Learning without teaching

We learn more easily from each other than from books

A few years ago, whilst visiting Berlin I arranged to meet up with two friends who lived there, Katrin, who was German and Lynette, Australian. They had both attended the Oxford Strategic Leadership programme, but in different years, so I had been able to introduce them.

One of them suggested we visit an exhibition of the work of the Alexander von Humboldt and whether it was because of the design of the space, or that we were each drawn to different things, within a few minutes I found myself wandering around on my own and I could see the others were each on their own too.

I was entirely ignorant of von Humboldt’s life and work, even though I had lived in some of the places in South America he visited, so I became quite engrossed. Every now and then I would cross paths with Lynette or Katrin, but each of us happily continued to pursue our own way through the exhibits until, after an hour or so, quite naturally, we found each other near the exit. Katrin explained that along the way she had bumped into some other friends who were still looking at things and asked if we would mind waiting for them, as she would like to introduce us and go for a drink together.

As we waited, we fell into conversation about what we had seen. It wasn’t a very large exhibition but it turned out that even so we had seen and paid attention to quite different things. Even where we had seen the same things more often than not we had made different observations about them or drawn different inferences.

As a result, what could have been a dull twenty minutes waiting, turned out to be a fascinating conversation, where the experience of the others enriched and informed my own. I effectively revisited the exhibition and my experience of it before I even left. This felt very different from walking around with someone and commenting on it whilst seeing it. I realised I would have been quite happy to have spent less time in the exhibition itself and more time in conversation with the two of them, thinking about what I had seen in the context of their impressions.

Reflecting on this now, some years later, I realise that what happened that day is a pattern that I have (unconsciously) woven into the work I do. Broadly speaking I design and facilitate workshops and conversations, often with leaders. What seems obvious to me now is that the ‘content’ of what is presented is not the most important thing, it is the other people and what they make of what they see (or feel, or notice) through the lens of their own experience. It is here that the riches lie. You learn so much more, so much more quickly, through the constructive exchange of experiences and interpretations.

The Oxford Strategic Leadership Programme (which I work on) is designed like this. The presentations and experiences people receive come alive by giving them a chance to chew them over together, in a small, facilitated group of six (a ‘tutor group’ in the Oxford vernacular). Arriving at agreement or consensus, or assessing the material objectively, is not the purpose of this, rather it is to deepen everyone’s understanding by subjecting it to the light of other people’s experience.

The Reading Weekends I have been running sporadically since 2013 share this pattern. People spend the day reading books, chosen from a wide selection of different books that were all suggested by the people themselves (there is only one copy of each). The solitary experience of reading is followed by an invitation to share your response to what you have read over lunch (or dinner) with others, who are doing the same based on what they have read.

Contrary to what you might expect, it turns out that the books aren’t actually that important. Where the conversations gain power and traction is not in the immediate reaction to the texts themselves, but in the cumulative and iterative responses to the responses. The books might be the blue touch paper but the fireworks are the people.

Yellow, the learning community¹ I set up with Alex Carabi during the pandemic is another example. Over the course of three years we ran over two hundred on-line sessions, each of which were designed individually. Except in retrospect we didn’t design two hundred sessions, but two hundred start points. All we intended to do was stimulate some kind of response, which would generate other responses and so on. But beyond that we had little idea what would happen or where they would take it. That was what made it so compelling.

Understanding this makes my work as a designer of learning experiences lighter. I don’t have to push, or cajole, or control the outcome (or even much of the process for that matter). All I have to do is create the conditions where people can share their different responses constructively. This is about mood and atmosphere, just enough stimulus to get them going and paying close attention to what emerges.

This is such a contrast with trying to transmit information or reach a pre-determined learning goal, classroom style (which is the style that many business meetings unwittingly mimic). When I give people space and freedom and allow them to do what they will with what I give them, what they create together will regularly surpass what I could plan (or even imagine). So why expend time and energy trying to constrain them?

There was a time when I used to work on another programme at Oxford alongside Richard Pascale and he used to say that ‘all adult learning is social’. I am beginning to understand what he meant.

There are hidden joys in this approach. Other people not only help you to see things afresh, but also to see yourself more clearly. And when you participate in such a process you are not only learning yourself, but contributing to the learning of others, in sometimes subtle ways that you may not even be aware of. Your presence can contribute to a process which is connective, regenerative, even healing, for you as well as for them. No-one has to teach for everybody to learn.

1. I don’t much like the term ‘learning community’ but Alex and I struggle to find a description we do like which isn’t totally enigmatic. Just to make it a little more difficult Yellow is also now metamorphosing from an on-line thing into an ‘in real life’ thing, so what it is, is changing. If you are curious, you can learn more about it here.