How Can Organizations Learn Faster? The Challenge of Entering the Green Room

In this article Edgar Schein explains how it is shocking to him how leaders today still are afraid to change their environments within the workplace. Any business must be able to readily adapt and change at any moment. With today’s evolving markets it is key to possess these attributes to succeed. Many leaders today are afraid to shift change or learn how to change because they are scared to go against the social norm, and this is where we fail as leaders. Schein explains how we must understand that learning is not a unitary concept. He breaks learning down into three separate categories including: knowledge acquisition and insight, habit and skill learning, and emotional conditioning and learned anxiety. Schein associates knowledge acquisition and insight with a concept called Anxiety 1, which is the feeling associated with an inability, or unwillingness to learn something new because it appears too difficult or disruptive. He explains for habit and skill learning to take hold, we need opportunities, to practice and make mistakes. He also mentions the concept of Anxiety 2 as the fear, shame, or guilt, associated with not learning anything new. For us as workers not to conform to these Anxiety’s and norms, and for change to occur, me must destabilize the organization and simultaneously manage three processes in the workplace. These include: disconfirmation, creation or guilt or anxiety, and creation of psychological safety. People are almost always going to feel anxiety become uncomfortable when trying to change. We must reduce the feeling of anxiety and make it a cultural norm so people feel they are in a stress free, comfortable environment. People must have a sense of direction and be surrounded by a comfortable environment that