Fast fading fads and keeping babies in the bathwater.
Training trends come and go. While we wish more would go, there are some fundamentals that we’d be foolish to lose.
Every decade or so there is a discovery so profound, so obvious, so accessible and practical, that it just can’t avoid full utilisation in every industry, at every opportunity possible.
Normally these pop/pseudo science revelations are validated with a set of FMRI data which is, after all, the new “studies show” or “science demonstrates” qualifier that silences even the most ardent skeptics in an instant. Who would dare challenge a brain scientist person?
In recent months we trainers have lost our great content padding Growth Mindsets and our Power Poses. They served us well but alas it’s time to adios them because “studies show” the results are unrepeatable and negligible. Much like the billion dollar hoax of (stage hypnotist and truth liberator) Richard Bandler and his NLP religion of the 7os. It turns out you can’t prosecute your friends and family as LIARS because they were caught looking up and to the right. Nor can you guarantee your poor subject will know any given answer by your asking “well, if you did know, what would you say?” even if you are locked in a hypnotic rapport coitus.
And before you raise your voice in deafening indignation about my lack of rigour, or my beginning a sentence with the word, “and”, …let me remind you that that’s not my bag, baby. I’m the reader of extracts, the disseminator of bite sized versions of the best sellers which fill the aisles of every airport lounge in the western world-I’ll give you the Spark Notes on the Blinkist summary I just listened to. I care not for your statistics…unless they are big picture and kind of support any one of my lofty proclamations.
BUT…almost unfortunately, I have benefited in many ways from these passing universal truth nuggets. I have not only (loosely) quoted the neuroscientists and behaviourists, and bastardised their rain-making IP, but I’ve also felt the power of the subsequent movements. I’ve seen my children stand taller when they’ve quoted and applied a growth mindset. My nervousness before high stakes presentations or interviews has been mitigated by a few big arm gestures and improving my “postural feedback”. Hell, I’ve even used positive language techniques to convince myself and others that all is well when I’ve been dead inside.
However, the most enduring models are from the ancient thought leaders. There’s very little that wasn’t covered about the human condition by Shakespeare, Aristotle, Marcus Aurelius, or the early 20th century philosophers. Humans must have their simple needs met. That is why it’s so very profitable and timeless to seek to codify the how, to bolster the self-efficacy, to lever us into some/any kind of action.
What each of these fads offers us is a language to understand some of our more restrictive human mechanisms and to take ACTION. Many a painfully awkward, socially deviant, little man (they’re always little), found his inner Lothario and potentially a mate through NLP. For better or worse. Anecdotally, we’re aware of struggle as a vehicle or even necessary evil for progress and Growth. If our escaping a “Fixed” mindset helps us with one final victorious attempt, how wonderful. We might find the confidence to make eye contact in the job interview thanks to our newfound self-belief from a 20 minute Ted Talk, and that’s an irrefutably wonderful thing.
So we continue to summarise millennia of evolution and adaption in a nutshell, a sound bite, or an easily trademarked Org Psych Model. Even if it ain’t necessarily so, remember that nothing can come from nothing and there may yet be a baby in the proverbial murky bathwater.
Maybe Pop-Science does have all the answers today - just strap in for them being a bit less absolute when we sober up in the morning.
