If the  iceberg metaphor of the concious mind being the tip and the unconcious being the underwater mass is accurate, then our instructional designs are pretty flawed if they play only to the tip. As an eLearning Consultant, I’m usually asked to design training to improve performance,  but I rarely get to refine and move the program forward as a true opportunity to change human behaviour. So here are four ways to enlist the help of the learners’ unconcious mind and possibly maximise my one shot at helping someone develop:

1. Plant and load- This fascinating article shows how we can place ideas in a learners subconcious by asking them not to think about them. Then when the learner is placed under a heavy mental load, these ideas inevitably surface. Eg ‘Dont mention the war’, from Faulty Towers is a prime example. We are effectively assigning to the unconcious, a monitoring task – “watch out for these ideas”. In so doing we store those monitroing programs and in times of heavy mental load, they are disrupted and actually generate the idea.

This approach is easily seconded to learning design, by setting out some rules or conditions that the learner is explicitly instructed not to think about, then have them complete an intense activity, to which those rules are relevant. They will remember them and apply them. Had we just exposed them to the rules and asked them to apply them we would have been relying on their conscious mind to keep them in short term memory. Instead we have installed them in the unconscious as monitoring programs.

For example, ask the learner not to think about or judge a persons religion, upbringing, current circumstances and so on in a cultural sensitivity program, then expose them to a stressful and sensitive situation and they will inevitably think about those things. You may have just broadened their terms of reference for that situation. For example, where previously they may have consciously thought, you are from this background, you may be poor etc, by asking them not to think about various other factors, their unconscious mind may throw up, you may be poor, you may be religion X, you may be looking for a job and so on, thus a broader set of factors (albeit stereotypical assumptions;) has been brought to the learners attention.

2. Johari window – Of course there is always this classic theory that suggests a pathway for learners in moving the aquisition of new skills and knowldege from the unconscious to the conscious mind. This approach is incredibly useful for structuring pathways to mastery and even in developing ‘train the trainer’ based courses, because it recognises the different stages of learning and the inteplay between conscious and unconscious mind. This one is well known, so I won’t go into details.

3. Mirroring – This is an NLP technique, and through the discovery of mirror neurons, now has a bit more credibility. By modeling the actions, behaviours and so on we wish the learner to aquire (and assuming they have at some point executed those behaviours previously), their brain responds as if they were actually doing it themselves. You might say their conscious mind is observing us acting a certain way, but their unconscious actually thinks they are doing it. This is important for reinforcement and whilst we have been using role modelling for years, knowing that a learners unconscious mind thinks they are doing it, not watching it, offers us a new perspective on this old technique.

For example, say I’m teaching closing techniques to sales people. I might show them a couple of variants and have them practice a couple of times with each other. Knowing that my demonstration actually lights up their brain as if they were doing it themselves, I might include some pre-class video materials that show the technique many more times, to reinforce their unconscious response to seeing it. When they attend class, they will have a preframed response of “I already do this” to observing my demonstration. This could dramtically reduce their fear of the new and unknown.

4. Fast, better decisions – Several studies conducted a few years back suggested that the unconcious mind is better at decision making than the conscious mind in some circumstances. In brief, our conscious minds can over analyse multi-factorial situations, acutally impeding our ability to make good or accurate decisions. Whereas our unconscious minds are able to encompass and intergate more factors, (the counter point is that our unconsious minds also imposed lots of bias).

But if we were to mitigate these bias’ by making the learners aware of them up front and give them some tools and techniques to make snap decisions, we may help them make better decisions within specific domains. For example, lets say we are teaching learners about establishing trust with people, and flash up some images/audio for a short amnount of time and asking them to make a decision – trust or not trust. Initially we may use stereotypes to uncover and make conscious their bias’ – you trusted the person in the suit, but not the scruffy looking person. Why?

Then give them more complex examples and more time to ponder – trust or not trust, and have them explore thier bias and their conscious milti-factorial analysis. Hopefull an examination of their success rate would uncover the role of over analysis and the subconscious in making better decisions.

Finally we could return to the snap decision approach and hopefully get a better success rate, with the bias somewhat mitigated and with the outcome being that the learner now has the ability to make fast and good decisions about trusting people.

What techniques do you use to engage the learners unconscious mind?