Brain Food for Pioneering Spirits: How do gaining insight and growth actually connect? That’s the question we explore in Room #841 of the Deep Talk Club, under our overarching theme of “Insight (and gaining it).” Listen in on the examples that came up and the perspectives that emerged in dialogue…
Note: This session was recorded live in German as part of the Deep Talk Club, so the video above is German-language audio only. What follows is an English translation of the conversation, lightly edited for readability — the back-and-forth between the moderator and participants is preserved, but the original timestamps and speaker names have been left out.
A wonderful good morning to you all. Today we’re talking about insight and personal growth. Personal in parentheses, meaning growth quite generally, and personal we can also look at more concretely too. So how do gaining insight and growth actually connect? That’s the question we’re diving into today, under our overarching theme of insight and gaining insight, and maybe already as an announcement, tomorrow we continue in the direction of “self,” in parentheses, insight, where we want to move a bit more strongly from this general area into this personal area, and accordingly we’re also expecting — we have an authors’ breakfast this Sunday with Dr. Johanna Dahm and Kati Schaab, which I’m really looking forward to too — so next week we’ll actually look at various directions from this perspective of self-knowledge, before we slowly wrap up the insight topic. Yes, and with that I’d like to dive into insight and personal growth with you today. Personal in parentheses, as I said, that can be quite general. Growth — what actually falls under growth for you? And what maybe distinguishes general growth from personal growth? And how does the whole thing connect with insight and gaining insight? Maybe there are examples from the past where you feel an insight led to growth, in whatever form, so we can open up different perspectives on the whole thing here, and through dialogue and exchange come up with different thoughts, different images arise for us, and then we’ll see which direction the room develops in together today. And in that sense, as every morning, you’re warmly invited to join and help shape a multifaceted room together with me, with your own examples, thoughts, impulses. And another quick reminder for anyone joining for the first time today, that the room is being recorded. The recording will be published afterward too. That means anyone who joins automatically agrees to that. And we have three small room rules. One is a profile photo where you’re clearly recognizable, first and last name, and at least a sentence in your bio. Anyone who, for whatever reason, doesn’t want to do that, is warmly invited to simply use the chat — here too you have the option to bring in questions, thoughts, impulses, and then I’ll see how it fits and pick it up too. So let me unmute for a moment and see who’d like to be the first to turn this from a monologue into a dialogue with me, and let’s see who joins.
A wonderful good morning, dear Andreas. I don’t know if you already caught the introduction.
No, actually not, but I’d love to break the ice with you for the first half hour, then I unfortunately have to leave for an appointment.
Yes, great, wonderful. Thank you so much for your support. Let me summarize briefly again — insight and growth is today’s topic we want to engage with, and we put personal in parentheses before the word growth. So how do insight and gaining insight, as well as growth, or personal growth, actually connect? That’s what we want to talk about today. Growth can be quite general, but it can also be specifically personal growth. Maybe there are different thoughts, impulses, or your own experiences here that can be brought in and shared as examples. Does anything directly come to mind for you, dear Andreas?
I actually find this a really complex and deep topic, because for me personally, you can distinguish growth. For many people, if I learn something, I grow. If I acquire skills, or work on my personal soft skills, to expand my portfolio, then I grow. But personally I’ve gained the insight that personal growth is only ever possible once I’ve had a certain experience. So I’ve experienced a situation and can evaluate it. And after that evaluation, growth arises mentally — toward a situation, toward how you handle defeats, how you handle prejudices, toward a lot of the headlines we’re currently seeing in society. And that’s such a hot and fascinating topic for me right now, because we live in a time where every day you read or hear something about Gen Z on talk shows, where every day you hear reports about AI and the dangers behind it, and that all happens, to some extent, without insight, because many of the people currently engaging with the topic, at least because they’re guests somewhere, haven’t actually engaged with it themselves, don’t even have the ability to report on what dealing with it was actually like, so it might be a personal assessment, but not an insight, because there was no real engagement with it in depth. So from my perspective, no growth has taken place regarding the perspective, regarding the attitude, and that’s why I think it’s currently a very difficult topic, because a lot of people judge perspectives, or situations, or circumstances, without having had their own experience with it.
Yes, really fascinating. Thank you so much. And if we just enter the term “growth” into the internet, we find different definitions too. I’d like to pick up on one or two. So I just entered “growth” quite generally, and the first thing I find on Wikipedia is actually from biology — the natural enlargement of a living organism, or second, the increase in scope, size, quantity, intensity of something. That means we can look at it from biology here, we could maybe bring in, say, economically, business growth or something like that as a term too, and talk about enlargement. I found it really fascinating that especially with this personal growth, you brought in this aspect of experience too. Learning came up as a keyword, and this learning, not-learning — also in the sense of, for example, have I consciously made something out of it, because I engaged with it more intensively, for example. That means we’ve had this aspect of reflection in there to some extent too. And so I find that great. As a start first, and I’m curious what Layla says about it. A wonderful good morning, Layla. What’s insight and growth, or personal growth, for you? What are the first things that come to mind?
I was just thinking, because you talked about lifelong — a wonderful good morning first to you both and everyone in the audience. I was just thinking to myself, you talked about lifelong learning. And then I thought, is there such a thing as lifelong growth? And then I thought, well wait, when did I — because you also mentioned biology, that you grow in size, and there are some very humorous sayings about that too. I should mention, I’m 1.60 meters tall. I always say, I’m not short, I’m concentrated. Have I stopped growing? And then I thought, yes, in height certainly. Internally I would — I don’t know if this sounds arrogant or not, now I’m getting into my beliefs — is it arrogant to say, no, I think you grow constantly, your whole life. Because with learning I think it’s simple to say that, because we’ve moved away from “what Johnny doesn’t learn, John never will.” But to say it’s a constant growth — you reach the middle of your life, and in the middle of your life you want to arrive somewhere. In biology, the tree wants to put down roots. So then I have to make sure I don’t get stuck there, that I don’t stay there too much. You can’t transplant an old tree either. And how is it with growth? Do you grow your whole life? I once had this image that if you don’t bloom, you might wither under certain circumstances. Sonja had a similar image too. What happens if I stop growing? Those are my first thoughts.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. And especially if we try to build the bridge again between this biological aspect and this personal growth toward personal development and so on — with growth, when we think of height or something like that, I find it understandable that we first think of these visible components for us. Let me open up something from brain research here — we’ve talked before about how, for example, when we learn something new, that has to do with our neurons and synapses and such, that we build a kind of neural network, so to speak, and that in the moment we learn something new, these strands grow, in the sense of becoming longer and connecting with others too. Or conversely, if we don’t learn anything new, that these strands also regress over time, so with increasing age too — and increasing age doesn’t mean starting at 50 or so, this is already set up from age 25 — that they regress again, meaning the strands get shorter again. And while that’s not visible to us at first, not physically in the sense of growing to 1.60m or shrinking or something necessarily, these are still processes that actually happen in our brain, so to speak. So we could connect this biological component with the factor of learning too, so to speak, or this aspect of learning, and look at it in the direction of the brain, and how that develops too. Andreas, Layla, do you have anything to add on this, or further thoughts through this impulse?
I actually find it fascinating to look at it from this perspective, if we consider our brain, and ourselves, as a system. I find it quite interesting to see that people can be divided into an open and a closed system. I find the English term nicer — am I open-minded or closed-minded. And that’s actually a bit of the insight I draw from it too. I believe that lifelong growth, as Layla described it so nicely, is actually possible, at least if I have an open system, if I haven’t gotten stuck in beliefs, if I haven’t at some point adopted certain perspectives that I’m no longer able to change, or to engage with other perspectives. And I once got a really nice image for this. Imagine we’re all standing around a car. Then everyone sees a different car from their own perspective, from where they’re looking. One person sees a scratched car, another a dented one, another a very, very beautiful, wonderful car. And each person is right from their own perspective. And I think that’s also the important thing — that you behave exactly that way, that you have this open system and then look at how it actually looks from that other perspective.
Yes, I find it really fascinating that you’re bringing in the concept of the system too. Let me differentiate a bit here in two directions. You brought in the English terms “open minded,” “closed minded” — if we pick that up in the direction of openness too, we’ve had various rooms already where we talked about this playing a role in actually taking in certain new impulses, realizing them, possibly doing something with them. And at the same time, I’d also like to bring in the term from systems theory here as a differentiation — a closed system that’s still in interaction with its environment or surroundings. I find it really fascinating to look at the brain as a closed system in itself. Let me build the bridge to where this thought comes from — we’ve had this quite often as an example in the rooms. We all hear the same thing, but we don’t know exactly what lands with whom, or what impulse has what impact on someone, or what gets triggered. And in that sense, taken by itself, it’s first a closed system that works in itself in some way, so to speak, without going into any details now. And then there are always things that come from outside that have an effect. But we can also assume that maybe some effect happens in some form — we can’t influence from outside, or we can’t foresee what effect emerges here or unfolds. And so, again here, thinking about this closed and open system in another direction too. Not just in the sense of am I open toward new things, but these processes, looked at neurobiologically, that happen in the brain here too, and also influence, with prior experiences and so on, where it connects, how it connects, and whether some form of growth is happening here, so to speak, or not. Layla, what do you think about that?
Yes, I’m a bit with this image, and I was just thinking — I found the image with synapses really nice, because you visualized it for us and the audience. And then I thought, yes, and with that it’s become somewhat of a measurable quantity, so to speak — synapses expand. And if we now assume lifelong learning — let me draw on my own experience here, which you’ve all had in school, and my profession, I’m a teacher, and there it’s about learning success. And that term isn’t always very positively connoted, but if you think about it, people like working with images, and everyone who’s a good speaker knows this, everyone who’s a good storyteller, and anyone who engages a bit with rhetoric, that you visualize it for the audience. And now the question is, how is it with growth? Do I have to visualize growth? You just said something, that it has an effect on people, that it’s a system — from this systemic therapy, if I’m paraphrasing you correctly, or from systems theory, if I’m paraphrasing you correctly. And closed systems aren’t “einsichtig” [transparent/comprehensible] — that means, is it comprehensible for the other person? Is the growth then recognizable? Because then I have to live with it. I don’t see an immediate result. Maybe it has an effect later, maybe it’s years later. And then I thought, well, if we look at the tree again as an image, we see how a tree grows. We see whether a seed we plant grows or not. With growth it’s different, because we don’t necessarily see whether synapses are forming, unless we do an MRI or something. And I don’t even know if you’d really see all the synapses there. I’d say you just see certain areas light up, or not, where there’s damage. But I think the brain is still a very closed system, because, for example, the effect of antidepressants is, to this day, I believe — please correct me if that’s wrong, and please look for information yourselves too — but to my knowledge it’s not conclusively established exactly how certain antidepressants work, exactly how in the brain. So we’re always at “A leads to B, then C.” That means we’re very interested in measurable quantities to see success and to see growth. I was just thinking, Yasemin, how do I demystify this system, how do I measure my own growth? Do I measure it by openness? Do I measure it by closedness? Do I measure it by my inner greatness? Am I allowed to show my inner greatness outwardly, without suddenly being a narcissist or an egotist? Because self-praise stinks, as they say. That depends on how the other person sees it. But we live in the age of individualism, so it’s nice to develop yourself. But how do I measure growth then? That’s what I asked myself.
Yes, a fascinating question, and especially I find the question of even talking about measuring at all fascinating. Because we quite often tend, especially in the context of growth and so on, to think in the direction of, say, scaling. Or we’ve maybe learned in companies that it’s about making things measurable. And that does seem to be something that keeps occupying us, going in the direction of measurability, in the direction of numbers, data, facts. And here’s the question, how sensible is that actually? I mean, yes, companies tend to set up some KPIs and so on. But often these are also numbers, data, facts that get put together where causality maybe can’t even be established at all. So you really have to be very critical about that too. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t measure anything at all, or similar. But the question is, what does this measuring actually bring us here? Also questioning that critically. Why do we tend to want to make something measurable somehow? Is it even that important, for example, how much more, say, was learned, or something? Sure, if I look at it as a teacher or as an adult educator, and I run a training measure, of course I’d like to know what the impact was afterward, so to speak — did it actually achieve anything? And we talked over the weekend about these “happy sheets,” in quotes, these feedback stories in the sense of filling out a form and so on. And that’s also something where I try to make something measurable, so to speak, but basically it’s not really meaningful, because it’s more a mood I’m capturing, and here it’s more criteria, so the evaluation, so to speak, is made based on something like how the training felt for me. That doesn’t yet mean I actually learned something and put what I learned into practice, and that’s why this causality is missing in many places, and a pseudo-causality gets established — that’s also why they’re called happy sheets — if a happy sheet, so to speak, gets filled out and turns out well, that you say, okay, we need to continue this training, it was great. And
de facto that says relatively little about the learning success, but more about the sympathies that occurred and how it’s emotionally rated, and less about whether it had a certain sustainability, whether something was actually put into implementation, and so on. So that’s why I think the topic of making it measurable isn’t so simple here at all, on one hand, so not just how do I make it measurable, but also to ask the question, do I even need to make this measurable at all, and if so, how could such measurability actually look? And then I wanted to address the sentence, “closed systems aren’t einsichtig” [transparent]. I personally think that can’t stand as is. Closed systems aren’t — well, in the sense of, we’re thinking now of inside and outside constellations maybe, closed systems, even the neural network connections we have here, they interact with each other. That means, a kind of communication happens here, so to speak, you could imagine it in image language — an exchange happens here. Information gets sent in various directions, impulses that come, and so on, stimuli that get converted, so to speak, into electrical flows. Movements happen here. Accordingly, a closed system, a system closed in on itself, is first of all something that works within itself, where we maybe have no view of what’s happening in this closed system inside. But it still interacts with the environment ultimately. And in this form, for example, we now have a room here, we’re talking together right now, and the moment we talk to each other and are in exchange, impulses get sent into the brain, and then something happens again. We just don’t know exactly what happens, but that this information first gets received in some way, and then gets evaluated. Then it goes through an evaluation system — is this interesting for me? Does this move me forward? Does it have relevance for me? And depending on that, processes get set in motion by the brain to take it in and process it further, or to let it bounce off again and say, I’m not even listening to that, that has nothing to do with me. So maybe that too, as a side note. Andreas, would you like to add to that, and share your thoughts too, before you have to leave again, since you already announced that?
That’s a fascinating topic. Really, really, really fascinating. And I actually find that we always end up in this school system, which ensures we always want to go into this comparability. Why do we have grades? So we can make comparisons to the standard. So we can measure how far we are from what we believe is right, for that moment, evaluate and say whether someone is good or someone is bad. And this evaluating, this measuring, accompanies us our whole life in the end. And I actually think that will also be the origin of change for the future, that we create changes there, and no longer necessarily want to go into this maximum comparison to a standard price, but rather place more value on individuality. And that also fits really nicely with this topic, “open-minded, closed-minded, lifelong growth.” Can I even measure that? Why do we even want to measure that? I think the individuality that everyone should put in the foreground for themselves, thinking about what’s my priority, where do I want to go eventually — and that it’s also growth, sometimes, to admit that there are limits, that maybe there are no limits, and that it’s so individual, depending on life situation, environment, social background, that we simply won’t be able to measure so many things in the future, but it’s much more important, especially with artificial intelligence, which is currently growing, that we become more individual and more neutral there, and maybe don’t even evaluate that on a personal level anymore, but just observe it, and encourage everyone to take these steps. And I think that was enough philosophy now. Thanks for the great room. I need to get to my next call now. Thank you.
Yes, thank you so much. And I find it amazing that you brought up this aspect too, with school and performance and grades. That means there’s this aspect of comparison in there too, so to speak, and so on. And that triggered an impulse in me too, to think in the other direction too. So basically we’re trying here, based on performance testing, to also draw a conclusion about learning success. That would at least be the first question, whether that’s even possible at all. Then the second question, which I also find really, really essential in this context, and completely independent of whether this is school — it could also be a continuing education measure or something. There are final exams there too, for example. Can you transfer that one-to-one here too? And then there’d also be a difference in establishing measurability, in the sense of, what’s actually being conveyed there? So did what was conveyed in this school semester, or in whatever context we’re thinking of right now, even open up the possibility of ensuring learning success, of making learning possible at all? And here we look at that much less, in quotes, in practice, than checking performance. So we assume that what we put in as input definitely makes learning possible as output. And now, in the second step, we go, and here we’re at all these linear causal conditions, which we simply assume are given, and we assume, if we now check the performance — but then I haven’t actually said anything about the quality of the content I put in as input. And I find that a really, really fascinating question here, because we tend to always check performance and draw conclusions about learning success, but check far too little what’s actually being put in there. And I can also transfer that — this isn’t going in the direction of criticizing school or something, please don’t misunderstand — we do this in a lot of places, and I’d also like to open up the coaching field, or something like that. I did that for many years, and that was actually the reason I decided to engage with the topic of professionalism in coaching in my diploma thesis, or in my dissertation too. Just as an example, some quality standards get set up there, something like, the coach has to bring experience from the field. That’s a widely held thesis, I’ll say. A lot of people would say, that’s a given. And people often don’t even get the idea to question that and say, was that ever actually checked somewhere? Is it really the case that the coach — we assume it is, and HR developers, they maybe pick a coach and assume that person has to actually have knowledge in that field. But at the time I started my research in this context, there was basically no research results at all. The subject wasn’t researched at all in a lot of places, especially not in the German-speaking region, basically not at all. And that raises the question — this is first of all a claim I’m making — that has to be checked first. Who even says that? It could be that a coach who doesn’t come from the field, because they don’t understand the subject matter, asks much better and more relevant questions that stimulate thinking, and that’s why the learning success might be much greater there, in the sense of reflection and so on that happens, than someone who comes from the field, because they have blind spots. So you could actually flip that around and say, we need someone — we could draw the conclusion, saying, we need someone who doesn’t come from the field, so they ask the right questions. But no, we assume that and take it as a given, and quality criteria get derived from that, that never get checked at all, in the sense of, what happens if I do A, and what would happen if I do B, and comparing both and going into a comparison. Now I saw that Marc raised his hand right away, when Andreas said something too. So I’d like to bring Marc in first, and then Layla can also make a connection again. Marc, a wonderful good morning.
Good morning to the round. I noticed that Andreas has to leave the room soon, and I have a completely different point, and if Andreas has something to add right after you, I’d gladly let him go first, if I may.
I understood that Andreas has already basically said goodbye to us. I think he’s just still connected and maybe listening in a bit on the side.
Okay, thank you, thank you, Yasemin. You mentioned the topic of school again, and that prompted me to come onto the stage, because I just saw something really fascinating that’s also possible — my girlfriend is currently grading final exams and class tests, and it came up, or she told me, that there are students who can’t express themselves that well in writing, where it’s really hard to gauge whether they understood this class test. And what I found really, really great, she told me, a day later after the test was returned, there were discussions, and she offered some students the chance to schedule an appointment with her in her office, where the students could explain the task again, not in writing but verbally. And then she came to the realization, and said, okay, you understood this, you maybe wrote it awkwardly, but I can see that you understood the principle. I’ll revise your grade. And at first I thought, okay, you could also think that could lead to unfairness, because I could always say I just expressed myself poorly in writing and study more at home afterward. But basically I really liked the approach, that we think anew, that we simply look at how we evaluate performance, and that there are simply people who maybe expressed themselves poorly in writing that day, but who definitely understood the learning material that was being tested, who can definitely explain it. And I always find it really fascinating when there are new approaches we try, because it’s not about punishment, but, like what you just said in the room, do we have some body of knowledge, even if it’s in a company, can someone do something, can they carry it out, can they apply it, and so on. And I always find that challenging when we try new techniques.
Yes, thank you so much. Layla, would you like to add something to that too?
Gladly. I’ll keep it short — I have a lot of thoughts, but I’ll try to order them and not talk too long. So it’s actually the case, Yasemin, I liked the thing about the closed system, because “sichtlich” [visible] means it’s recognizable for the other person. Recognizable, I really meant something like making it visible. That doesn’t mean closed systems aren’t “einsichtig” [transparent/comprehensible], meaning they can’t be understandable, but that it might be a bit harder. So thanks for the correction. What you both did or said, I found really interesting, because we’re at performance measurement here. That’s a topic we’re constantly engaging with, thinking about why we even need to measure performance at all. And then I thought to myself, well, it’s about making things visible, and it’s about repetition. That’s why we often have these key data points, because we search — I think in brain research, you might be able to confirm this — you automatically search for a system. And I think you also search for the repetition of success, so of learning success. What do I have to do now to make you have this learning success? And also to make that visible. And that connects, if we come to your title, it’s about growth, not just about learning. How can we make that visible? And with the happy sheets I had to smile a lot, because I also thought, that’s like perceived temperature. It’s like when I turn on the TV in the morning and someone says, well it feels like it’s already 25 degrees, and I think, yes, but factually it’s 19. So it’s their current state of mind. With performance measurement you’re completely right. I’m a representative of the school system, and I’m a fan of the school system, or I wouldn’t work there. And yet it’s the case that I tell my students, look, kids and teenagers, I can’t evaluate your potential, I can only evaluate your current performance. That’s just how it is. And my job is to encourage and challenge them. And here we’re back at the topic of repetition — how do I manage to foster their potential? And I think that’s also a really important point, that you always think about this when you evaluate someone, no matter in what context, whether it’s a loan agreement, whether it’s coaching, whatever, that I simply think, this is my evaluation based on my attitude. And if I’d gone by my own evaluations, and I’ll say this quite openly, I finished elementary school with a 4.0 [German grading, roughly a “D”], and that grade isn’t a good grade, it’s a passing grade. But I’m neurodivergent, meaning I need different conditions. So there we are at “can you even — is it even possible to treat everyone the same?” What Marc said about oral and written performance, I’d like to add to that. It’s really, really important to do that, because there are a lot of students who are stronger orally than in writing. Some are stronger in writing than orally. It also happens the other way around, students who stand at the blackboard and can’t hold a presentation or anything at all. But not because they can’t do it, but simply because they haven’t recognized this ability in themselves, or because they have other competencies. And I think that’s just important. So I’d like to bring up accommodations here, meaning, for both teachers and parents, because parents are responsible as legal guardians — I have to make sure my child doesn’t get pathologized, but I also have to make sure they get evaluated accordingly. That means I have to see these strengths and difficulties. And what you said, Yasemin, it was about needing this experience field — at some point in my career I heard the sentence, “you don’t even have kids, you don’t know anything about this.” And I had to laugh so much, because I didn’t really know how to respond appropriately, I hope, because I act from my profession. I studied didactics, yes, and I was a child myself once too. But it’s also this “everyone was in school once, so they think they can tell you how to be a good teacher.” So, no, sorry, that’s not how it is. But I also don’t need children to be a good teacher. It’s not written anywhere in the job profile that I have to have used my uterus. And it’s not written anywhere that I have to have children to be a good teacher. That’s an experience I could have had, that would certainly help me. I could also say, I have five siblings, I’m an aunt — no, but I studied pedagogy, and I studied German, and I studied ethics. And I think about things a lot. And that’s why I do think I’m professional. And sometimes I notice that this thinking-outside-the-box is also quite nice, when someone doesn’t come from the profession. But you notice, we’re always caught in these evaluations. But I think it’s about making things visible — that maybe it’s not just this good-and-bad thing, that certainly exists too, but I think it’s about measurability, it’s about visibility too, and about repetition. That’s what I wanted to bring in, because I think you’re simply trying to repeat that. And if I only had successes in class for a year, and next year that doesn’t work out, and of course those are also personal successes as a teacher or in education, but no, I also have to adapt to my clientele, so in this case to the children and teenagers, and then I try to repeat that. And I don’t know if that can be seen as good or bad, or right or wrong. Yes, but it’s also just an assumption, and I’m curious what you all think about it.
Yes, great, thank you so much. There were a lot of aspects in there again too, and by the way I’m totally with you on this — that was a huge part of my dissertation too, exactly under this perspective of professionalism, looking at what’s actually the difference between quality and professionalism. So not using the terms synonymously either, and really getting to the bottom of it and looking. And one of the results was actually that quality, or quality standards, that we set, are basically a kind of catalog of criteria we try to orient ourselves by to some extent, but they don’t say anything about the professionalism at the end of the setting, or the content, or anything else — they can favor the whole thing, but that doesn’t mean the action was actually professional. That was a really, really essential result from this work, among other things in the analytical view, and that someone who has no experience, or little experience, can still act professionally too, and similar. And what you just brought up with this example, with the teachers, I find really fascinating — do you have children yourself, or not? That’s also something I picked up, by the way. I don’t know if it was in the teacher context, but definitely in the doctor context I picked that up. The question that should actually be asked is, how do trainings actually need to be designed so it’s possible to be a good teacher even without having a child yourself, or to be a good doctor, in quotes, without having gone through every illness yourself, meaning to be able to act professionally. That’s what I mean here by “good” and so on. That means there are other things we’re allowed to look at here again, in quotes. And we’re really allowed to become aware of that. And in the moment, whether it’s a coaching context, whether it’s a teacher context, whether it’s an educator context, in the moment we say, well, they can’t judge that at all, because they don’t have experience with that, in quotes, then that’s an indicator for me that the training is apparently insufficient, or I question the training and say, this is a misdirection, so to speak, in how I look at the whole thing. And we tend not to do that in certain areas, because it’s already established, because, I don’t know, the medical profession, or the medical field, has maybe already established itself in the sense that we don’t question that behind it, even if it’s a “young buck,” in quotes, not meant disrespectfully at all, who just came from university and starts working right away — we don’t think about that and say, I absolutely don’t want to be treated by them, because we assume once they’re done with their studies, they’ll be able to do everything, in quotes. And on the other hand, especially with an educator or whatever, because these professions might not be as recognized, not recognized to the same degree socially in our minds as, say, a doctor or a lawyer or whatever. And there we’re very quickly caught in this evaluation construct. So we evaluate emotionally here, and question something that maybe doesn’t suit us as parents, along the lines of, I don’t know if that’s — you don’t even have your own children. So I don’t even know if you can judge that. So really, here too, taking a look at ourselves and becoming aware of that too. On one hand. And now actually, out of this discussion about professions, also looking at the trainings again. And the relevant question in this context is, for example in the training of a coach too, how does the training actually need to be designed so that when someone, as a newbie so to speak, comes out of this training, they’ve gained the ability to work with it, even without already, I don’t know, bringing 10, 20 years of experience in the field. And there needs to be corresponding research for that, and so on. That’s also being done now, by the way, to provide answers to this, and these trainings accordingly, maybe even against the background of certain regulations, or or or — you can also bring in this discussion about charlatanism here, to set certain cornerstones here, and possibly even go, to a certain degree, into some regulation, to ensure that this doesn’t get abused afterward, and not everyone can just call themselves whatever, or or or. But that’s with coaching now, that’s just one example. We have this in many contexts. Doesn’t matter if someone calls themselves a consultant, if someone calls themselves a trainer. Even if we look into these contexts, we have the same issue everywhere, because the terms aren’t protected, and accordingly a lot more can go wrong here, in quotes, than maybe in other areas where per se, first of all, a university or whatever chamber-of-commerce-backed training takes place. There, some thought has already been put into it, and at least something has already been established, while in other areas maybe some players from the field just say from their gut, I’ve had this and that experience, so that’s how we do it now, those are the quality standards. And whether that’s actually “successful” afterward or not often doesn’t get checked at all. And that’s a deficiency here. Then we have the second aspect, which I’d like to underline again. You said, I can only evaluate current performance. And I’d like to underline that really, really strongly, because we’re talking about a snapshot here. That’s a really important key term we’re really allowed to keep in mind here. That means, for example, and I find this really fascinating, when I did my training in the field of brain research, there was also, at the end, a corresponding exam and so on, even though we know that basically doesn’t help at all, and can’t actually check the real learning success, and similar. We don’t think much of it. But we know the market demands it, that it’s better received if you’ve completed this training accordingly, and if someone asks about it, then you have a certificate you can show. So we open the door for you to do that, well aware that basically, in quotes, it says almost nothing. And I find that really, really fascinating here. And if we pick up this term of repetition again, I find that really important too. We know from brain research that repetition doesn’t mean I have to repeat the entire learning material or similar. In the training we did recently, I actually used this example — “imagine you have a huge lawn, and you’d take a lawnmower with full enthusiasm, and would just mow one strip, so to speak, diagonally from left to right on your lawn, or something, and then you sit on your terrace and are totally excited and look at how this lawn looks, with one mowed strip and the rest grown normally, and you look at it. Then you go on vacation and you come back, and you go out on the terrace and look at this lawn again, you’ll notice that the spot, the strip you’d mowed before, has grown back, and you’re outraged. What actually happened there?” And that’s exactly the same thing that happens in our brain. That means, the moment we engage with a topic, do certain things here, our neurons, synapses, and so on develop, so to speak. A neural network gets formed here, expanded, and so on. The strands lengthen, and the moment I stop watering it afterward, so to speak, to put it that way, using this garden image, when I stop mowing the lawn, when I stop watering it, then it regresses again too. That means, now I can take an exam at the end of a school semester, but then I’ve learned for the exam. That still doesn’t say anything about the learning success, in quotes, after a year and a half or two years. That means, if this doesn’t happen now — and repetition doesn’t mean repeating the entire learning material, but setting our neural network in motion, and that doesn’t happen through repeating the entire material, by the way, we also know that from brain research — one word, one sentence, one quote is enough, and that daily. And through this repetition, the synapses get set in motion again, so to speak. This neural network gets flooded through, and with that it’s there. And if I repeated that daily, with a quote, with a sentence, with something, so that people can make the connection, so to speak, then after two years you can remember what was covered much better than if that doesn’t happen. And interestingly, I like to work with these images and such too, and especially from this training we had in a really small group, it’s very different — some continue, some don’t continue, and so on. But with those I’m in contact with, I know, for example, that this lawnmower even got ordered as a symbol for the desk, so to speak, or as a keychain. I don’t actually know if it’s a desk model or a keychain, but exactly to keep these synapses going, so to speak, and to keep remembering it. And now, in various contexts, I just need to say, think of the lawnmower, and it’s immediately clear what’s meant. It doesn’t need to be explained anymore. And the neural network is immediately flooded through. And here we’re really allowed to draw a lot more from science, in quotes, to actually establish these repetitions and this learning success this way, and to make it lasting and sustainable. So I’m curious what you all think about that, Layla, Marc. Gladly Marc, and then Layla afterward.
I have a big urge to respond directly, dear Yasemin. I mentioned this in the room once before — I find it really interesting that we all get ourselves a nutritionist. And I want to come back to your headline, insight and personal growth. We all get ourselves a nutritionist because people tell us, you eat unhealthily. Oh, really, that’s interesting. And we know that eating wrong, and wrong nutrition, can make you sick. And the term “thought advisor” just occurred to me. And ultimately a coach, and the exchange, what we’re doing, is thought advising. And if we think the right things, that has a big influence on our growth. But most people, and I belonged to that group for a long time too, thought more about what they eat and whether it’s the right thing, rather than what they think. And that’s why I really, really like this term “thought advisor,” because thought advising, or also the exchange in a group with you all or with other people, helps you arrive at new insights and thereby generate new growth. Thanks for listening.
Yes, thank you so much. Layla?
I was just thinking to myself, first I was directly with Marc, and thought, okay, so is school supervised learning, and not supervision, but supervised learning? And is a coach then supervised thinking? And is that something we should aim for? Or should we aim for advising, and not deny the other person the ability to use this advising accordingly, no matter how old or young they are? I’ve now, this whole time, I was thinking internally, one, I’m a bit with the written and oral grades, so it’s divided into two categories, so for everyone. So there isn’t just accommodation for some, but that’s also a thing that exists for everyone, I wanted to add that quickly. The other thing, I was thinking a bit about you, Yasemin, because I learned this in school too — didactics is about starting from the students’ life horizon. And then I thought, okay, well, let’s go into marketing now. Which I don’t come from at all. But there’s customer orientation. And what does my customer actually want? My customer, whether that’s a patient, or a student, or a coaching client, they wish for a perspective shift from the advisor, teacher, caretaker. And that’s what you get encouraged to do — what does the customer want? Think about it from that perspective. What does your student want? What could answers be that come from their life horizon? And then I thought, yes, I think that’s really what it’s about, thinking about it that way, that you can maybe do good advising and do school well by considering, I don’t have children. But I still consider myself a good, or a very good — no actually, I consider myself a really good teacher, I’ll say that now. So I’m being bold now. Because I can make this perspective shift, often through my own experience, what I’d also wish for myself. And I’m also glad about my own experience — I know why a child might not have a packed lunch, why a fountain pen can’t be bought, what it’s like to go to the same vacation country your whole childhood. All those kinds of things. But I also know the other perspective — I grew up quite Swabian too, and because of that I had a lot of opportunities. Can you expect someone who enters this profession, or whatever profession, to have had all these experiences? No. Can you expect them to try to adopt this perspective and change the training accordingly? Yes. In my studies it was still the case that I was told I should do an internship. And I financed my studies through work, and I didn’t have the financial means for various reasons. In any case, this internship was quite a lot for me, at 30 hours. And I had to do that on top of what I was normally already doing, like studying and other things that were going on. And then I looked that up, because I asked, can I count my waitressing job? And they said, no, no, that’s not a training profession. And then I looked it up in the regulations, and it said there that teachers often have no insight into training professions, so it’s this “from school back into school,” they’re supposed to do this internship to be able to understand the life world of the students. And then I thought internally, wait a minute, I work the whole time, I come from a working-class household, I can relate to that really well. Yes, that’s right, that’s a great idea to do that. You just have to think about how you do that with people you’d otherwise be slamming the door in the face of. For me, it was really hard to do that on top of everything else. So you notice, I managed it. And how can you enable perspective shifts, how can you create conditions — and here we’re at this point, we don’t want to make things equal, but we want to create similar conditions. And that’s why I’m always happy, but I also talk to people. I talk to my colleagues, I mentor, I don’t know, I administer the second state exam. I always look at it through my own lens, and I don’t say my lens is the right lens, it just has my strength. But that doesn’t mean the other person’s lens isn’t a good lens either. But if I notice that they only see it from their own perspective, with their own prescription strength, and can’t put themselves in someone else’s shoes — and the regulations have certainly changed, but if it were the case now that with one internship they say, okay, now you can put yourself in that position, can you speak from your profession about what it’s like there? I don’t know. I thought, I don’t know if that’s sufficient. But I think that’s what we wish for, the perspective shift. And finally, the hotel management trainee does a rotation through all the departments, and the male trainee too — they work at reception, they have to make beds, and so on. Why do they do that? So they get to switch perspectives, because that way you can maybe advise on such areas too, because then you know what it’s like to be there. Yes, that’s what I wanted to add.
Yes, wonderful. I’d like to pick that up again too, before we go into the closing round, actually. So on one hand, this internship thing, that’s a really, really good example of that. It’s a quality standard we set, so to speak. We think, to open up this perspective, for example, it would be good if I did an internship, or had someone do an internship, so this perspective becomes accessible. But I don’t know what happens then. That means, one person does an internship and gains really great perspectives from it, and does something with it too, so has a learning success for themselves, and another one doesn’t. So that means, here too we’re back in this — it’s the brain, it’s a kind of black box, so to speak. That means, I open up the framework, but I can’t necessarily always influence what ultimately comes out in the end, because the system “human” is simply too complex, or our brain is too complex here. I can’t plan one-to-one what comes out as output afterward. And in that sense, that’s a good thought, and it can definitely make sense to say, it’s regulated that there are internships, because we definitely want to open up this perspective, want to let people gather experience, and similar. But I can’t draw the conclusion that this internship will lead to exactly what I planned actually happening, looked at for the individual person. And that’s really fascinating here. And then again, the differentiation between advising and other terms we’ve used here. If I go to an external consultant, they have the mandate to show me various options. It’s not about my learning success, it’s not about me learning how to do it or something, but the consultant is there for that. I have a problem, and the consultant tells me, you now have option A, B, or C. Which one would you like to choose? So they show me different options. That’s a difference to the teacher, or a coach, or whatever. There, for example, we also talk about the role of a “learning companion.” In coaching we speak figuratively of a midwife. That means it’s not about the person being all-knowing or something, but about supporting the learning success. In coaching, for example, that’s done by asking a lot of questions, and not giving answers, to enable the other person, through thinking, so to speak, through impulses that come in, to find answers for themselves. Now you can transfer that to school, and think about whether it’s right how we’ve been doing it so far, maybe it should be different, or similar — I’ll leave that evaluation to you. But ultimately it’s about — this was important to me — differentiating again between advising, and what a coach does, or maybe a teacher does, or something. In every professional field there are different roles we have, and depending on what the goal is, and here we can connect again to the goal of education, not school, education. The goal of education is self-efficacy, self-determination, enabling an autonomous life. And that requires my student to even be capable of reflecting on certain things, thinking them through, perceiving themselves, developing an identification with themselves, with their own body and so on, finding answers for themselves, how do I actually want to shape my life. And for that to be possible, school is basically constructed, in quotes, to set this framework, to create these possibilities. Whether we’ve succeeded at that or not is a whole different discussion. Or how school is allowed to change too, against the background of digitalization and so on, everything that flows into that. Those are discussions that have been going on for many decades already. They’re also justified. We’re allowed to always look at this critically too, and see what changes might be needed too. And that doesn’t mean no changes have happened here at all. And I just wanted to add that as an impulse too.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. Unfortunately, due to today’s stimulating discussion, I haven’t had the chance to pick up your contributions from the chat again. Sorry about that. I took a screenshot and I’ll just take it along, so we can pick that up again tomorrow, or in one of the next rooms, and let it flow in, maybe even in the form of questions and such. So just a note, it didn’t get lost or anything — but when there’s a stimulating discussion going on, I get to weigh, in moderation so to speak, what we pick up today already, and what we maybe set aside a bit and pick up again somewhere else. Right, yes, wonderful. Thank you so much, and with that let’s gladly move into the closing round. Layla, Marc, in that order, what were your highlights from the room, or what would you like to underline again? And tomorrow we continue with insight, or self-knowledge.
Yes, images are nice, language creates reality, perspective shift is a prerequisite for inner growth. I’m a 1.60-meter-tall black box. It’s important to think outside the box. But the question is whether school and other educational institutions only teach you to think inside the box. And I’ll leave that now to the other black boxes here in the room, and overall, however they let that sink in, to generate their own inner growth. Thanks for listening.
Wonderful, thank you. Marc?
Room 841. The number 841 is a tight number. The 8 stands for objectivity, the 4 for patience and energy, and the 1 for inspiration. We find all of that here together, and that’s the reason I love being with you all and being here. I wish you a good start to your day.
Oh yes, wonderful. Thank you so much. Yes, lovely. I think a lot really came together today, which can and may get us thinking again. And it’s up to each of us to see what we pick up, what we want to use to sort our thoughts again, and maybe even transfer one thing or another in some form, and apply it to our own life or our own business. So in that sense I found it really fascinating. I really found it very, very multifaceted too. Thank you so much for that. And I’m really looking forward to tomorrow, because then, as I said, starting tomorrow we go deeper into this focus on the self, not just insight and gaining insight quite generally, but bringing this component of the self more strongly into focus, to then, on Sunday, look at it with Dr. Johanna Dahm and Kati Schaab too, in relation to decisions, so to speak, at the authors’ breakfast, and build bridges to these topics, and next week then, with the focus on insight from the self, open up various rooms, to then slowly bring all these aspects back together, abstract them upward, and find a conclusion, so to speak, together for us, for the several weeks we’ve now been engaging with the overarching theme of insight and gaining insight. So I’m really looking forward to that. You’re all warmly invited to join again tomorrow at 8am, and I wish you all the best. Until then. Ciao.
