes a breathing space before we act. Taking a pause when faced with something new might not come naturally. Knowing when to pause and check helps us be effective in our leadership.
